jewelry making using one of mama's porcelain roses

in the spring i treated myself to a jewelry workshop to learn how to do "cold connections". in other words, how to put things together with yes, cold connections. we did do some flaming (annealing) of  metal, melting wire to make beads like the ones at the top of the piece above, which is my first piece using a porcelain rose that my beloved mother alice made. there were instances were it was necessary to solder, and mostly it was great to learn how to rivet, wire, and drill holes.

we experimented with etching metal, lamination, and rolling patterns into metal, such as the square and circle in my piece which i'm inspired to call homage to alice.

here are two views of altoid tins that were annealed to remove the paint. the first one blistered so beautifully, i saved it and will varnish to maintain the pattern instead of washing it off.