My tumble polisher has arrived!!! Hooray!

Naturally I had to immediately create something that used the full potential of it (polishing and hardening is tumbled long enough) and so I threw myself into creating a chain consisting of 38 individual links. Most of them are curly, but 13 of them are just oval hoops. The curly ones are just SO my style although a bit of a hassle to create:

First I ran up one or two ends with the torch (basically melting the tip of the silver wire, which then behaves like any other liquid and shapes a drop. In order to get the right curve to the finished shape, I angled the wire to almost horizontal, forcing the drop to hang almost sideways from the wire).

Then I shaped the individual hoops (and I mean individual –no two are the same) and soldered half of them close. After etching I hammered chosen parts flat in order to lend it the art nouveau “schwung” I always crave of my lines and started assembling the soldered hoops with the still open. Soldering the rest of the hoops too was a tad challenging: a lot of small pieces of solder to place and NOT to accidentally tilt off again. And noooo… I was too lazy to do it in small quantities – I did the whole chain in one go! Luckily I succeeded *grin*. Afterwards I hammered details on the freshly soldered chains -now much harder to get to right becaus eof the links they were connected too, but I managed quite well.

And so the new tumbler came into use and didn’t let me down: After 4 hours of tumbling (these are delicate things, so I wanted them to harden a lot to keep their shape) I was very satisfied with the result.

However, after having looked at it for some hours, I decided to add a little extra and replaced one of the round hoops with one made of 18 carat gold. You don’t notice at the first glance, but it’s just so cool and understated and makes the whole thing very special.

It took me over 6 hours to create this chain (plus tumbling of cause), but I am very satisfied with the result, and hurried to take a picture of my mum wearing it.

By the way:
When I was listing this chain on Etsy I measured it and counted the links: There are 38 links and it measures 83 cm! Spooky, eh?

This necklas was sold end of november. You can still see more pictures of the finished item here. I loved it and will therefore probably create something similar again. Perhaps with some set stones?