Teardrop earrings with poinsettia style flower cutout
£39.00
Product Code: 31368f
Stock Level: 1
Teardrop shaped long drop earrings featuring a cut out design with a Poinsettia style flower with a cluster of tiny appliqued solid metal balls in their centre. Strictly speaking, if this were a poinsettia, the central balls are in fact the flowers, with the 'petals' actually being large bracts.
These hand crafted earrings have been made in metal clay and I initially drew the design digitally, to cut out from the clay. The balls were applied by hand under a magnifier with tweezers and the earrings fired in a kiln at very high temperature for several hours. The petals of the flowers are completely cut out and you can see right through the holes in what is called a negative space design.
The earrings have been made by me in a pink bronze metal clay called Desert Sun, which has a high copper content, but is officially a bronze. So I think it would satisfy both requirements for either a bronze, or copper piece, as the earwires are solid copper too. The earrings have been antiqued to bring out the details.
The earrings hang 50mm (2") overall from the top of the earwires and are 14mm (>½") at their widest. The earwires feature hammered scrolls and deep teardrop hanging loops to allow the earring pieces to swing freely. Please note that this design of earwire uses slightly heavier wire than I usually use, if you have sensitive piercings.
What is metal clay?
Metal clay (now available in base metals like copper, bronze, iron, steel and brass and precious metals like silver and even gold) is a clay like medium made from tiny particles of metal, combined with an organic binder and made into a pliable clay or paste with water. After working with the clay-like medium to form the article, it is thoroughly dried to remove all of the water, the shape is further refined and then fired at very high temperature in a kiln to both burn off the binders and to cause the metal particles to fuse together as solid metal - this firing takes a full day to complete - at which time I tend to work with crossed fingers, hoping that the kiln gods are smiling on me that day and it fires successfully. Not everything does.
