This project came to me from a friend who had some opals that he bought a long time ago on a trip. He now wanted to make a pair of earrings for his wife. We weren't able to get together so this project was done totally online. I first did several sketches and narrowed that down to 4. Then I made a few sketches with wax wire to get it an idea of how the stores will work. I emailed the pictures and they picked the variation that they wanted. Now I was ready to translate the idea into silver. The trickiest part of this project was building a setting for the opal chunks at the top. I fabricated them from wire and made them look like they were suspended in the space. This whole piece so there was no casting involved.
It was done with round silver wire but I forged it down to get some taper and a little texture to the wire.
She loved them! This was a custom project so it's not on my website.

The trickiest part of this project was building a setting for the opal chunks at the top