Steve Smith's Jewellery: The making of Harliquin dichroic glass pendant jewellery

Whilst making these round pendants of dragon eyes and cats eyes. To be fixed as pendants and bracelet cabochons. I have lots of very small off cuts from corners. These off cuts can be very expensive and nothing goes to waste so I decided to use them for a new

Harlequin design pendant idea I've had for a while.

More about these cats eyes and dragon eyes on a future blog post.

Here you can see the basic pear drop design, very rough but it should smooth out in the kiln.

Lots of corner off cuts placed together to form the basic shape. This dichroic glass in 2mm thick so the top glass had to be 4mm thick.

The simple glass firing rule is always in the front of the mind.

"Glass wants to be 6mm thick and round. "

Well I wanted that thickness but did not want it round so I made sure the firing soak time was not too long. I decided through experience for that to be 4 minutes. (If your interested. lol)

And now, after cooling. The fired cabochon, straight out of the kiln. As I expected, all nice and rounded edged but still in the shape I wanted. A pear drop or tear drop pendant shape.

I then glued a bail on using E6000 glue and did not touch it for 48 hours. A lesson learnt from fiddling with glued items before this time had lapsed which proved unforgiving. As in, it fell off! lol

Here it is in all it's fine glory.

My first

Dichroic Glass Harlequin Pendant

I am really please with the finished piece. I never quite know what is going to come out of the kiln until it's done it's thing. But as long as enough thought has been put into it, it's usually ok. Although, I do have a small tub with mistakes and designs that just didn't work.

These, as I have said earlier will be used at some time in the future as I don't like to throw any glass away.

If you want this unique pear drop harlequin pendant for £15 plus £3 p&p

then contact me via email:

stevesmithjewellery@yahoo.co.uk

My facebook page: www.facebook.com/SteveSmithJewellery