Making a bubble drop pendant

This is one of the projects I have been working on recently – a bubble  drop pendant made from Argentium silver, a sterling silver bail and tinted resin.

I love working with Argentium silver (sterling silver that has a small amount of germanium replacing some of the copper content). Argentium silver has a silver content of 93.5%, slightly higher than conventional sterling silver.

Why do I love working with Argentium silver? It does not fire scale and is really easy to fuse, which I find easier than soldering. Argentium silver can be hardened by baking in a conventional oven, which means I can work with dead soft wire/sheet, shape as desired and then bake it to harden sufficiently to be worn. On top of this, Argentium silver is highly tarnish resistant.

  1. Shaping the wire circles using pliers.
  2. All of the wire circles placed on my charcoal block, ready to fuse together.
  3. Fusing the circles together.
  4. Soldering the bail onto the pendant.
  5. Hammering the pendant flat.
  6. Ready to fill with resin – I stick the pendant onto tape so the resin does not run outside the shape.
  7. Filling the pendant with resin.
  8. The filled pendant – if you look closely you can see all of the air bubbles that need to be removed.
  9. After lightly heating the resin with a torch to remove air bubbles.
  10. This is what the pendant looks like when I remove the tape backing. To finish the surface of the resin I need to either sand the resin (for a matte finish) or coat with another layer of resin (for a gloss finish). I decided to make this pendant reversible with a matte finish on one side and a gloss finish on the other.

Leave a Reply