WJA's Maker's Project
The WJA - Women's Jewelry Association Maker's Project is a fundraiser for the San Diego local chapter. This event benefits the local and national WJA scholarship fund. Each designer receives a “gem" from a fellow WJA Maker. The challenge is to use the "gem" and create a wearable jewelry design.
We always start with a pencil sketch
WJA Maker's II theme is "She Inspired Me..." There are many females in my life that have inspired me. I selected this gem for my project because of the shape and the color. And the fact that it reminded me of the the strongest designer in the world - Mother Nature.
Adobe Illustrator was useful in created the template for cutting the metal.
We hand cut the design from copper sheet. Shown above is the bezel and backplate soldered together the gem almost fits. With some final tweaking we finished the soldering and patinaed the copper to have a rich brown and warm grey color. The final design element we needed to make was the sterling silver pearl chain with copper colored freshwater pearls.
