A few months ago I bought this set of handmade beads from an artist in Mexico. They've been sitting on my bench staring at me ever since. I knew I wanted to make a necklace since they work so beautifully all together, but it wasn't until just the other day that I got started. Just need to take more photos and it can go in the store!

To pay better attention to how an item will be worn. How it will hang. Balance. 

​It started off so well. Glued a design to some nickel silver sheet. Then saw practice!

I cut out a wing, too, this time in copper. Sorry I don't have a picture of it. I really have to get better at this kind of thing.

I did an ok job with sawing so I didn't need to do too much filing afterwards. Practice is important! So the soldering steps went like this - 

1. Bird wing (because it's the largest piece) - hard solder, sweat soldering technique
2. Jump ring on back (2nd largest piece) - medium solder, direct join with 3rd hand
3. Eye (because it's the smallest)

I still think I overheat things when I sweat solder. I can never see when the solder flows and I have to guess which means sometimes things aren't joined at all and I have to start over. Very annoying, but I don't know what to do about it. I wear magnifying glasses throughout and I still can't see when it happens. Bah!! 

The bail connection was fiddly, but using a loupe makes it easy to see if I had gotten the ends of the wire directly on my tiny bits of solder. With some adjusting they were in place. A light press down of the tweezers and it was good to go. It went much easier because I could see when the solder flowed. Not the neatest join ever, but workable. If I was going to use this piece I'd clean up the rest of the mess on the back, but I'm not going to and if you're smarter than me, you can see why.
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I should have thought better, but I was so caught up in my process that I didn't. I should have used two jump rings on the back since it is too wobbly on a single hang point. Too bad since the rest of the piece looks relatively good. Again, it's only cleaned up and not finished so pardon the mess.

Overall it was a very good learning experience and that's where I'm at. I really need to think things all the way through before starting off on a project. But that only means I get to make another one and since it was fun, I don't mind. Wish me luck at trying to place two jump rings on the back with only one 3rd hand!!