Friday 13 August 2010

More helm chain with beads

n the last post I mentioned I had made a pendant and earrings to match the sterling silver helm chain bracelet with red beads I showed a photo of. The earrings and pendant are made from 1 mm sterling silver wire. The larger rings have a 6 mm inner diameter while the smaller rings have an inner diameter of 3.25 mm.


Sterling silver helm chain pendant

As you can see, on the pendant it made more sense to me to place all the beads around the outside of the pendant.


Sterling silver helm chain earrings

But with the earrings I decided to stagger two beads and then used a single smaller jump with bead at the bottom of the earring to hold the lowest two large loops shut, until I did that, the lower two loops had a habit of opening and allowing the bead above them to slide down.
The pendant is hung from two sections of belcher chain using 2 small jump rings. I decided that hang the pendant from two points rather than one gave a better display of the piece as hanging from one link caused the pendant to elongate into an oval shape rather than a circle. This is because the gaps between rings are slightly larger than one that would allow the pendant to hold a circle shape - but when I tried using jump rings with an inner diameter of 3 mm instead of 3.25 mm I could not get the elements together so had to go back to the 3.25 mm inner diamter smaller rings. The two rings holding the pendant to the chain are actually only 3 mm innner diameter as I did not want them to be really obvious and get in the way of seeing the pendant.

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