These are for the rather magnificent Pizazz (), as an extremely belated Christmas present.

Warning: Much of what follow is sheer metalwork geekery, and very possibly boring who isn't learning almost exactly the same things as I am right now. Beware.

The one on the right was a test-piece cut, rolled out, impressioned, and hammered for texture, from a twenty-cent piece. The black in it is rouge from my class' studio polishing machine.
It is, however, too small for the kind of pendant I was trying to make, and I rather screwed up the back when trying to make a different type of bail, so I cut my losses, converted it from the neclace-pendant it was intended to be and attached a cotton wrap to make it the same type of hair jewellery I initially experimented with when making Sparrow and started working on:

The one on the left; the pendant proper.
This one is eighty percent silver, and when I got it it was a fifty cent piece minted in 1966, the (so far) last year Australia had currency made from precious metals minted for regular circulation.

We have a rolling mill at school (think of the clothes wringer your grandmother may have used. It's a bit like that.), and I was able to both remove the die-struck images of Australia's shield and Queen Elizabeth's profile, and leave the & impression with a bit of bent paperclip by using it.
I taped down the wire & with masking tape, which had been cut through by the squishing pressure when it came out the other side.
The rolling mill left the coin a bit curved as it came out, but I rather liked the curve so I decided to run with it.

You've gotta anneal quite frequently when you're drawing metal or rolling it out because it work-hardens quite quickly during these processes.

I cut out the shape you can see (plus a stalk on top which is now bent behind as a bail) with a saw, 'cos when you're working with silver you're more concerned about wasting metal than you are when working with zinc.

Then I had to file bend the stalk around and solder it (fileing it to fit the back first, of course). I heated the pendant too quickly here, so the bail began to melt, and slumped.
I've largely been able to correct this, and now it's the shiniest part of the pendant, though there's still a small ditch I'd have had to remove too much metal to take away, at the back.
I got to play around a little with patination for this one, but what with the polishing I still had to do after to keep the finish I wanted it didn't really take. I will be comming back to this technology.
Silver is enormous fun to work with and (after the other exercizes I've been doing with brass and gilding metal) comparatively easy. I guess the apparent ease might be because I know I'm making something worth wearing, when I'm working in silver, so it feels more worthwhile, though...
In any case, I've learnt a lot doing these, and I'm rather pleased with how they turned out.

I really hope Pizazz likes them.