I was aiming for a planet and moon thing when designing around these two stones, and it wasn't until I actually got everything set that I decided it that to me it looked more like an extra-planetary ground/sky landscape.
I'm not going to tell you what to see in it, and honestly, I suspect if we took a poll no two people would see the same thing, so I will just tell you how it was made because I don't do that enough.
Per usual, we start with a structural framework of textured silver and use a technique called Keum Boo to fuse a high karat gold foil to make specific areas stand out. We use a solution called Liver of Sulphur (mmm - it smells as good as it sounds) to oxidize the piece. Gold doesn't oxidize, so it stays gold, and we polish the high points of the silver, so we end up with a lot of great contrast. In the process we break off the bail. So we go back and cut down the bail and resolder it to the piece, reoxidize and repolish, and this time break off the setting for the tourmaline. After a few months in time out, we clean up the join and resolder that, then re-Keum Boo, and reoxidize, and repolish...
Anyway. In case you can't tell, this one almost didn't make it to the finish line. But when it did, it immediately became one of my favorite pieces.
56x56mm, 18" steel cable choker
sterling silver, 23.5k gold foil, mexican fire opal, rio grande rustic, green tourmaline