Death's-head moth and the Thylacine.

Yay! I'm back to working :D I really hope I won't have to get back to physio again, and won't have another such a loooong break in making stuff. This remains to be seen, but fingers crossed! (Or, as we say it: thumbs held ;P).
The bad news is, I still didn't manage to make two pendants I really wish to be able to finish, because I keep running in technical issues with them. I'm after two attempts, and had to scraped both. But third time's a charm, right? I also have to finish a hinge bracelet I hoped to have made by now, but I run in a problem with one hinge and have to figure out the best way to approach this. In the worst case scenario I'll just redo the hinge, so this shouldn't take much longer.

And now for the stuff I did finish:
Death's-head moth( Acherontia atropos) cuff:

Etched copper cuff featuring Acherontia atropos

 I really like that cuff! While I also (surprise, surprise!) really like the pictures I took of it (and for the most part, all the pictures I took during that photo shoot), it looks better in person. Apart from the moth and the scrolls, there are also mu customary crescent moons on either end of the cuff.

Continuing with Acherontia-theme, there are also two pairs of earrings:

Etched copper A. atropos earrings with silver details.

 This pair is really delicate by my standards: while they're quite long, being 5.1cm in total, the moths themselves are only 1.3cm long (counting the element attaching them to the chain) and have wingspan of 2.1cm. They're small. And were a bit of a challenge to cut out, I must say. Especially the bits close to antennae. And painting the patterns before etching was also a bit tricky, but they turned out pretty nice. The elements with the moons are about 0.9cm in diameter. Again, small, for me.
The chain and moons are sterling silver, as are ear wires.

Etched copper A.atropos earrings with an ear cuff.

 In these pair, the moths are slightly bigger: they're about the same length as previous ones, but their wingspan is about 2mm larger. They were much easier to cut out, mostly because their shape is much simpler.The ear cuff is 0.6cm wide, and it's engraved. I did the engraving with hand gravers, and, let me tell you, there was a lot of sanding afterwards to remove all those accidental nicks and scratches... Hand engraving is... tricky. And unfortunately, there are no courses anywhere in my area I could take to get better at it, which is frustrating.

As I already mentioned, I planned to make two pendants as well, but they proved trickier than I anticipated. I'm still determined to make them work, so hopefully at some point I'll actually manage to make them.
Moving on to Thylacine- theme, there's a cuff:

Thylacinus cynocephalus on an engraved copper cuff.

I love this one as well, even though I realised only when I was processing the photos, that I didn't give it the second front leg... Oh, well, it's still pretty as it is ;). There are, of course, crescent moons on the ends of the cuff.

Then there are two pairs of earrings:

Etched copper Thylacine earrings with sterling silver details and tiger eye cabochons.

And these look somewhat weird on those pictures... They're actually rather shiny in person... I did retake some of the picture today, so I'll see if I have any better ones. Thylacines are famous for how wide they could open their mouths (up to 80 degrees!) so it would be a shame if I didn't show them with open mouth on any of the pieces... That being said, I might have overdone it...

Here the stones are unakite, and the pictures even weirder.

I swear, these are shiny. Those pictures are weird. I'm actually wondering if I shouldn't try to profile the head of the Thylacine on the right hand side a bit better, but I'm not sure how to do this (I'm thinking about using graver for that) but I'm not certain I won't end up with a bungled earring I'll then have to etch another blank for... These are the first earrings with a stone set as a part of the ear wire (for the lack of better term), and I really like how those turned out(aside from that one issue). I'll probably make more in this style.
 And finally there are two pendants (there were supposed to be three, but I've ran into some issues with the last one. It's not scraped yet, because I think I may be able to salvage it. We'll see.)

Thylacine on an etched copper pendant with a hematite cabochon.

 I must say, this one is probably my favourite piece among all this lot.  It has two bails at the back, and if you look closely, you can actually see in this picture where the chain is coming from, so to speak. Originally, I wanted to attach the chain to the Thylacine's snout an tail, but these are so small I wasn't sure I wouldn't melt the chain while attempting to do that. I really love this little guy :)

Etched copper and silver thylacine pendant

 Another gaping tassie tiger. Tricky to photograph, as it's difficult to prop in such a way so it doesn't slip. To take this picture I had to actually trap the chain under the stone. But it worked! I had to make the upper part of the pendant twice, as at my first I actually melted the silver moon. Generally speaking, soldering silver to copper is tricky, at least for me. I either end up with melted silver, or, after pickling, find out that the metals didn't solder together. I have problems getting to the point where everything gets nicely together, and nothing melts.
But I'm carefully optimistic I'm on to something, because the second moon soldered perfectly at the first try. And that, by the way, gives me hope for those pendants I'm yet to make successfully.

So these are the new finished pieces, and I have several still at the WIP stages. I already uploaded both cuffs to my shop, ant the rest will follow shortly, once I finished processing the rest of the pictures.

Oh, and one more thing... I also ran into a weird problem, maybe someone will have some ideas what to do about it. I have huge difficulties with getting anything oxidised. Everything is as clean as humanly possible, and yet I can't get LOS to work. The metal either goes crappy brown colour and refuses to darken further, or it goes black, but then everything comes of, and then it gets to crappy brown colour. It's not as if I didn't oxidised anything before, and yet I've got no clue what's wrong. The only thing I found that works is getting gel on an old toothbrush, brushing it, undiluted directly onto metal, running the piece under hot water and brushing it with brass brush. This usually works, even though it doesn't make sense. It should be to concentrated and create nasty, thick black layer that flakes off. But it's the only way I can get anything oxidised lately. I would stick with it, but it's so wasteful! Anyone have any bright ideas on that? Any tips? I would love it if you shared your thoughts, because it's slowly driving me bonkers!

Have a great upcoming week!
Kasia