Pebble Brooch

After the peacock fiasco, this was the piece that earnt me the qualification. 

I worked hard to make sure the syringe lines had a form and purpose.  To be honest, I'm not a great fan of the syringe - something to do with my total inability to keep a steady hand whilst also pushing down on the syringe - but I am often amazed at what others can do with it.  So I did want to push myself to showcase some of the possibilities of the syringe in openwork pieces.  The syringe can do more than openwork, but this was the requirement from the certification board.   I had to try really hard for this piece to have well defined lines (I ended up with my arm on a block of rubber, my left hand holding the unsteady right one, and not breathing, ha ha!).   Also this piece is quite small, only about 4 or 5cm square, so you can imagine the fiddliness of the job...   I started by doing a series of pebbles individually, cleaning those up and polishing the edges before choosing the nicest ones and attaching them together with paste.  Attaching the brooch findings is always a bit tricky but I had calculated the shrinkage well in this piece so it all matched up nicely when fired.