With a Llittle help from My Friends

On the left is an earring sent to me by a customer. This is a nicely made sailboat, obviously fabricated, with silver sails and an amber boat. But there is only on earring. An emotionally charged piece, one of the pair was lost and I was asked to make a new pair as a close replica. I took on the challenge.

Really - how hard could it be?







The first step was to buy, cut, aand polish amber for the boats. One road trip later, I had a little (well, a lot!) of help from my friend Sue and her husband Tom. They shared a great meal, lots of wine, and lots of fun, along with their lapidary equipment and lots of support. I left the next day with a handful of polished amber boats, a new lapidary passion, and the feeling that the tough part of this job had been accomplished. Only the silver sails were left to make now. Not a problem.(Can you sense the set-up here?)

 Well, it wasn't as easy as I thought.Due to a fragile ego, I left out the photos of the mangled sails. No need to share all that. Everything kept falling apart. Nothing seemed to work. So what to do? Get a little help from my friends!

I passed around my sad, mangled sails at a dinner get-together with some jewelry buddies, and I listened to several possible solutions. Thank goodness for friends! A couple of mangly (yeah, it's a word. Now.) attempts later, I came up with the reasonable replica here. Whew.

My customer has happily asked for three pair of earrings to be sure the sentimental piece is always available. Here are the almost finished sails and boats for the 3 pair. At the left is the original earring, with a new bail for it's future life as a pendant.

Stay tuned to see the shaped and cleaned up pairs.
Boy, will I be proud (and relieved!).