Here’s a picture of the opal earrings I made for my mother-in-law back in 2014, and which kind of kicked off a “rediscovered” passion for silversmithing after an absence of over two decades in a way.
I had often missed creating silver jewelry, but never really had a place where I could do more than a quick repair, or something very simple as we were apartment dwellers never in the same place for long due to my job at the time.
Made from sterling sheet and wire, the bezels were hand-serrated and set within a twisted rope border. The opal stones are about 5-6 mm triangular free-form cabochons that I had acquired well over 30 years earlier, too.
In fact, when I originally purchased them, I had also purchased another slightly larger opal that I later used in creating a ring for Kathy back in the late 80’s (and is when I discovered apartment living really *does* limit what you can do when it comes to silversmithing). 😉
It was after I had made Kathy that ring and her mom had seen it, that I wound up promising to make a pair of earrings with the other two opals for her. You can read more details about that on this site’s About page.