Nature inspired jewellery

I love to use nature as inspiration in my jewellery making, and collect seeds and grasses and petals which I keep in little screw top jars in my workshop.

I found some hollow hand blown glass beads (from Clbeads), and some large glass cabochons on Etsy and made these pendants.

The first one has a heart shaped geum petal caught between the two glass cabochons. I made two bezel settings with open backs, then soldered them back to back. I covered the join with some twisted sterling silver wire which I soldered in places and then attached a jump ring to the top.

I polished it with tripoli and rouge before setting one of the cabochons into the bezel cup. I popped the petal onto the cab and then placed the other cab into its cup, catching the petal between the two. Very pretty.....

This one has a dandelion clock inside, captured forever, reminiscent of late summer....

  and this one has pretty dried grass, a reminder of hot dry summer days....

 For the hand blown hollow glass beads, I gently fed the seeds in through one of the holes, then closed the holes with hand forged oxidised bead caps, and hung the bead on an oval rolo chain. Beautiful, a joy to make.