Tadpole Galaxy Pendant

The tadpole galaxy pendant that was made for an astronomer is finished and she has it (and loves it). So now I can put up the photo. I'm showing it large so folks can see details. It's only an OK photo. This kind of work is very hard to photograph really well. I put it up large so the detail and small stones were more obvious. 

In life, the stone are flashing and vivid.  They are a yellow sapphire and 3 blue sapphires. There is also a very small white sapphire that is above and slightly to the left of the yellow one. It represents a star that is fainter then the rest. 

I needed to curve it differently since it needed to be wearable jewelry as well as sculpture. It's about 4" in sterling.

Sculpting, patinaing ,and polishing a design of something that is both there and not, and has varying levels of transparency is very challenging. It becomes a translation of shape and form. This was a lot thought and work and I am very happy with the final design.

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This is the photo she gave me to work from.

I'm just back from visiting my daughter in Santa Cruz,  so not much new on my work in the last few days.  I'm working on a pair of wedding rings today.