In the office at work there is a place where people drop stuff they don’t need no more, but it is still too good to throw out. One day there was a beatuful earring which supposedly lost its partner. I decided to give it a new life as a pendant instead.

This new pendant I crafted is directly inspired by one of the most iconic pieces of lab equipment: the Erlenmeyer flask. Its distinctive conical shape, designed for mixing and heating, has always struck me as elegant and functional. I wanted to capture that essence and transform it into a wearable piece of art.

For the centerpiece, I used that beautiful rose quartz teardrop cabochon. The soft, gentle pink of the rose quartz offers a wonderful contrast to the cool, precise lines of the flask, bringing a touch of warmth and organic beauty to the scientific form.

To add some sparks to the piece I employed the filigree technique to fill the space around the gemstone. Instead of a solid silver backplate, I took my time handcrafting the intricate silver filigree. This delicate, lacy wirework creates an ethereal, almost molecular structure within the flask’s outline, enhancing the light that plays around the rose quartz. It adds depth, texture, and a sense of delicate complexity that I feel perfectly echoes the microscopic wonders we explore in biotechnology.

This pendant is more than just jewelry: it’s a personal fusion of my professional journey and my love for handcrafted artistry. It’s a reminder that beauty can be found in the most unexpected places, even in the meticulously ordered medical lab world.

Peek at crafting process

First of all I remove the cabochon. Since the original lonely earring is not sterling silver I am not going to reuse its body. Luckily the cab was just holding by a drop of glue and poped right off with minimal force.

Next step is to create a new saddle for the salvaged cabochon. This time I used 0.4mm thick silver strip for a saddle frame. The very same strip made a great bottom to hold the stone. I could cut a teardrop shaped solid sheet but this would hide away the beautiful inclusions inside the rose quartz.

With the saddle soldered and roughly polished it is time for the main shape. I researched the Erlenmeyer flasks and sketched a pendant frame. Then I used a 1mm silver wire to shape it accordingly.

After some bending and cutting I placed the wires on my soldering block and got on with my blowtorch. At this stage it is particularly difficult becuase there is a fine line between melting the medium solder and screwing up the entire piece.

On top of the flask I added a jump ring for a future bail. Inside the flask I placed a first filigree wire around the inner circumference. Only then I soldered the stone saddle to the bottom of the flask. Once the structure was stabilized this way it was easier to add consequitive layers of filigree to fill up the openings.

When all filigree work is completed I added a tiny bail made out of a piece of spiral wire, which concluded the soldering phase. Now it is time for stone setting. I immobilized the pendant by driving a few nails into a wooden block around it. This set up enabled me to operate my bezel pusher to bend the silver edges inside to tightly hold the cabochon.

Once the stone is in its rightful place I take my time polishing the small details with silicone polishing wheels and high grit sand paper. Then clean up all the polishing compound residue and voila – the Erlenmeyer Flask Pendant is ready to be put on and draw some astonished looks.

The post Erlenmeyer Flask Pendant appeared first on Slavik LTD.

I’ve been tasked to craft another shoe pendant similar to the one I’ve just managed to sell!

It took me a few weeks of struggle and handcrafting but it is now completed and I am quite happy with the result. I hope my Customer will be satisfied as well – check it out below:

The post Custom high heel filigree shoe pendant appeared first on Slavik LTD.

Sole

Every silver shoe starts with a sole. Same as previously (like in High Heel Filigree Sandal with Carnelian Stone and Butterfly or Strappy high heeled pendant with garnet cabochon) I cut it out of a 1mm silver sheet. Interestingly enough I couldn’t find any template for a high heel sole so each time I draw it by hand. It would be an issue to craft a specific size shoe, thus it’s a good thing no one will wear those on their feet.

Once the first sole is sawed and rough edges are filed away I use it to make a pair. I draw an outline of the first sole on the sheet to saw a second one. This way it is easier to make pair of soles look very much alike.

Having both soles cut and polished it is a perfect moment to stamp my brand on them. Mainly because they are still flat. Once you bend them into a shoe shape the stamping task becomes hell of a lot more complicated. Ah, recently I got a new punch with a tiny 925 marking and I love how it presents itself right under the SL stamps.

Next step is to bend the sole into the shoe shape. It can be a bit difficult because you want your shoes to have sexy curves. I mostly do the bending by hand with a little help of nylon pliers not to damage the surface too much.

Heel

Once I’m happy with the soles shape it is time for the most tricky part of the shoe – the high heel itself. The heel is a complex pin with a flat angled surface on one end.

To produce the heel I first heat up and melt one end of a 1mm wire to form a bubble. Then I cut this bubble to fit the angle of the sole and solder it to a little D-shaped 1mm plate. It does look really ugly until it burred, filed and polished to its proper shape.

When the heel starts to look okay-ish I solder it to the sole to form a “slipper” which is a base for the future shoe. Based on previous experience I now use a longer piece of wire so I can adjust and equalise the heel hight for both shoes. Having both slippers looking alike is a huge successful milestone in this project.

Back heel holder

The leading design idea for this particular pair is to have few shoe straps to hold the stones. Pretty much like these gorgeous Cassandra high heel sandals from Saint Laurent. Not being too good at following the sketches I decided to model it out. I sculpted a little leg out of a candle wax and attached it to a slipper.

First decoration (and also structurally crucial) element of the shoe decoration is the back heel holder. I use paper stickies to cut out the shape for the heel holders and stick them onto the wax leg. Based on the paper template I saw them out of 0.8mm silver plate and anneal it to prepare for hammering.

Straps

Back heel holder also has rather complex geometry. I tried before to produce only with and tools and let me tell you – it is not a good idea. I am genuinely happy that I spent profit from selling my High Heel Filigree Sandal with Carnelian Stone and Butterfly on this micro dapping set! It is a perfect tool to form silver into curvy shapes and I was super excited to use it in this project.

With the heel holders soldered to the slippers it finally started to look like a proper pair of heels. Now it is time to add some straps!

Again the sticky notes came in very handy for modelling straps for my sandal. I just cut out thin stripes of paper and put them onto the wax leg to see how it would look. It also gave me an idea about where the stone saddle will sit and what are the attachment points.

Based on the paper templates I cut my 0.6×1.4mm flat wire into pieces and solder them one by one to each slipper. Once all the straps were in place I filed the attachment points for the stone saddles and soldered them right in. After all the soldering I left both shoes in the acid bath for some time for cleaning. It would be great to put them into the tumbler for a nice polishing, but I ain’t got one unfortunately. But my Dremel Micro with metal brushes and silicone discs also managed to do a good job. The result was actually better than I expected and I got so excited I almost started to set the sones!

Shackles

Happily though I managed to calm myself down and noticed that an important element is still missing – a shackle to connect an earring with a hook.

It would still be possible to do after the stones are set, but I prefer not to heat up the stones. This is risky as not all stones take heating positively. Some might change colour or even crack, hence it is a good habit to leave the stone setting as the very last step in making a jewellery masterpiece.

I took two tiny bits of my flat wire and bent them into micro jump rings. As this should be the very last soldering activity I used the super soft solder to preserve already existing solder joints. Also I clamp a shoe heel in a cross tweezer to dissipate the excessive heat while soldering the shackles. With shackles attached I went through another cycle of acid bathing and manual polishing to get ready for stone setting.

Stone setting

This is my first project I specifically purchased stones for. There is a local shop selling all kinds of precious and semi-precious stones, This is where I found these gorgeous garnet marquise stones and I knew exactly where to put them. Basically I did the entire shoe design around these marvellous garnets.

I choose to use bezel setting technique for this project as I find it the most neat and tidy way of exposing a beautiful stone. Prongs can sometime steal away some thunder away from the stone and I definitely didn’t want it here. Given that the high heel sandal is not the easiest shape to set the stone into I needed a smart way to firmly hold it in a vice. Most jewellers advise to use some sort of jewellery putty or sealing wax, but I can tell you that the polymorph plastics works great as well. You just melt it in a hot water, form it around your piece and let it cool down. Once hardened it is surprisingly strong and you can safely clamp it in a vice for bezel setting. After I finished setting stones into their saddles I gave the earrings another round of fine polishing. And let me tell you honestly – they look truly remarkable!

Exhibition

I hope you enjoyed following the manufacturing process and now it is time to check out the final result. This time I tried to spice things up a little and produce some artisan styled photos (at least in my mind they are). Thus I invite you to have a glimpse though the pictures below and enjoy the show!

This piece is still available for purchase. If you are interested please visit my Etsy Store or send me a DM in my Instagram to talk business

The post High heel strappy sandals silver earrings appeared first on Slavik LTD.

The backstory

The idea for this pendant has nothing to do with European history and weapon choices in 17th century. My day job is about building products for engineers like tools for the API management. We were brainstorming a name for that tool looking through words containing letters “api” in them. Once we got to the word “rapier” it was simply perfect for our case and we spell it as “rAPIer”.

Inspired by the success of our rAPIer I really wanted to craft something special to make the statement. A little research on rapier gave me a lot of confidence that it was more like an art rather than a practical weapon. And this was the beginning of my crafting journey.

Forging the rapier

Well, there is no forging in silversmithing really. It does, however, sound appropriate here. I happen to have a 1mm thick silver sheet for this project. It seemed to be perfect to cut out a blank bar for the future rapier. The longer side of the blank will become a blade and the short one will do as a handle.

Even though it might seem as real forging – a hammer hits a metal bar against an anvil – it is actually called work hardening. Silver is a rather soft metal and hammering it makes it a little more stiff. This is exactly what I need to form the blade.

Rapier is a kind of sword with a slender double sided blade and a wide hilt to protect the hand in a fight. In this story there will be no fighting, but the blade should still like it’s ready for a duel. I use my Dremel with an aluminum oxide bit to grind and sharpen both sides of a blade. I wrapped some 0.5mm wire around the other side of the blade to make a straight handle to look nice.

The hilt

The hilt is a sort of a shield around the handle to protect the hand holding the rapier. Traditionally hilts were made out of a solid steel plate. It was reliable and durable but also quite heavy. In order to reduce the overall weight the hilts started to be made of bent bars, which also gave smiths a way to decorate rapiers.

Keeping the weight in mind I bent a 0.8mm wire in a fish resembling shape. Inside of it I put a loop where the rapier blade would go during the final assemble. Some of the open spaces in the hilt-to-be I filled with filigree wire – it always looks good on jewellery.

The final step is to join the blade with its hilt. It is important to bend the hilt in a waxing crescent moon shape before and then insert the blade into the middle loophole. When done right the thinner end of the hilt will spring load the handle side of the blade making it pleasantly easy to solder. Later on I added a little jump ring on top of the hilt to attach the bail and make it actually wearable.

In case you’re interested in the details of the entire crafting process do not hesitate to watch a little video I put together. Enjoy!

En garde!

Unfortunately, this item is not available for purchase. If you dream about something similar, please check my Etsy store or contact me through the form or on Instagram and let’s see what I can do

The post Silver rapier pendant appeared first on Slavik LTD.

Sole making

As any other project it starts with a basic shape. In this case the shape is a shoe sole. This time I did go extra mile and outlined a sole of real high heeled sandal. Not being sure about the right scale of a future pendant I placed few outlines beside each other to compare.

I knew for sure that this shoe must be bigger than previous ones I made. The reason is simply because the flattened silver wire I have looks clumsy on a smaller sole. So I printed the scale sheet and cut out few outlines. It seemed that number 5 would be good enough.

Next step is to glue the paper sole to a silver plate. I have a nice 1mm thick silver sheet, which is perfect for this project. With a good jigsaw a sole appears in no time. Important point here is to give it a very good polish as you wouldn’t have access to the inner sole surface later on. Also it is much easier to accomplish while the sole is still flat.

Another trick is to grind off the edge on a lower sole surface. In engineering terms it is called fillet, but it is not crucial to keep a perfect radius around the entire circumference of the sole to make it look great. Once you happy with the fillet the sole is ready for the main bending. I use a pair of soft jaws pliers to protect the surface during this operation. Also it is important to remember to stamp a logo before the bending, in my case it is “SL” on the bottom of the sole.

Modelling the heel

Then comes the fun part – making a heel. The difficulty here is that the heel is geometrically complex object, which cannot be easily produced by basic operations like bending, flattening or sawing. This one requires moulding. Silver moulding is not easy to master at home, but there are shortcuts. I took a piece of candle wax, warmed it up in my hands and modelled a heel directly onto the sole.

After few iterations of the wax heel it finally looked good enough. So it was the time to make a mould. I used a common gypsum powder, the one you could find in any home appliance store. When the mixture was getting a sour creme consistency I stick the sole with wax heel right inside the gypsum cast. I gave a few days to dry and harden and then I heated it up with a blow torch, let the wax out and poured melted silver into the cavity.

Even though the result was not perfect it was still fine to go forward. I did realise that there will be a lot of grinding and filing to get to the shape of the shoe I envisioned.

It took some effort to grind all the imperfections off the homemade silver moulded heel. And even then I knew it would need more work. Nevertheless I decided to leave it to the latest phase of the project. I needed to connect the heel to the sole in order to proceed. Steel wire came very handy while soldering the pieces.

Decorating the slipper

I call a sole with soldered heel a “blank slipper”, which is a huge milestone in a project like this. If you can get it right – the next step should be easier. However, I figured that it might be a bit boring to decorate the slipper with only silver strips. So I decided to add a stone as a decoration. Luckily there was a lovely garnet cabochon in my stones collection which would fit perfectly onto a sandal I was making.

The aim was to make this miniature shoe a bit more realistic than my previous creations. Not like it will ever hold a foot in it, but I still wanted to get the details right. So I modelled a tiny leg out of the same wax I used for a heel before and attached it to the slipper. Now all the straps started to look much more vibrant and gave me a clearer visualisation how could it look like in the real life.

Soldering such small and complex pieces is always tricky. I had to scrap a lot of flattened wire to get all the soldering work right. When I completed the last joint I figured that it was a middle of a night, that’s how I got an idea to shoot a video of citric acid cleaning bath.

Setting the garnet

After a hot bath and few hours of filing off all the excessive pieces of straps all over it was a time for a final challenge. Setting stone in a bezel turned out be an extremely difficult process (if you want to get it right of course). My fellow goldsmith (a professional one) advised me to wrap the entire piece in hot sealing wax – the substance once used to seal royal correspondence. With no goof quality wax in hand I decided to improvise and use a thermoplastic polymer. It actually worked quite alright firmly holding all the delicate pieces intact while letting me put it into the vice.

I cannot say it all went smooth, but at the third attempt I managed to fixate the cabochon at its saddle. In the absence of an impact engraver (I hope to have one someday) I managed the whole bezel setting with tiny flat screwdriver and a hammer.

Voila

After the final touch of a fine grain polishing paste and brushing up in soapy water it was the happy ending of my story. Please enjoy the photoshoot and don’t be shy to share this with your friends!

Being so happy about finally have the spring sun I just couldn’t help myself and made a little clip. Enjoy!

This piece is still available for purchase. If you are interested please visit my Etsy Store or send me a DM in my Instagram to talk business

The post Strappy high heeled pendant with garnet cabochon appeared first on Slavik LTD.

This particular story starts with a rectangular malachite stone, which I was lucky enough to dig out in one of the local mineral shops. It is not perfect for the design I had in mind as one of its surfaces is convex. Well, it is still better than nothing, right? Besides, it is not that easy to come across a clean straight rectangular stone these days. I decided to give it a try anyway.

As my camera body is going to be bright green, I though that the lens might also get some colouring. There was a rose quartz cabochon lying around waiting for a perfect project to come by. We all know that the world is far from perfect, hence we should grab the opportunities as they come.

I made a simple round cast with two prongs out of a silver strip for my camera lens. There was no need for any back support as the camera body will hold the cabochon in place.

The body itself consists of a rectangular frame and two horizontal bands running across the whole piece. In order to fit the malachite I had to make two identical frames and solder them together afterwards. Only after that I realised that it would be way easier to do the soldering first to get a wider stripe and then bend it into a frame.

After hours of bending, fitting and soldering the back stone finally got into its rightful place nice and tight. I then added few prongs on the back to make sure it doesn’t go anywhere. Actually one of back prongs is an imitation of an on-camera flash, which in the same time is a pendant chain loop.

After all the soldering I removed the excessive pieces of stripes sticking out everywhere and give the whole piece a rough grinding round. It came out a bit different from what I was having in mind, but it does resemble a camera look.

Although non-functional, there is even a shutter button added on top of the camera body. Once grinding was done I did a first iteration of polishing with rubber abrasive brushes (they are amazing by the way) and set the malachite into the frame. All the fitting efforts payed off and the camera body is now fits snugly with the curved green stone.

Simple things are usually learnt hard. I wanted to do some more polishing around the frame edges with the malachite in place. This is when I felt stupid not recalling that this mineral is not particularly stiff and scores only about 3,5 on the Mohs hardness scale. Luckily the scratches were not critical and I managed to buff them out so the back of the camera looks mesmerisingly smooth.

Setting the quartz was pretty straightforward using the two top prongs I set up at the very beginning. However, next time I’d rather spend few more hours to build a bigger cast for lens and set the stone from the inside as I did in my earlier Silver camera pendant. Even though it is much harder to produce I believe it worth the hustle.

The final result might not deserve a central exposure in an art museum (depending on a museum probably though), but it still looks good and instantly reveals its inner meaning.

Unfortunately, this item is not available for purchase. If you dream about something similar, please check my Etsy store or contact me through the form or on Instagram and let’s see what I can do

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The post Malachite and rose quartz camera pendant appeared first on Slavik LTD.

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Making soles

Based on the experience I gained so far it seems obvious that any shoe making starts from the sole. So I just borrowed my wife’s real life sandals and outlined approximately the shape of the sole on a post-it note. This convenient as the post-it then sticks well to silver during the next step.

As a sort of an optimisation freak I had an idea of sawing 2 soles simultaneously. Spoiler alert – don’t try this approach and stick to the normal cutting by a jeweller saw. Besides, it is also a lot of fun!

I started to kinda like the sawing process. Once you get your hand on it it is impressive how precise the cut can be. This is nothing like sawing the wood – you can trust my word on that.

Once both blanks are cut to the shape they gotta be filed to fit each other. This is where my optimisation passion pays off – I clamped both soles together and grind them to the final shape.

I figured that the process is getting easier when the blanks are equally levelled. A tiny anvil and a bit of hammering do the flattening very well.

Once I was happy with the shape of my soles I filed down all the edge on one side. This trick gave a nice nifty touch to the soles, which made a huge difference to the overall sandals design.

It was definitely a good idea to flatten the soles once again and polish them from both sides. Because the next step was the bending. Once bent it would take hell lot more time to get the same shiny effect on the soles surface.

Mounting heels

The hardest part of the tiny shoe making is to produce a good looking and fine fitting heel. It took me several attempts and lot of hours trying to get it right without metal casting experience as well as equipment.

In my first iteration I tried a technique used for making pins. A piece of wire hangs a bit above the heating brick and flame heat up its lower end. Wire melts on one side forming a droplet which should be easy to file down to a heel shape. The problem I discovered was that it makes a weak spot where wire and a droplet are joined. Even though I was being careful it broke both times I tried to shape it with a file.

Until I am ready for real silver casting, there is another way to make a spike heel. I used it before and it seemed to work fine, even though it is far from perfect. The idea is extremely simple – I carved out a rough heel shaped hole in my coal heating brick and melt silver scraps right on top of it. As a result I got a strong solid piece, but it required a lot of afterwork to make it look nice.

A friend of mine, an experienced dental specialist, offered to help me out with metal casting. It seems like a great next challenge in my jewellery adventure, but I decided to complete this project in the old school fully manual way. And to be honest I think it went quite well – I was even offered to sell one of those blank slippers as a pendant.

Decorating the slippers

The offer turned out to be not too serious after all, so I started to prepare myself for the next phase. Even though the high heeled slippers look surprisingly good I did have in mind to decorate them. And this time I was determined to set some stones.

I’ve got a couple of tiny cute amethyst marquises in my mineral collection, which are perfect for the occasion. Small and semi transparent they would look lovely on the silver sandals. Having a hard time trying to sketch out a design I decided to go with a flow and try ideas along the way.

To boost my imagination I even carved a tiny leg out of a polymer clay (first time I ever tried it). Although it looked a little creepy it did help me to figure out the overall pattern I was after. I imagined that the shoe will have a toe strap, an ankle strap and an amethyst set between them. To make sure it will all work I needed a reference point, hence I started with a setting frame for the stone.

There was nothing supernatural – just a loop made out of a 1.2mm strip and some filigree to keep the stone from the bottom. During the fitting it al on the tiny fake leg I figured that the setting frame is a tad short and it will skew all the straps. Naturally I needed to add something around as an extension. My eye got caught by a piece of twisted silver wire scrapped from a previous project. Mental note to myself: spirals can consume a lot of solder unless you fit them properly to the frame.

It is interesting that when my excitement goes a tiny bit over the top something happens. I was grinding the inside of the setting frame to make sure the amethyst will sit there comfortably and put it in its saddle on and off like hundred times. And all of a sudden there was a sound no jeweller ever wants to hear – crack. Damn. Snap, back to reality (cheers, Eminem). This was pure luck that I had another amethyst just like the broken one. However, the setting frame was no good for it and I had to start over.

For those who know me close enough it won’t be a surprise that I adore tiny micro things. So here was my chance to produce one of those – a tiny clasp for the ankle strap. I have done it once in a previous project and I must proudly confess that I’m getting better at this. Oh, come on you gotta admit – this is cool! And freaking cute!

Another little trick I figured during the final assembly of all elements. The setting frame for my amethyst marquise needed to be equipped with prong to hold the stone tight. Since the whole idea of these earrings is to be fragile and delicate I made the prongs out of the thinest wire I had in stock. If I’d cut the prongs prior to soldering it would have been quite tricky to get them attached properly. Hence, the hack is to bend a longer chunk of wire in a shaсkle and solder it as a whole. This way heat from the torch dissipates evenly and solder doesn’t flow all over the place.

Enjoy the show

I was kinda worried that it would be a challenge to make a second earring looking similar to the first one. It turned out to be somewhat true as I fully completed one earring first. Only after I was happy with the result I started the second shoe. But the fact that I didn’t have an initial design sketch came in handy as I just used the first earring as a guide for another one.

In any case I wish you to enjoy the photoshoot below and I hope it’ll give you an inspiration to pursue your own passion. Have fun!

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This piece is still available for purchase. If you are interested please visit my Etsy Store or send me a DM in my Instagram to talk business

Check my Instagram or DM me through Etsy if you want to keep in touch.

The post Alemanas – High Heeled Amethyst Earrings appeared first on Slavik LTD.

Jigsawing

As in any shoe the works starts with a sole. To keep proportions fairly in place I borrowed few real life sandals from my wife’s collection. I did my best trying to reverse engineer a real shoe into the sketch on a sticky note.

At the time the only solid silver material I had was a piece of 8×1 mm stripe so I had to fit the sketch within its boundaries. I cut the paper sole and glued it onto the stripe and seemed to be ready for sawing.

Honestly I thought it’s gonna be much easier exercise. Probably because the only jigsaw experience I had was many years ago in school where we were making a birdhouse out of a plywood.

Nevertheless I managed to get the sawing started. And let me say it went fairly smooth and I started to enjoy the process. But sure enough this feeling didn’t last – the blade broke and kicked my confidence right in the guts.

After a bit of emotional struggle and few broken blades I did manage to finish the cut. Well, it was not too bad for a bird house builder and I celebrated this little victory with a nice cup of coffee.

Sole shaping

Let me tell you a little secret I discovered during my jigsawing exercise. The better cut you produce – the less filing you gonna have to do on the piece. In my case the edge looked like it was brutally torn rather than cut with a saw.

Surely I had to do something about it to ensure my good night sleep. As in the old russian anecdote I just armed myself with various files and smooth out all the flaws around the piece.

Once happy with the condition of the sole it had to be curved into its elegant stiletto shape. Surprisingly it was not hard at all after I heated the piece and rapidly quenched it. This operation makes silver way more flexible and easy to work with. I used few pliers with plastic covers to leave no marks on silver surface.

Making the heel

Little did I know that crafting a life looking heel would become such an immense challenge. I used to work with silver wires and a heel is nothing but a straight spiky piece of wire, ain’t it? Well, not even close! I did my technical due diligence and figured that shape of a heel is an engineering nightmare. At least the stiletto type I was after.

There basically 2 parts of a heel: a heel neck (long slim rod) and the heel itself (sort of a stump between heel neck and a sole). I’ve started with a chunk of a 2 mm wire, which obviously too thick for a heel neck, but not enough for a nice heel. So I added a ring on top of the soon-to-be heel and soldered it together.

The outcome I got was ugly and looked more like an WWII grenade rather than an elegant and delicate heel I was up to. Thankfully some millenia ago a file tool has been invented which gave me a chance to turn my grenade into a lovely heel.

Shoe assembling

So far it was going really good but incredibly slow. In my pursuit of a lifelike miniature I had to repeat some of the building operations over and over again. But at some point one should state that enough is enough and move forward.

At this point I had prepared all parts to build a fundament for a sandal. It was only a matter of fusing a sole with its heel. It was one of the points where I screwed up the soldering and had to produce another heel.

Finally after long hours of fitting, soldering and re-soldering the high heeled sandal started to emerge in its glorious shape. This by itself was a big victory for me, but it was merely a half-way until the checkered flag.

Decorating

I am fascinated with filigree art. I also got lucky to know just a guy who produces silver supplies for this line of craft. It is only natural that my true desire is to decorate everything with this mesmerising twisted wire technique.

Interestingly enough I realised that it takes me a lot of effort to transfer a vision of this sort of work into a sketch. On top of that having a sketch doesn’t help but vice versa. So I just dove in and started to bend wires on the fly. First was the toe strap. I made an oval, filled it in with filigree and cut it to fit the sole. Already then I was proud of myself as the shoe started to look like a real one reminding those fancy high heeled flip-flops.

Right at that happy moment it hit me – there must be a clasp on an ankle strap. It was so clear and beautiful in my head, it’s a shame my skills are still poor to reproduce it. But even with what I did manage to craft I was truly happy with the decoration bits.

My engineering background whispered that there might be a stability and stiffness issue. I didn’t argue much and added a silver stripe connecting the toe strap with an ankle strap. At the back of the shoe I added another strap with a chain loop (it is a pendant after all).

Showtime

After all the soldering the shoe is getting a warm pickle bath to get rid of debris and flux residue. Once it comes out of it there are sanding and polishing procedures to make it shiny and glorious. Final rinse and its ready for its first photo shoot – enjoy the gallery below!

Unfortunately, this item is not available for purchase. If you dream about something similar, please check my Etsy store or contact me through the form or on Instagram and let’s see what I can do

The post High-heeled sandal with clasp and filigree strap appeared first on Slavik LTD.

I’ve been alway fond of good shoes. Probably one of the reasons is that I used to be jealous of my schoolmates wearing cool branded sneakers, while I could hardly afford some cheap charlie boots for myself. Also once I had a chance to see how the real shoes are being produced on a shoe factory just outside my city.

Once I’ve stumbled upon an article about a craftsman who got seriously fascinated by shoes and dedicated his life designing the perfect footwear for women. This is where an idea popped in my head: if shoes can be that extraordinary – it might as well be an art!

It took me a long time to get over my doubts and commence this project. After a number of copper wire mockups it seemed more and more doable and finally I’ve got enough motivation to drive it forward.

The result was astonishing! I was so proud of myself that only after the polishing was finished I figured that no picture of the making process were taken.

I am now planning to create a whole series of shoe-like pendants and earrings (not yet sure how to design a high-heeled ring). Make sure to check this blog regularly and subscribe to my Instagram channel.

UPD: I run a lottery giveaway within my friends on Facebook where they could sign up anyone except themselves. The winner seems to be thrilled about her new pendant and here is what she shared upon receiving the prize!

I feel lucky to have a way to cause people smiles and make them a little bit happier

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