These photos show two of my necklaces placed on top of eachother. For my next piece i want to incorporate the silver and the patina in a similar way, so that it will be a series/collection of three necklaces. For the next necklace i would like to manufacture a new chain, perhaps introduce forged links?
We were taught about colours and using their complimentaries to create shadows. I painted some little shells, sweet man.
The above watercolour painting was painted by my great gran. Her watercolour skills were amazing :)
These are some interesting facts/statements that I found in the foreword of ‘Into The Deep’, written by Don Walsh.
“It is difficult to comprehend the ocean’s breadths and depths, let alone the splendid diversity of its life.”
I agree with Don Walsh’s statement, beneath the oceans surface is an incredibly vast variety of creatures and corals, most of which only a select few have seen first hand.
“Earth – it really is the wrong name.”
According to Walsh, the oceans cover more than 70% of the earth’s surface area, and living space hidden beneath its surface is 543 million cubic kilometres. Looking at these statistics it is understandable how one could feel so removed and out of touch with this huge expanse of water.
“More humans have visited the moon than have been to the deepest part of the ocean.”
I love this statement. Mans fascination with the depths of the ocean is very similar to mans fascination with space; both of these places are not immediately accessible or tangible.
My patinated necklace is complete! And i really love it... 
The pictures above are close ups of the patinated copper elements. I sealed the patination with a matte waterbased glaze.
The above picture is from my photography book, 'Into The Deep'. It was this picture that i used as a reference and inspiration for this piece.
I am really pleased with how my necklae turned out. I learned alot about patination, a process i have never used before. If i ever make this necklace again, one thing i would change however, is the lenth of the chain. Personally i love longer chains, but if this chain was shorter the patinated elements would be spread out and ultimately better displayed.
above are copper elements that i placed between two piece of cotton wool soaked with the patina solution. The cotton wool starting sticking to the copper and gave it a thick blue coating with was not ideal...
I then tried painting the solution on the pieces which seems to work better. The solution still pools in the grooves of the metal so it gives it a natural 'unpainted' look.
Once i had patinated the copper elements for my necklace, i noticed how lovely the inside looked. I would like to make earrings with these elements but i will change the silver attachment. The piece of silver wire, at the moment, will be covered and bent into a jump ring which will allow it to be attached to the necklace. For the earrings i will solder a longer pieces of wire and mould it to some of the grooves in the copper so that it flows with the piece and doesn't look 'stuck' on.
The above picture shows my copper elements that were taken out of the solution and then put back in, to further the patination... they were left in for too long and started to disintegrate.
I have never patinated copper before, and thought it might be interesting to incorporate it into a neckpiece. I have lots of these little forged copper 'coral' pieces that i can play around with...
Here is the finished chain and pendant...
With this project I wanted to play with different materials. in a previous meeting with my lecturer we discussed possibly using actual artifacts from the sea (shells, glass, coral) instead of just using them as reference material. I was given this stunning piece of paua shell by a friend, and thought it would be perfect to use while experimenting with different materials. 
For this piece i kept the setting very simple so that it didnt take any focus away from the shell itself. I originally wanted to frame set the back of the shell and set a piece of enamel to make it more interesting, but after playing with forged elements i decided a simple setting could be just as interesting as an elaborate one. This was the back of the shell can also be seen.
