Another new Piece Off The Bench

I thought some of you might be interested in how some of these pieces are designed and made so I'm going to go through this one step by step.
It started with a beautiful piece of local straw agate that had an irregular shape and beautiful live edge. So we decided to mount it to a sheet of German Silver that was cut to reflect the stone's shape.

The plate was distressed and holes were drilled to allow for wire wrapping and jump rings to attach a cord. Both sides of the plates were distressed.

The stone was then glued to the plate using clear Gorilla Glue and left to set overnight. The next day, German Silver wire was used to wrap the stone to keep it from moving in any direction (in theory, the glue should do this but you never know...).

The back shows how the wire has been secured and tightened.

Then we chose a beautiful premium Greek leather cord and decided to use a very labour intensive method to create "eyes" in the leather by wrapping them in German Silver wire to match the stone wrapping. The cords were then attached to the plate using a German Silver jump ring.

Finally, I used a premium silver clasp on the other end of the leather cord and the piece was complete!

So waddya think? I love mounting stones like this and will post more on the blog in the days ahead. And if you want to see this piece in person, just come by the shop.
Cheers!