Ahhhh

Now this is why I started making jewelry in the first place..... so I could make work like this mainly for myself at the time.  These days, even when I make jewelry to sell, I'm still envisioning it on myself.

Two sterling silver feather pendants- first handsawn, then hammered, then defined and refined with chasing tools over pitch.
 
For the finish, I tumbled the pendants for a few hours, oxidized them with liver of sulphur, and then burnished up the highlights with a 3M green polishing wheel.

This bracelet might be sold.  I have to wait to hear back from the client who suggested it.
 
I love how it turned out.  The oak leaf and acorn theme seems to be timeless.  I textured the metal first with hammers, then created the image with chasing and repousse, and finally formed it to the cuff shape with hammers again. 

The heat oxide is so beautiful on bronze.  Bronze gets a bit of copper plating on it after repeated heating.  There is so much copper in the alloy that the copper somehow comes to the surface during the annealing process.  So when I start to burnish back the surface, I go through a range of colors from black, brown, red and then finally the goldtones of the bronze.
I used a variety of 3M Scotchbrite brand buffs and wheels to get the right finish, burnished but still rugged, with lots of texture and color tones.