Finished Starfish

Today I cast my sea star in Sterling silver. Here is the piece with sprews attached.

Here is the piece after some initial filing and cleanup.

More polishing:

The underside:

I blackened the piece after everything was smooth.

The final step was to buff it with a jewelry cloth.

Lost Wax Starfish

This weekend I am taking a class on Lost Wax Casting at Creative Side Jewelry Studio in Austin.  I decided to base my design of an image from Ernst Hackler's Art Forms in Nature. 

The design is an ancient relative of the starfish with a cool flowery pattern all over the body.

I even textured the underside. I love two-sided jewelry.

Here's my piece with  a wax channel connecting to the piece ("sprew"). The piece will be put in a tube and filled with a plaster-like substance. Once this is dry, we melt out the wax, leaving behind space which we can fill with metal. Tomorrow's class we'll do the metal casting. Stay tuned for more :)