Get inspired by some of our favorite techniques for making flower jewelry using these customer favorite flower blanks for silversmithing.
Flower jewelry designs are perrenial favorites. Flowers are feminine and charming. They evoke beautiful memories of special gardens and landscapes. Flower pieces are classic, timeless keepsakes that never go out of style. There are many ways to tackle metalsmithing flowers. A fantastic technique is using flower blanks to fuel your creativity.
Flower Blanks
Pre-cut flower blanks are building blocks for nature collections. They are a great time saver so you don't have to saw out intricate shapes and create a lot of wasted scrap sheet. Jump straight to the fun part of flower jewelry making. Flower blanks are available in different sizes and petal configurations so you can recreate real flowers from nature or your artistic interpretation. These materials are an inspiring way to kickstart a new jewelry collection or create fun seasonal designs to build your silversmithing skills.
Floral findings are some of our favorite and most versatile pieces. They make beautiful jewelry on their own or can be used as a decorative element in a design. Dress them up for a night out or make them casual for everyday wear. And they’re not just for spring! Add other findings and design elements to make the perfect piece for any time of year or trending design style. Check out some of our favorite techniques to use on our popular flower blanks in the sections below.
Texturing Flower Jewelry
Adding a texture to your flower blanks is a quick and easy way to add dimension. There are a lot of different ways to add texture to sterling silver blanks. We’ll talk about some of our favorites for these blanks, but be sure to check out our full blog on Texturing Jewelry Metals.
Hammering
Our favorite technique with the flower blanks is to add a petal texture using a cross pein hammer. Not only do these line textures add dimension, but they mimic the veining texture of some flowers. You can make them as random or strategically placed as you want. If you want to create a dimpled look, try out the ball pein hammer. Or try playing with any texture hammer you have!
Stamping
If you’re looking for a very strategic way to add texture, try using a metal stamp. Sylvie found that using the letter ‘i’ or ‘v’ stamps worked great to add deliberate lines to the flower blanks shown here. Try playing with some of the small fun shapes to accentuate the petals or play with overlapping stamps for an all over design. Or use the blank to add personalization stamping to a necklace or bracelet.
Rolling Mill
For an all over texture, try using a rolling mill. The variety of plates available makes it easy to find a fun pattern you’ll love or try adding your own materials! We’ve had fun playing with fabrics, leaves, and more on our rolling mill. Just remember that your blank will be distorted after running it through the mill. You will want to run it through twice in opposite directions to help with the distortion, although the blank likely won’t be perfectly proportioned to it’s original size and shape.
Forming Flower Jewelry
One of our favorite parts about these flower blanks is being able to easily shape them to bring the petals to life. It adds dimension and an extra sense of realness to the flowers depending on how you choose to form them.
Pliers
Using a pair of jewelry pliers to form your flowers is a great way to add a multi-dimensional look to your blank. You can really start to take each petal in a different angle or a few different ways to add a life-like petal look. Bring it forwards, backwards, a little to the side, add a little bump, etc. Just keep in mind that sometimes pliers can mar up your metal. With enough texture and extra care, this likely won’t cause too many problems. But if you have silicone tipped pliers, they greatly reduce the chances of marred metal.
Dapping Block
Try using a dapping block to form your flower blanks! Using a dapping block will give your flower blank a more uniform dimensional look since each petal will be dapped at the same time at the same angle. Depending on how much you choose to bring the petals in, this might create a slight lift or a small cup to hold other design elements. Just be sure to protect any texturing with a piece of leather or suede between the tool and your blank if you don’t have a wooden block.
Sawing
One of Sylvie’s extra tips with forming our flower blanks is to use a jewelers saw between the petals just a little bit. By creating a deeper cut between petals, you can really change up how you can bend the petals and create a totally different look for the flowers.
Adding Other Elements to Flower Jewelry
Flower blanks make a great base for adding design elements and decoration. There are so many ways to enhance your textured and formed blank to make a beautiful and unique piece of jewelry.
Stones
CZ stones and tube bezel settings are some of our favorite design elements and they work perfectly with the flower blanks. Our CZs are available in sizes 2mm through 6mm – meaning you have options from a large focal point stone to small accent stones. We also have a range of colors that you can use for the season or make birthstone jewelry. Bezel cups are also an easy way to add a small cabochon stone to the flower blanks.
Solder Charms
Adding a solder charms to your flower blank is a great way to add extra dimension to your jewelry piece. We carry a variety of sterling silver solder charms that work perfectly with the flower blanks, such as leaves, bees, bugs, and other flowers to stack up. Some are also available in 14k gold to add a touch of gold to your piece.
You can also use some of the smaller flower blanks as solder charms for cuff bracelets, rings, or other metal blanks.
Granules
If you have any scrap metal laying around your studio, here’s a great use for it! Use a jewelers torch to ball it up into small granules to use as the center of your flower blank. Or just add a few as a dimensional design element around the petals.
Balled Up Wire
An alternative to little granules would be to use your torch to ball up silver wire for the center of the flower blanks. This technique adds not only dimension, but the ability to angle your design elements in a natural way.
Connect The Flowers
The flower blanks come in a variety of sizes, which opens a whole new design path – connections! Solder them on top of each other for an easy layered flower. For a linear connection, use wire to connect multiple flower blanks to each other.
Or, try using rivets and leave a little space to allow for some movement. This creates a fun kinetic jewelry piece that has an added kinetic element everyone loves.
The flower blank series is a fun and versatile jewelry finding with so many design options! These are just a few of our favorite ideas that we’ve done in the studio, but there are so many more techniques to really create beautiful and unique jewelry pieces. We’d love to see what you make with our flower blank series! Tag us on social media @halsteadjewelrysupplies so we can see what techniques you use.
Ready to turn flower blanks into beautiful pieces of jewelry? Check out these articles for tips on some of the techniques we talked about in this blog!
