Sometimes, it takes a client to push me outside of my comfort zone and try something I’ve never tried before.

This is the story of one such event.

Recently, I was contacted by a potential client… who also happens to be my new accountant! Talk about supporting your clients – he asked me for some advice regarding some jewellery for his wife. During the back-and-forward, he suddenly asked me – ‘What about horses? Could you do some horse earrings + and a necklace’?

To which I replied ‘for sure’! after thinking about it for a few minutes and dreaming about how I could bring such a thing into being.

I’ve cut a lot of things out of a lot of silver over the years, (including very small things, like the custom initial earrings) but I’d never done animals before. I’m also not the most talented artist, so I had to come up with a design that was my own, and was also what my client was after.

After lots of googling, printing out pictures of horses, sketching, rubbing out, sketching again, and a few emails, we settled on a design.

From there, it was time to bring the design to life in metal!

Here’s how the big horse (the pendant) looked as it emerged from the sterling silver sheet.

Once I’d cut all three out, I thought they looked like a mare and her foals (yes, I know that mares usually only have one at a time, I grew up with horses, I am exercising creative licence here people 😉 )… so I couldn’t resist taking this photo.

After much cutting, filing, sanding, soldering, more sanding, hammering, polishing, jump-ring-wielding, more sanding, and finally polishing, here is the final result.

I have to say, I’m pretty happy with how these came out – they were so much fun to create!

In fact, I loved these so much, and got such a great response from you all after sharing them on social media, that I’ve made them available in the shop. The necklace is here, and the earrings are here. And hey, if you have suggestions for any other animals, I’d love to hear them!

Nick keeps telling me I should do an Australian animal collection, and I love the idea. But which animals to include? Platypus, kangaroo, koala, emu?