The tree of life is one of the oldest symbols in the world and is pretty much universal . So that is what I made today a tree pendant . This Pendant is based of the usual shadow box but it is not a pierced and cut design .You work your way inward from the edge without having to punch a hole and feeding your saw blade through it . You start out again with 2 circles of equal size. I use my trusted disc cutter . A disc cutter is one of the first things I would get as a new metal smith . It is so much easier to make circles fast and equal in size. Yes you can cut out you circles with a saw by following along the lines of a drawn circle , but even though I am pretty good at sawing I was never able to saw out a perfect circle by hand .

Take your 2 circles and draw a tree on one of them , If you are not good at drawing directly on the metal , draw on a piece of paper until you have a tree you like then you can glue your drawn tree onto the metal and wait until th glue is dry and then start cutting from the edge in . My edge is the roots of the tree . Carefully saw out your tree , the smaller your tree or shape the more intricate the design the more difficult it is to saw and you might brake some blades. A good metalsmith that saws a lot will not brake the blades . Mine are actually wearing out before breaking and I get many pieces out of one blade . However in the beginning I broke them right and left . I always buy the 144 bulk pack by riogrande.com .

After you are done with sawing out your tree I would recommend cleaning your piece with some sandpaper to clean up the edges and to make it easier to solder. If you need to see a tutorial on how to solder you can look at some of my other entries ,some of them show you in detail on how to solder.

Clean up your tree pendant with either a polisher or use the flex shaft . Add a Jump ring or bail and a chain and voila done

www.nicilaskin.etsy.com in case you are interested

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