I have this thing for moons: they show up in my ceramic, metal, and even 2D work from time to time. Over the summer, I started to create a crescent moon wall hanging while I was in the jewelry studio finishing up a pair of earrings. Up until last week, this celestial project was just two pieces of bent copper wire.

Way back in July, I started the wall hanging by measuring out how big I wanted my piece to be, and cutting the wire for the inner and outer curve of the moon. When I picked up this project again last week, my next step was figuring out how to attach the pieces at the end points: after some trial and error, I ended up soldering the wire together.

After “pickling” the wire in a chemical solution to remove the fire scale from the soldering process, I moved the piece to an anvil and hammered the wire into its final shape. To do this, I had to move the wire around the horn (aka pointy end) of the anvil while hammering to get a smooth curve. Then I was able to add texture to the surface of the piece by hitting it on one side with a ball-peen hammer. As a final touch, I wrapped both points of the crescent with thin copper wire to cover up the solder joints. Sometimes you just need to come back to work a few months later when you have more motivation to get it done!

Featured Image: Jill Sibio, 2018