Opal Flame Workshop

Project 1

Making A Boulder Gem Inlay Opal Pendant

This interesting Opal Workshop project will be for a Boulder Gem Inlay Opal Pendant named The Opal Flame.....

I intend inlaying a beautiful piece of Lightning Ridge Crystal into an attractive item of  Koroit Boulder Opal ironstone.

I love the deep red-browns in this boulder piece as it has lovely bright lines and markings of green and blue Gem Matrix Opal running through it.

At the top of the boulder is a small number of flame-shaped deposits of Gem Matrix - perfect !

The natural rough opal  shape of the Lightning Ridge Crystal Opal has kindly presented itself to me in a likeness very closely resembling that of a "finger of fire" - what more could one ask !

The colors of this Lightning Ridge Gem are brilliant emerald-greens and aqua green-blues, with the color patterns themselves playing their part by exhibiting a "flame-like" movement.

From this point, I will carve and more clearly define that "finger of fire" into it's finished shape and once that step has been finished, the next step will be to mark out onto the Boulder the completed shape of the Gem Opal.

Just to slightly sidetrack here... when I was a child, my family would spend time on camping holidays in secluded areas of pristine rainforest. Often, I would gather up dried or semi-dried  tree leaves from the forest floor, these would include different types of eucalyptus tree leaves.

Having thrown these dried  leaves onto our campfire,  I would be totally fascinated by the way some of these leaves would burn with a green or a deep green- mauve fire. I presume this was owing to the particular oils present in the leaves - this I found mesmerizing ! This opal reminded me of that "green-fire ...."

I will be bringing you more photos when I've finished shaping this piece of Gem Crystal !

Well.... next step completed!

Photographed here is the final carved shape for the beautiful piece of Lightning Ridge Gem Crystal.

As you can see, I've managed to keep very close to the original unfinished rough opal shape, but just to make it more interesting and challenging ... a couple of small "fire" shaped flickers have been added.

A clearer close-up of the Koroit Boulder Opal has been added here to show more of the Boulder Opal itself before the inlay work takes place.

An outline of the flame shape will be marked out on the boulder opal so all that is needed for the next stage is to carve the mirror image into the Koroit Boulder.  No problem... ?? Well then again, this may take a little while!

If all goes well with this stage and nothing goes wrong and gets flung out of the window into the garden below (!) - I'll be back with the next  update  showing a successfully carved out mirror image of the flame into the boulder opal.