Everything you see on my site....except the stones and gemstones themselves....have been made entirely by hand by me. Just me. There's no mass manufacturing, no sending out of stuff. I do the designs as well as the manufacturing, and I'm the only person making the jewelry.
Most items start their life as a sheet of metal. I do a lot of work in copper because that's the most affordable base metal that doesn't induce allergies. Yes, it will turn your skin colors, but it shouldn't trigger a nickel allergy. My metal of choice is silver, but that's pricey stuff so I don't keep a lot in stock. I do have brass and nickel silver for things like pins or embellishments that won't be contacting skin. I don't work in gold at the moment because I just plain don't have the money to source it.
Then I begin by cutting out base shapes. For my claws I use a press and a custom made cutting die to get consistency in the claw shape and size. I still have to use a jeweler's saw to cut the very pointy tips, however. If I want some of the fancy textures I first cut the metal into long strips, emboss those with texture using a rolling mill, and then cut out the claw shape. The shapes are tumbled in a tumbler to polish them up, round off edges, and get them squeaky clean. When that's done, this is the best time to create patinas of color or black.
For copper I use liver of sulfur....nasty stinky shit that has to be applied outside using a respirator. One its dry it's fine to handle. For silver, I use Black Max patina. Both of these chemicals are sensitive about any grease or fingerprints on the metal so sometimes I have to strip the patina and start again. Depending on the effect I can either slop on the patina, or use a fine brush to actually paint on the patina and slowly layer it to get a specific color that I'm looking for.
Now that the claws are colored, I'll use a polishing tool to strip back the patina from the high points so there's a neat contrast. This stage is what gives each claw its unique character....no two claws ever come out of this process exactly the same! With sterling silver I sometimes need to switch to a pinpoint polisher and actually trace the raised areas by hand to get the best contrast.
For other jewelry I will also use impression dies many of which are extremely old and hard to find. First I use a jeweler's saw to hand cut out a rough shape, then I anneal the metal with a torch to soften it up. My press is hand-lever, and each piece typically takes a couple passes through to get all the detail I want on the piece. It then gets trimmed, matched with another flat piece of metal for the back, and the flat back and the detailed front are then soldered together, pickled, and tumbled in the tumbler to polish and remove hard edges. There's a good possibility I will also be doing more cutting of material using the saw to remove negative spaces.
Certain pieces I use PMC (Precious Metal Clay) to create. This is really fun stuff to work with, in bronze, copper, fine and sterling silver. You get the organic shaping of clay which will sinter in the kiln and become solid silver. This is the process I use for the kinetic pendants. After the piece has finished firing is when the stones are added.
I do like to work with manmade gems for ethical reasons: there's no mass mining of the earth, stripping it of materials....and there's no issues to worry about such as exploitation of people (aka Blood Diamonds). Also, many of the manmade gemstones are kiln-firing friendly for the PMC pieces. I like to get my gems from Otto Frei or Rio Grande, not sketchy sellers who ship their stones soaking in oil.
All of my pieces have their own individual character because they were made one at a time by hand and therefore each one is slightly different. I'll either solder my artist's glyph onto the piece or sign it by scratching my glyph on using a stylus. I don't do any lost wax or other forms of casting; while this would help with consistency it's a branch that I'm not ready to explore yet!
I don't take my jewelry off when I'm working so I build my pieces to withstand a fair bit of abuse and destruction. Every piece started out as a proof of concept, and I tend to keep those PoC pieces as 'stunt' or display pieces as they may not be up to snuff for sale. Then I typically wear the PoC piece for a while to uncover any issues or weak points that need correcting.
When you order a piece, odds are high that the piece is being made specifically for you; I only keep inventory for craft fairs so if I wasn't selling that piece at a fair it's not in inventory. This also means that it takes a bit of time from when you place the order to create the item.
You'll note significantly higher prices on items like lockets, kaleidoscopes, and some of the vials and this is due to the hours spent shaping everything just right and adding the latches and hinges (very fussy).
Hope this gives you an idea on what goes into creating these pieces!