From Concept to Keepsake: The Birth of the Furnal Equinox 2025 Pendant
All custom designs start off with an idea. Usually, the customer gives me an idea of what they want to have made, an idea of the size they want, and the materials they would like to have it made in. Sometimes if I'm lucky there is actually a reference image which I can use to create the design.
In the case of the Furnal Equinox pendant that I created, I started off with using the theme of the convention. This year's theme is monsters in Toronto, with the design for their banner including a dragon wrapped around the CN Tower and a tentacle monster attacking it. Using this I came up with an idea of making a pendant representing all these elements, and showing that this convention happens in Canada.
I started off with a sketch of a pendant. In the background is a maple leaf within the centre of the maple leaf is the CN Tower. The frame of the pendant is made of tentacles with a monster eyeball in the bottom centre of the pendant. On the back of the pendant is the name of the convention and my logo.
From the rough sketch we create a design in 3D on the computer of both the front and the back of the pendant. This design was used to create a 3D model that was printed with a resin printer.
The resin model, once finished, is used to make a rubber mold to make wax injection copies that would be cast in bronze and silver as needed for the convention.
The convenience of being able to take a resin model to make a mold saves the step of having to cast an original piece in metal first in order to make the mold, thus saving at least two weeks of work.
Once the wax copies were done I took them to my caster, Fonts LB Casting, who cast the pendants in bronze for me.
The casting, once I receive it back, goes through a process of removing the sprue, sanding, and tossed in the tumbler before being assembled with the bail and soldered.
After, I polish the piece in order to bring out the characteristics of the pendant.
All in all, this has been about 2 to 3 months from concept sketch to casting. There's still much more work to be done, but it is coming together wonderfully! Here is a finalized pendant in antique bronze, below.
As this is a very special limited edition creation, there will be only 50 antique bronze pendants celebrating Furnal Equinox 2025 to be had, so if this calls to you as a keepsake to remember the experience, pre-order yours to pick up at the convention in person ASAP! Once they're gone, they're gone!
Thanks for reading,
