Living in a fantasy world, can you believe I'm now over half way through this life changing experience in Antwerp! Time is just flying by, but the days seem to roll into one as I sit at my setters bench for up to 7 hours a day almost 6 days per week! 
Embarking on a tricky set of exercises we were presented with Fantasy Zigzag and an Irregular layouts. Where the spacing was crucial in producing a desirable effect. Using an array of different size stones a pattern must be mapped to fill the space which was effectively an unknown shape (cause in the real world you could be handed any shape to set stones into)
I tried not to think too hard about the shape, but there was most definitely some shapes easier than others to fill. One of the hardest tasks was making sure you took enough metal away as you are making bridges and cleaning between split claws which are near impossible to clean up after stones are set so must be done prior.
Ensuring you leave enough metal around the edges to split the prongs and for some areas where you are left with too much metal where you could make decorative beads to camouflage addition to the overall illusion of pave setting!
There's a few things I definitely need to work on, mainly to do with clean up, I do also leave too much metal behind which leads to 'fried eggs' on the beads. It's also really difficult not to mar the bright cut when doing clean up, but all comes with practice and there's more clean up opportunities to come to perfect! 