Beads on a Wire

These earrings were so much fun to make - the trick was to get the wire the right length so that the beads were counterbalanced, so the wire moves like a pendulum!

I started with about a 6 inch length of square sterling silver wire. I twisted it with my pin vise, then bent it (I actually did each step side-by-side, if you will, for each earring, so that they would match as closely as possible). I put the gorgeous, handmade, raku-inspired lampwork beads on one end, and formed a loop to hold them. A Bali-style spacer went on the other end. Initially, I had left this end a little too long, and the earrings didn't hang correctly, so I shortened it, and got lucky the second time.

I love the way they swing when worn!

Mysterious color-changing beads

Yesterday, I told you about a new, square stitch pattern I had worked with. I actually made 2 bracelets with this pattern; one purple, and one olive green, but the big difference between the two was the size of the Delica I used to stitch the design.

But the wider bracelet, the one made from size 8 Delicas (DBLs) didn't start out to be green, at all.

These are the DBLs I chose for this particular bracelet:

There are actually 2 different colors mixed together here - the solid black arrows near the bottom of the picture are pointing to the DBLs that I call "raku". The vendor calls this color "matte metallic blue iris" - and that hits 3 of my personal seed bead buttons: I am a sucker for metallics, for mattes, and for ANY color with "iris" in its name! So I couldn't wait to work with these beads! Look at the pretty blues, mauves, roses, greens, and bronze in these beads! Delicious! And, some of my favorite colors to work with, of course... 
The open arrow in the pic above points to the second tube of beads I added to this mix - a matte blue DBL that matches the blue in the "raku" DBLs perfectly. Right?

Until I started stitching, that is:

I mixed the beads together in one big pile, and started pulling them randomly as I stitched. By about the 3rd row, I noticed that all the "raku" DBLS were turning green or brown, but I kept stitching, thinking that I just needed to work up more of them, and their gorgeous raku-ness would blossom. After I had about an inch stitched, I convinced myself that something was wrong with the beads, like maybe they were mislabeled - I don't know what I was thinking. But I ripped out my stitching, sorted the two colors (Fun!) and put the raku ones back in their tube, and grabbed another tube of the same color. And started again.

Same result.

This really had me stumped. You can see the solid blue matte DBLs easily - amid all those olive green and coppery brown beads! Where did all the blue and the burgundy go? What was I doing wrong?

So I took the bracelet apart again, sorted the beads, again, and started over - for the last time.

I finished the bracelet, and had to change the size 11 seed bead I had chosen for the picot (my original choice was a vivid metallic burgundy seed bead that really highlighted the burgundies and roses in the pile of raku seed beads), and I chose an olive green 11 for the edging.

And I probably should have pulled out all those matte blue DBLs, and just gone with the greeny coppery brown ones ("matte metallic BLUE iris", remember) - but I didn't. This color combo is fine, but I just think I would like all the brown-green beads by themselves, better. Maybe next time!

"Raku" Copper Earrings

A few days ago we had our monthly metal studio playdate, where I experimented with an enameling technique which simulates raku.

I initially wound up with 5 pairs of similar earrings, even though I had used 4 different colors of enamel and left the 5th pair with NO color - just clear:

I love the way these turned out - but I learned that the process of exposure to the flaming, smoldering paper basically negates any efforts to add color to the copper, as the 5 different colors that went into the kiln all came out the same. I love what came out, but it would have been interesting to be able to influence the colors somewhat.

So, since I didn't really want 5 basically identical pairs of earrings, I decided to take 3 pairs and re-treat them with enamels, using a very light coating of a different color of transparent green on each pair:

It's subtle, but the pair on the left was colored with beryl green, the middle pair with turquoise, and the right side pair with sea green.

These are not bad, but I still like the original-flavor raku coloration the best:

I have 2 pairs of these, and so I stashed one away from myself, and will be offering the other up on Etsy later this week. Gotta take Etsy-worthy photos, you know. I'll slip back in here and drop the link when I get them listed.

So there are my raku earrings - lots of fun!

"Raku" in the Metal Studio

Sunday was Metal Studio day again - we have such fun playing on these days! I wish we could get together more often.

This time, we decided to tackle an enameling technique known as "Raku;" it bears some similarities to the raku pottery process, as I'll explain below.

I decided to use the process to create several pairs of fold-formed copper earrings. These start off with a large sheet of 24g copper, which I then cut into 1-inch squares.

Next comes the folding - each square is annealed, then placed in the vise and manhandled until folded, with multiple annealings in between each fold to keep the copper soft enough to work with.

Here is one pair of earrings after all the folds are placed and re-opened:

The dark dusky color is firescale from the multiple annealings.

The earrings were then pickled for a long time to remove the firescale;

The acidity of the pickle solution actually removes copper molecules while removing the firescale, leaving a matte finishe, so I then took steel wool to both sides of each earring to get a nice bright shiny surface again (although I certainly could have left them matte!) And this is the point where holes are placed for the earwires - don't forget to do this before firing!

The firing process is next - 2 firings with clear enamel to both sides was first, to get a good base coating.

Then comes the "raku" firing. These are the pieces, ready for firing (the raku color of enamel is in place):

That's my trusty Paragon kiln ramping up in the background - it has to get to around 1500 degrees before we can fire.

Now, more about the actual raku part of the process. Immediately upon removal from the hot hot kiln, the pieces must go into a container (with a lid!) containing shredded paper, so that they will ignite the paper and then smolder under the lid.

Here is the roasting pan we used, filled with shredded paper, ready for the emergence of the earrings from the kiln:

Isn't my nice clean roasting pan pretty?

So, the pieces are yanked from the kiln and unceremoniously dumped into the roasting pan, whereupon flames start shooting skyward (have the fire extinguisher nearby!!) I quickly clamped the lid on the pan, squelching all but a little of the escaping, acrid, stinky smoke, and ran for the door to get this smelly thing outdoors. OMG it stinks.

After about 70 minutes, the smoldering process ends and the roasting pan is cool to the touch, and we can continue.

Opening the lid:

The square burnt up thing is the screen that the trivets were on. Underneath there, buried in the paper, are the trivets and the earrings. And can you see that smoky yellow film on my pretty roasting pan?

My entire roasting pan is now coated in this horribly stinky sticky gunk. Several washings with baking soda and clorox (not together!) eventually removed it.

I fished out the trivets and earrings, and this is what I had:

You can sort of see some interesting, "oil-slick" coloration here, but really not much to look at, huh? Just square brown blobs, in my opinion. Then I started to think (which can be dangerous!) - if that nasty yellow slimy stuff is all over my roasting pan, it might just be on my earrings, too...

So I took the earrings to the sink and scrubbed them with dishwashing liquid, water, and an old toothbrush. And this is what was lurking underneath that film:

Now you can see the reds and blues and irridescent I normally associate with raku!

Each earring looks slightly different, but I could find 2 that closely resembled each other enough to pair them into 6 pairs. And the more I look at them, the more I love them!

This was time and labor intensive (and I had to clean that mess out of the roasting pan!); if I hadn't chosen to fold form the earrings it wouldn't have been nearly so time-consuming and difficult, but I really love the result!

Now the 12 earrings are piled on my work table, waiting for earwires. Sometimes the very last, finishing step (attaching a clasp, anyone?) is the one I procrastinate on. Well, that, plus it was almost 9 PM by the time we finished the firings, and I wasn't hanging around to place earwires - I wanted to go home by then!

Hot off the Worktable!

A new beaded cabochon:

And look what colors it is! Surprise! I keep working with these colors, over and over.

This pendant started with a gorgeous cab from my friend Mak, whose pieces are always so colorful, fun, and inspiring.

Here is the bezel in its early stages:

One side is higher than the other, so my finished bezel laps over the top on the lower side for a couple of rows (visible at the lower left, just to the left of the strip of matte copper seed beads crossing over the cab):

It's hardly noticeable, and certainly no big deal, but I know it's there!

After finishing the burgundy peyote weaving, I added the strip of matte copper seed beads across the top just for whimsy, and did a picot of slate gray and transparent copper seed beads around the top, and then a slate gray picot around the outer edges.

It had been awhile* since I wove a beaded bezel, and I kind of stumbled when I got to the backing, but I recovered nicely, if I do say so myself. And I enjoy this technique so much that I won't wait so long before I do another one, so my poor brain can't forget again. LOL.

This cabochon flashes so many gorgeous colors - burgundy and other reds, blue and slate gray, coppers - it is just yummy.

It would look great on a chain, or strung with complementary beads, or on a beadwoven rope.

And it is available now in my Etsy shop!

And since we are on the subject - here is the last cabochon I created a beaded bezel for:

*It has been a year, basically, since I did this piece - wow, where does the time go?
a) Look at the colors - there's my blue and burgundy, again
b) How can I forget how to do something I have done multiple times, and the last time was less than a year ago? A little scary...
c) This one is also available on Etsy!

Beading a Bezel

I have really been itching to beadweave this week, and after the fiasco that was my non-contrasty geometric peyote bracelet this week, I decided to bead a bezel for this beautiful raku cabochon by MakuStudio:

I just have 2 rows stitched here, and I apologize for the over-exposed pic.

This cab is very tall, and actually its height varies all around the circumference, so this one will involve a lot of stitching and a bit of a challenge to make the bezel even all the way around.

Evolution of a design

I had this gorgeous, large, burgundy Raku bead, and my original plan was to braid a simple beaded kumihimo rope to suspend it from.

But this design quickly became a study in problem solving, with problem #1 being that I didn't have any matching seed beads in a size that would work up into a beaded kumihimo rope.

So I decided I would fall back on one of my favorite beadweaving stitches, the spiral.

I had too many bead choices here, and had to play with them, and keep narrowing them down, so that I didn't end up with a overly busy or chunky spiral rope that would overwhelm the bead, despite the bead's size.

Because this raku cylinder bead was huge - almost 4 inches long, with a very large hole running through it.

This is the spiral I finally decided on: brown freshwater pearls, mauve seed beads, burgundy seed beads, olive green seed beads, and copper seed beads for the core. After stitching this 2 inch length, I came upon problem #2: how to cap the large raku bead?

I spent a couple of days working on this beadcap issue. I stitched a number of different attempts from seedbeads, in various sizes, and various patterns, but none of them worked; they needed to be relatively flat on the end, and then immediately flare out pretty widely, and then hug the bead.

And no ready-made beadcaps were anywhere near the size of this bead's end, so I kept stewing, and started looking around for anything I could use to cobble together a suitable beadcap.

I finally found a combination of Vintaj brass findings that I felt, theoretically anyway, could work.  I used metal punch pliers to punch 6 holes in a Vintaj brass ring, to correspond with the placement of the 6 petals on the Vintaj flower.

These are the 3 Vintaj components I finally settled on - the larger ring is a good size for the end of the Raku bead.

Here is how the 3 components stacked in my plan -  now I just had to get them to stay fastened together (and attach them to the bead!)

I made a number of attempts to wire-wrap the components together, but wasn't happy with any of the results.

So I decided to weave the components together with seed beads, and after several more tries, this is the (somewhat over-exposed, sorry) result. 

I then used 20g Vintaj brass wire to wire the caps to the bead, and then attached a length of spiral to each end.  The original plan, after settling on the spiral, was to have the whole necklace be a simple spiral, but by now I had so mych time and energy invested that I decided to glam it up, and added a short length of Vintage brass chain with fringe embeliishment comprised of Swarovski crystals and freshwater pearls to each side, before continuing on with the spiral rope.

Of course, I had to do some more embellishing, so I added fringe to one side, and some freeform peyote leaves to the other.

Then I finished with a Vintaj brass S-hook and extender chain, providing an adjustable finished length.

 

And the Winner is...

Me!

The results of the Etsy Beadweaver's June Challenge are in, and my beadwoven spiral, Do You Raku, won!

With so many gorgeous entries, I feel truly honored!

Thanks to all those who voted!

Full story here.