Woven Mixed Metals Pendant

Mixed Metals Woven Wire Pendant

This is my favorite piece out of everything I made during the Cold Connections Workshop I taught last weekend.

It started with sheet copper, which I cut and sanded, and then fold-formed. This is how the copper looked when the folding was finished, after multiple annealings with the torch, a soak in the pickle to remove all the fire scale, and after I drilled all the attachment holes. (compare the finish on the copper below with how it looks after tumbling (above).

fold-formed and drilled copper

Next, I cut 4 pieces of 16g sterling silver wire, and hammered them into "paddles." Then I attached them to the folded copper rectangle, one at a time, by coiling and weaving 26g sterling silver wire around the paddles and through the holes in the copper. It would have been very handy (no pun intended) to have had 3 hands during this step - the pieces wanted to do everything, and go everywhere, except where I wanted them to be.

Mixed metal woven pendant

I drilled holes through the tops of the side paddles, and added silver jump rings, so this piece is ready to hang from leather, ribbon, chain, etc. - or to be incorporated into a fabulous jewelry design of your own!

Here is the back of the pendant, showing a bit of magenta heat patination from all the annealing:

Back of the pendant, with magenta heat patination.

It's available in my Etsy shop!

Reviving a Mini-Zombie

Remember the Zombies? Those projects you're so excited to start, but then never finish?

I'm not doing very well on my resolutions to dig up some of my Zombies and finish them, but let's not dwell.

I AM doing better at not creating Zombies - much better. I used to start projects left and right, casting them aside a few days (or weeks) later for something newer and shinier. Now, I make a concerted effort to finish one project before starting a new one...but sometimes, stuff gets in the way. Know what I mean?

In the wake of the flurry of creative activities surrounding the 5x5 challenge I just finished, I almost created a new zombie!

Remember this piece?

Mojave turquoise pendant

I was just about to take it apart and redo it, when I was chosen for the 5x5 challenge - I set it aside on my workbench, in a safe place - and .... 2 weeks later (seems like 6 weeks!) - forgot about it!

It never made it to my box of Zombie projects in the Zombie cabinet, but trust me - I completely, totally forgot about this piece. Yesterday, I was itching for a new project, wandering around the bead shop looking for ideas and inspiration, and decided to wander back to the workbench for a stronger pair of glasses, and caught sight of this pendant.

I spent some time yesterday afternoon trying to extract the cabochon from its bezel:

 prying the bezel open like a sardine can - the stone is still stuck tightly in place!

finally: the cab is free!
Today, I'll get busy with this redo - starting with measuring and cutting the bezel wire. This was actually the hardest part last time, because of the irregular shape of the cab.

Stay tuned - I really will get this pendant finished. Soon. Fingers crossed.....

Mojave Turquoise Pendant

I have decided to take a break from beadweaving for awhile, and get back to working with metal!

I started this pendant on Sunday, and it is almost finished (it needs the final ultrafine buff, to really bring out the shine in the silver):

Contemporary Sterling Silver pendant with Mojave turquoise and CZs

The Mojave turquoise cab is just gorgeous - nice pinks and purples, and beautiful veining. It would make a gorgeous piece all by itself, but then I put it next to these 8mm lilac CZs, and - wow!  I really love this combination!

Mojave turquoise and lilac cubic zirconia

I started playing with designs on paper, and what you see in the 1st pic above is very close to my final drawing.

Freeform cabs are a little harder to work with; here is the soldered bezel:

Fine silver bezel

Getting the bezel the perfect length was quite a challenge, given the irregular shape of the cab!

The irregularly shaped bezel really didn't want to lie flat on the sterling silver table, and needed a little (a lot) of encouragement from the t-pins. Notice all my solder paillons,  lined up and ready for the torch!

Bezel on table, with solder paillons, ready for soldering

Despite my best efforts, the t-pins changed the bezel shape a tiny bit during all this maneuvering, but once soldered, I was still able to get a good fit with the cab.

Next, I added the wire support for the CZs - I used 18 gauge wire for this (a decision I now regret)

18g wire soldered to bezel

The next step was to add the pronged settings for the CZs - I soldered these to each end of the 18g wire.

I forgot to take a pic of the finished piece before I set the stones - sorry!

Here is the back of the completed pendant, showing the bail:

Back of sterling silver pendant

Here is the front of the pendant again:

Pendant front - Mojave turquoise and CZs

I am not thrilled with the outcome - I love my design, but there are a couple of flaws in the execution. For one, I should have used a thicker wire for the CZs - when these are bumped, the wire moves and bends. Not really what I was going for!

The second thing I don't like is visible at the top of the cabochon - where you can actually see the wire along the bezel. Notice how it isn't visible at the bottom beside the bezel. This has happened because the cabochon narrows to such a sharp point there at the top, and when I was setting the stone, I had to push the bezel more there at the top to get a good snug fit, and when I pushed the left top side of the bezel over as far as I needed to, it revealed this wire. If I had foreseen this, I would have figured out a different way of soldering the wire to the bezel. Live and learn, right?

As I said, this piece still needs a final polish (and tumble) - if the wire hardens more, I may decide to live with the design. If the wire doesn't harden more, and keeps bending, OR if I just can't accept the way the piece looks at the top of the bezel, I will probably take it apart and redo it.

What do you guys think? I'd love some feedback!

Abstract Textured Copper and Sterling Silver Earrings

I am crazy about the texture I achieved with these earrings - it has a brushed, matte effect that I just love. Hope I can duplicate it!

I used a piece of sterling silver sheet to craft the loop the earrings hang from, and carried it down onto the earring in a swirl design. The sterling silver is riveted to the earring, but the rivets are hidden by the curly copper "S" pieces I wire-wrapped on top of the silver.

Bali-style copper earwires complete the design.

Paddle Earrings with Lampwork Beads

I made these sterling silver paddle earrings during the cold connections class I taught Sunday:

I used 18 gauge sterling silver wire, hammering it flat and wide at one end to hold the handmade lampwork bead in place. After sliding the bead on, I continued to carefully hammer the wire above it to slightly flatten it, and then used round nose pliers to create a loop at the top for hanging.

Silver and Copper Chainmaille Bracelet

I call this one "Off-Kilter Celtic"; it is a variation of the Celtic Weave:

The sterling silver rings fit inside the larger copper rings, and smaller copper rings link everything together.

I love mixing metals, and I love the large copper toggle I chose for this bracelet - this one's a keeper. All mine!!

Happy Veteran's Day!

Copper and Sterling Silver Earrings

I cut and sanded the sheet copper, then textured it with the balled end of a chasing hammer. To highlight this hammered textured, I treated the pieces with liver of sulfur. A hole was punched in the top for hanging.

Next, I cut 2 pieces of sterling silver wire, and formed them into "squiggles" which were basically mirror images of each other, with a loop at the top for hanging. Then I hammered the squiggles flat with the chasing hammer, and they started to not match each other quite so well, but that's OK!

I used a jump ring to connect the squiggle and the copper rectangle to a sterling silver earwire.

Fun, easy design!

Silver Cylinders

These perforated sterling silver cylinders are among my favorite beads - unfortunately, I got them at a show, and these are my last two!

Sterling Silver and Copper Wire Bangle

Newly renewed on Etsy - this sterling silver and heavy gauge copper wire-wrapped bangle bracelet. Good for what ails you!

Copper and Sterling Silver Chainmaille Bracelet

I was dying to use these triangular copper and sterling silver beads - I loved mixing metals, and I love the shape and texture of these great beads!

I designed this Byzantine chainmaille bracelet with a mix of sterling and copper jumprings:

And look how the toggle matches!

It's available on Etsy!

Chainmaille Lariat

This heavy sterling silver lariat is woven with 16g rings in a tubular variation of the European 4-in-1 chainmaille weave, and feels so good to wear - it drapes so gracefully! I used snowflake obsidian and gorgeous tourmalinated quartz for the dangles - I wanted to use just these beautiful pieces of tourmalinated quartz, but I didn't have enough! Don't you hate when that happens? But the snowflake obsidian fills in nicely, I think.

Sterling + Resin = Stunning Necklace!

Here is the second design I created last week:

The pendant has its origin in my foray into turning scrapbooking components into jewelry.

My friend Sonya had been watching videos and reading articles & books about Ice Resin, and wanted to try it. So we scheduled a day to meet and just play with bezels, found objects, glitter (!), scrapbooking stuff, and Ice Resin.

And before our play date arrived, I wanted to experiment with making a bezel, so I cut two 12-inch pieces of 14g sterling silver wire and hammered (and hammered and hammered) each piece until they were about 8mm wide. I wanted them to look hammered, so I made sure I only hammered the pieces on one side, and the result was 2 curved, unbelievably hard pieces of sterling. There was going to be NO opportunity to bend these pieces at all unless I annealed them, and I didn't want to deal with firescale, pickling, etc. I wanted to get my bezel done.

Fortunately, the 2 pieces of sterling wire were curved almost identically at their ends, yet curved in opposite directions in the middles. I decided to use this to my advantage, and I wire-wrapped both ends, which was a bit of a struggle, but I finally got them secured. The hardest part was muscling one of the wires into a big loop for the bail, and getting it to stay with the other wires while I did the top wrap. The bail wasn't turned the way I wanted it to be, but I knew that could be overcome somehow when it came time to design the necklace.  Then all that was left to do was turn the wire ends a little to complement the middles - I used my round nose pliers, and every bit of upper body strength I could muster. The wire was really work-hardened! But I had a nice, oval bezel to play with.

Play date! Sonya and I spent a lot of time just perusing all the different things we had to work with, and deciding what bezels were going to receive what goodies - this was fun!

Sonya had brought in a beautiful selection of scrapbooking papers, and I chose a piece with teal and pink garden scenes to create the backing for my bezel. I cut it to fit, and glued it around the edges to the back of my bezel. My bezel was not exactly flat - another fault of the work hardened wire, but the Ice Resin is self-leveling, so I knew if I could get the bezel to lie flat when we did the resin pour, then the resin would level out and everything would be perfect.

I poured a little bit of resin into the bezel, and then placed a bouquet of white paper flowers on top of this resin, and then "filled" the bezel with resin. I levelled the bezel (I thought) with a scaffolding of paper shims, cardboard shims, and toothpicks. Looked level to me. Ha!

This was our first time working with resin, and we had overpoured. Big time. Then I discovered that my bezel wasn't really level, despite my levelling efforts, so it was full at the top, bottom, and on one side, but had a huge, scooped-out looking defect on the other side. This is no big deal - I just had to re-level the bezel, and repour some resin. And I overpoured again, but once it cured and I did the clean up, the bezel was full, so I was happy. I polished the bezel with my Dremel, and set it aside to think about how to design around it.

I chose a lovely sterling silver chain with large, open links that have been hammered and textured. Since my bail was turned 90 degrees in the wrong direction, I couldn't just run the chain through the bail, and had to figure out how to attach the chain to the pendant. Once I figured this out, I wanted to add some embellishment to fill the space between the chain and the pendant, I had some tourmaline nuggets that matched the teal in the pendant perfectly, and dangled these on sterling chain in a cluster around the bail.

The larger links on the chain were the perfect size for a toggle bar, so I decided to do something I have never done before: A front closure. I have done plenty of side closures, but never a front closure. I selected a long, textured toggle bar and attached it to one end of the chain, and looped it through the large link on the other end of the chain. Closure!

I loved the way the tourmaline dangles pulled the teal out of the pendant, so I decided to add a few to the links in the chain. Voila!

And it's available in my Etsy Shop!

Sonya and I learned a lot about Ice Resin - it is fun, it is very forgiving, it is messy, it is self-leveling, and you can turn just about anything into a nice piece of jewelry with it. If you'd like to learn how to use Ice Resin, Sonya is going to be teaching an Ice Resin class at Yaya Beads later this month - give it a try!

Have a great day!

Very Sparkly Spiral Chainmaille Bracelet and Earrings

The spiral chainmaille rope is another of my favorite weaves. This set is woven with sterling silver half-round rings, so it is lighter in weight than you would expect, and the spiral weave allows the bracelet and earrings to catch the light with every movement. I just love this set!

The textured toggle reflects the spiral pattern in the bracelet, which is now available in my Etsy shop.

The matching earrings are also available in my shop!

And by the end of this week, I will have this bead embroidery cuff bracelet finished - or at least, that is the plan....lol.

Cold Connections

My friend Kathy came down from William Holland Lapidary School, and taught a fantastic, intense, 2-day seminar on Cold Connections at my shop. Everyone had a great time, and made some gorgeous creations.

I am just thrilled with Cold Connections - it is the process of connecting metal without heat - so no soldering. You rivet, grommet, lash, etc - and there are just endless creative possibilities.

I will show a couple of my projects here, and post more later - otherwise, this will be a HUGE post.

Kathy stayed at my house with me and Bailey, and everyone had such fun - we laughed so hard for 4 days straight. Plus poor, neglected (NOT!) Bailey got tons of attention and treats!

This is one pair of earrings I made - I combined copper with sterling - I am still absolutely crazy about mixing metals and textures!

This is one of my pendants - I combined sterling and copper again, and while it is hard to see, there are holes punched all along the bottom edge, where I am either going to beadweave some fringe, or hang some dangles via wrapped loops, or maybe a combination of both - haven't decided yet.

Plus, with the way my schedule has been, it may be weeks before I even get to work on this one again - but busy is good!

I have temporarily closed my Etsy and Artfire Shops, due to the unexpected and early death of my computer's motherboard. I hope to be up and running again in 7-10 days.

My Newest Chainmaille Design

I may be stuck in a rut, folks... I am fascinated with combining different metals!

Here is my newest chainmaille design -

Flowers, made up of copper, sterling silver, and 14k gold-filled rings, in 6 different sizes.

This pattern took about 2 weeks to design, with a lot of failed attempts along the way. Lots of opening and closing of hundreds and hundreds of rings...

I didn't think it was going to be that difficult, so I didn't even start photographing until about a week into the ordeal.

Part of the delay in development was due to my running out of suitable jump rings, and having to wait for the order to arrive.

Here is a photo from about 10 days into the process - the last failed attempt is at the top, and the final pattern is finally visible below it.

This close-up of my last 2 attempts shows that the flower is visible in the upper design, but just not well-enough developed to suit me.

Then, as I stared at it, (and contemplated the agony of disassembling it once again, opening all those rings...) inspiration struck. I created 2 more flower units, changing the size of one of the rings in the pattern, and reconnected the units by bringing all the rings on the sides together with one larger sterling ring, and the final pattern emerged.

I took apart the previous design (that's 90 minutes of my life I'll never get back!) and got busy assembling the floral units and building the bracelet.

But I still wasn't quite happy with it, and wanted more color in the juncture between the flowers. I spent about an hour attaching and removing rings, trying to figure out how to get a mixture of metals in those connections, and finally gave up and went to bed.

When I got up yesterday, I continued building the flower units and connecting them, and it suddenly hit me - I could connect the units with an even larger sterling silver ring, and nest a copper ring inside the large silver ring...

This worked perfectly, so I disassembled the bracelet, again, and reconnected all the units, and finished it off with this stunning hammered sterling silver toggle.

Then I counted the remaining rings to make sure I had enough for a pair of earrings, (didn't want to start something I couldn't finish!) and I just love the result. Now all that remains is to tumble them, to remove tool marks and harden the rings, and I'll be ready to list them on Etsy (if I can part with them!)

Collaboration, Part 2

Here is the second bracelet I wire-wrapped with SandFiber's gorgeous peyote beads,

Carol Dean wove the peyote beads with emerald-AB delicas, although they look more teal than emerald to me.

I added sterling silver rombo spacer beads, and then crafted the wire-wrapped bangle with sterling silver wire.





This beautiful bracelet will fit up to 6.75 inches, and is lightweight and flexible.

I have to thank CD for this fabulous idea - adding handmade beadwoven beads to a wire-wrapping project was genius! These two bracelets turned out great!