5x5 Metal Component Challenge Reveal, Chapter 2 (The square copper thing and the X)

Welcome to Chapter 2 of my 5x5 Metal Component Design Challenge Reveal
 (Chapter 1, the filigree ring, is here)

As a reminder, here are the components again:

 

 metal components for 5x5 challenge

After finishing my design with the filigree ring (yesterday's post), I decided to work next with the square copper thing at the bottom of this photo. I would stop calling it the "square copper thingy" if I only knew what it really was!

The location of its very tiny holes suggested it was meant to hang, like a pendant. (Although, at one point, I was so stumped I thought about cutting off those holes AND the supporting copper legs they were on, leaving just a plain copper square! I decided that would be a little too easy.) This square component was easily twice as thick as the 24g sheet copper I usually work with, for what that's worth. Thick, and heavy!

This piece really stumped me, again. But, building on my success with the blue lampwork flower and the filigree ring, I decided to see what I could find to "stick on" the pendant. I rummaged through the bead shop, and came up empty, inspiration-wise. Then I decided to dig into my super-secret stash, and I struck gold. Well, not literally - but sort of ... I found a beautiful vintage BSK earring, in green and gold.

vintage BSK leaf earring

BSK was founded in New York in 1948 and did business until the mid 1980s - the letters "BSK" stand for the initials of the three owners: Benny Steinberg, Slovitt and Kaslo. BSK was known for its colorful enamel designs, simple silvertone and goldtone pieces, and stunning designs - all at a competitive price point (the collections were widely sold in department stores, including Woolworth's.) I actually had/have both earrings AND the gorgeous matching brooch - I love the colors and design, and had squirreled them away for "later". I guess "later" is finally here!

Y'all probably know I'm big on making paper mock-ups of my metal designs, so that all my mistakes happen on paper (theoretically), instead of ruining my metal pieces. And since I only had one of these copper square thingies to play with, I decided I better experiment on paper:

I played around with clipping the earring on the paper model, and liked the result, so I decided to proceed.

The first step was to patinate the copper square so that it matched the earring. Learning from my experience with the filigree ring, I first took a rough emery board to the copper square, and roughed it up pretty well. Then I used antique gold Gilder's Paste, to get a nice brassy gold tone. Perfect! (I sealed it).

Next, I put some thought into how I would attach the earring to the copper square, and decided that I would NOT remove the earring clip - if I wired the clip to the back of the square, no wire would show from the front, leaving an unobstructed view of the pretty earring.

I placed the earring on the paper square, and marked my ideal placement for drilling holes. Good thing I did this on paper first - when I punched the holes in the paper (on either side of the widest point in the clip-on attachment) they turned out to be wider than the earring itself, so they showed from the front. Oops! I experimented a bit more with hole placement, and finally figured out the optimum placement for 2 holes, without them showing from the front.

the copper shows through where I buffed the holes - but it won't show on the finished piece!

At some point around this time, the patinated copper square, now gold, ended up next to the "X" on my workbench, and I saw that the "X" was a good size, proportionately, to hang the metal square from. (Wow, that is an awkward sentence - sorry!) I decided to figure out a way to use the "X" as a bail for the square.

The metal "X" is 78 mm long!

I had initially tried to think of other uses for the "X", and had made a paper mock-up to fiddle with. One of my ideas was to wrap it around a ring mandrel and turn it into a ring, with the ends of the X crossing on top - but it turned out to look more like some sort of weapon, and I couldn't figure out a way to de-weaponize it (that made me happy, design-wise) - so I had abandoned the ring idea.

The marks you see on the "X" in the pic above are where I decided to amputate its legs, in order to turn it into a bail. I cut them off with the jeweler's saw, and filed them with the Dremel. Then I turned the remaining legs under with roundnose pliers, to make loops for hanging. I did this because the legs were a little too narrow for me to feel safe drilling them (my first choice) - and I'm really glad I did this, because turning the ends under also shortened the "X" to a perfect size.

In the process of turning the ends under, I got some pretty ugly tool marks on the right side of the "X" (the left side in the pics) - I tried to remove these by buffing/polishing with the Dremel and my radial disc attachments (these things are THE BOMB):

Dremel with radial discs

The disc colors correspond with different grits, so you use them sequentially from coarsest (yellow) to finest (green).  They'll buff out scratches, remove firescale - I love them! You can get a brilliant, mirror shine with these babies! When I touched the yellow discs to the "X", they instantly removed whatever coating was giving the "X" its antiquey brass color, revealing a rich bright gold that perfectly matched the patina I'd applied to the copper square. Wow.

The "X" before buffing/polishing, next to the patinated square

After polishing the X, I remembered I needed to drill holes in its center to hang the copper square, so I drilled those holes, and went back and rebuffed and polished the middle of the "X" again.

you can still see the tool marks (at far left) - but they aren't too bad

Here is how the pendant looked after I wired the earring to the square, and then wired the square to the "X" (adding a couple of palace green Swarovski crystals for a little flash).  (I had to use 24g wire to connect the square to the "X", because the pre-drilled holes in the square were so small):

 front of BSK leaf pendant

the back of my BSK leaf pendant (formerly, the "copper square thingy")
The square and the X looked like brushed gold! So shiny - I love them (Sorry, Heidi and Joan - I gotta have the shiny!)

OK - the hard part was done - now to make a necklace for this pendant.

I wanted to pull out more green, and had some beautiful irregular tourmaline nuggets that were perfect. I didn't have any brass chain, and the gold chain I had didn't really match, and I didn't want to string or weave anything ... so after some thought about how to convert brass wire into a necklace, the light bulb finally came on: Girl, you DO know how to cut jump rings and make chainmaille, don't you? Duh.

I haven't done chainmaille in 2 years. No wonder I almost forgot! And I LOVE chainmaille! (except for the ring-cutting part.)

I cut several hundred brass rings, and decided to weave a byzantine chain, since it is the easiest for me to incorporate beaded links:

chainmaille and tourmaline necklace with vintage leaf pendant

brass toggle clasp for chainmaille and tourmaline necklace

So there you have it: the copper square thingy and the dreaded "X" components. Done! 3 components down, 2 to go!

OMG I am long-winded.

Oh yeah - almost forgot. This necklace (and the matching bracelet and earrings) are available in my Etsy shop!

Tomorrow: Chapter 3: the copper disc with the weird cut-outs.

Looking for Chapter 1 (the filigree ring)? - here it is! 

And don't forget to check out our feature in the May Issue of Bead Chat Magazine (we're on pages 21-26):

5x5 Metal Component Challenge Reveal, Chapter 1 (The filigree ring)

Last week, I told you about the Artisan Whimsy 5x5 Metal Component Challenge: 5 members of Artisan Whimsy were randomly chosen to design with 5 different mystery metal components (we all received the same 5 components.)

Our results are published in the May issue of Bead Chat Magazine.

May, 2013, issue of Bead Chat Magazine. Our 5x5 challenge is showcased on pp 21-26 

I'm breaking down my blog reveal  into 5 parts, because y'all know how I tend to ramble on (and on) with the details....

Here's the pic of the 5 components that was posted in on Artisan Whimsy:

These components were generously provided by Heather Marston - thanks, Heather!

Between the time I learned I was chosen for the challenge and the time I received the components, I kept looking at this pic, trying to "pre-design," to coin a word. We all do that right - when shopping in a bead shop, you see a great bead, and try to imagine designs in your head, right? Well, this was only slightly different - I only had a photo to work with, but still....the suspense was killing me, and I knew we didn't have long to work with these components before the deadline, so I was worried about the time crunch. Hence: imaginary designing in my head: "predesigning."

In my head, the filigreed ring at middle left above was about an inch in diameter, and the copper ring (with those crazy triangular notches) beside it slightly smaller - like a large beadcap. I had all kinds of ideas for that copper beadcap, and the filigreed ring, too!

And then the components arrived.

They are huge. HUGE!

5x5 metal challenge components, with a dime for size reference

One thing participants were asked to do, in addition to testing and designing with these components, was to describe our thoughts and processes as we worked with the pieces. Here are some of my initial thoughts:

• OMG, these are HUGE.
• This giant filigree ring is SPLIT!
• There's only one of each of these components, so I can't screw up.
• There's only one of each of these components, so I can't make earrings (unless I suddenly meet a pirate).
• The square copper thing is really thick, and its holes are so tiny!
• What the hell is this "X" thing, and what am I going to do with it?
• What have I gotten myself into to now??!?

The filigreed ring was 47mm wide (almost 2 inches) - and the copper disc? 38 mm - that would be one giant beadcap!

I spent a lot of time just turning the pieces over in my hands, and playing with them on the workbench. Placing them beside each other, thinking ... and not accomplishing much! I acted like they were some sort of metal Rubik's Cube, and if I just got them in the right configuration, they would magically come together and reveal all. And it's funny, but several other people that saw them did the same thing! Weird.

I decided I needed to just dive in, and since the filigreed ring was the most familiar piece, I'd start there.

The ring itself was large (47mm), open, and flimsy - in order to be usable, I had to get it securely closed, so I decided to try wiring it together:

 I knew that whatever technique I used to close it, my results would still show, so I tried to be as unobtrusive as possible. I used a small piece of craft wire, and wrapped it through a couple of the ring's holes, a couple of times, carefully tucking the ends in. This was a really tight fit - the ring may be large, but the holes are tiny!

OK - what now?

I thought about beadweaving - just embellishing, and embellishing, and turning it into a pendant. Much like the way I embellished this (much smaller) Vintaj Natural Brass filigreed ring to make a ring for a beaded toggle:

Beadweaven toggle (beadweaving on a filigree ring)

But one of the things I wanted to do with this design challenge was push myself, and do new things, and I bead around filigreed rings all the time, so I ruled this out.

I thought about doing some abstract wirework/ wire weaving on the ring - going in and out of the holes, and across the ring, but I ultimately ruled that out, too.

I gave SERIOUS thought to poking a hole in the middle of the X, and turning these 2 components into the world's largest toggle! (But then I compared their size to my wrist, and when the toggle is larger than your arm, it's time to rethink your plan!)

 giant toggle!

As the clock ticked, I decided to use Gilder's Paste to color the ring (with no further plan in mind!) I was initially going to use an antique greenish shade, but at the last minute I switched to Iris Blue - which was a fortuitous decision.

The Gilder's Paste didn't take to the ring very well - I probably should have roughed up the metal some, but there wasn't much metal to rough up! I got maybe 90% of the ring to turn blue, but the rest remained stubbornly bronze. Plus, the parts that wouldn't turn were on the front (as determined by my placement of the craft wire when I wired the ring closed - that had to be the back side, right?)

I fretted, stewed, and then remembered the Perfect Pearls - I pulled them out, and applied the blue Perfect Pearls on top of the unsealed Gilder's Paste. It was a perfect match, and adhered beautifully. Now my ring was 100% blue. So I spent a couple of days sealing it (application of sealer to one side, then 4-6 hours for drying [we were having extremely rainy humid weather], followed by flipping, sealing the other side, waiting.... etc - I wanted to have 2 full coats of sealer. If you've ever had this stuff rub off your jewelry and onto your clothes or skin, you know why!)

Now that I had a blue ring, what to do with it? I held it, turning it over and over - stumped. I walked around the bead shop with it and found the perfect blue floral lampwork bead - the blues matched perfectly, and the bead was almost the perfect size - a few mm larger would have been ideal, but beggars can't be choosers!

handmade blue lampwork flower bead wired in center of patinated filigreed ring

Connecting to the ring was problematic (as connections often are, for me!) - I wanted my chosen method to jive with my color scheme; basically, I wanted something blue. My blue artistic wire wasn't a good match, but I had some blue Parawire that was closer. Not perfect, but close enough.

I wired the lampwork flower into the filigree ring, and then started working on making a necklace with my new blue flower pendant. I liked this large link copper chain with the pendant - the large links mimicked the roundness of the ring. I decided to try patinating the chain with ammonia fumes (I rejected the Gilder's Paste and Perfect Pearls for this project - too much territory to cover, and too many overlapping pieces: I was worried about adequate coverage)

Fortune smiled on me, as the ammonia fumes not only worked, but turned the chain the same blue as the ring. Yay! I really like the rustic look I achieved with the ammonia fume patina.

ammonia fume-patinated blue copper chain

I patinated a copper S-hook with Perfect Pearls (blue, again) - and voilà! A simple, rustic, blue floral necklace.

And it's available in my Etsy shop!

We've all had a lot of fun with this challenge; some of us are blogging about it, and some aren't (it's not a formal blog hop.) Here's where you can read more about my creative fellow 5x5-ers:

Heidi Kingman
Charlie (Charlene) Jacka
Sharyl McMilian-Nelson
Joan Williams

Stay tuned for Chapter 2 (the copper square thingy)! And don't forget to check out the May issue of Bead Chat!

Foldformed Copper Cuff

This was a fun cuff to create - the challenge was to get the fold to form at one corner of the cuff, and extend to the opposite side of the cuff:

If you look closely, you can see that there are 2 different textures hammered into the cuff - one on either side of the fold.

With the help of my Sharpie, my paper template, and my vise, I got it right the first time - yay!

The folds are flattened down at the ends of the cuff, so the cuff is more comfortable when worn.

I achieved the beautiful patina through a combination of Liver of Sulfur, buffing with steel wool, and a very long time in the tumbler (about 4 hours).

Following up

Yesterday's clean-up of the Liver of Sulfured pendants didn't quite go as planned.

I know it's hard to tell in the pic (though enlarging it will help!) - but the Liver of Sulfur that was so hard to get on there (because of the acetone) is equally as hard to get off! Look at the oval piece at top left - I can see at least 3 black patches on it without even clicking on the photo. These absolutely will not come off (unless I sand them off, but that will get rid of the etching, too!) -

They all have these black splotches on them (and the backs are WAY worse - but since it's the back, I'm not really focusing on that.)

I'm toying with the idea of just covering it up with another patina - maybe Gilder's paste, maybe alcohol inks. Don't know. I'm kinda of tired of them right now, from all the time I spent with them yesterday!

Wednesday Worktable

Not much going on, on the old worktable today:

I had cut out some pieces of copper for earrings, pendants, connectors, etc., a few weeks ago (probably actually a few months ago - I wanted to stamp them with my brand new Zentangle stamps, but I never got around to it.

When I made the copper pendant last week for my upcoming metal workshop, I poured up a new container of etching acid, and it tends to go bad, so I decided to finally stamp and etch these pieces yesterday, before I have to throw out the acid. The pieces took a nice deep etch, and I still had enough time left to patina them in Liver of Sulfur (LOS) - which is where I started to run into trouble.

The LOS was all ready in the crock pot, nice and warm. I put some craft wire through the holes in the pieces, and dipped them in, and .... no LOS stuck to them. It ran off like water on a duck's back. Very weird. I dipped again, and again, and again - and nothing stuck. So strange. What was going on?

I remembered that I had had the bright idea after etching to clean the lingering Staz-On from the metal with acetone, instead of burning it off with the torch like I usually do. I didn't want to haul out the torch and the annealing pan, and the acetone was right there from when I cleaned the ink off the stamps, so why not?

Well, here's why - evidently it's incompatible with the Liver of Sulfur.

I took all the pieces to the sink and washed and scrubbed them really well with steel wool, and dipped again. It took several dips, but the pieces got about 98% covered. Interestingly, most of the spots that would not take the patina were on the back (non-etched) side - so not of much concern to me.

If you look at this photo again, there is a small area on the front of one of the oval earrings, where there's no LOS (arrow). Probably won't impact the finished piece.

So today's task is to remove all the LOS I struggled to put on there, leaving the pretty, patinated copper underneath.

After that, I may start a new beadweaving piece - I'm feeling the need to bead!

Today's burning question to my readers - I'm really wondering if my readers tend to be jewelry makers, or jewelry buyers. Would you rather by the components (once cleaned up and finished) like this, and incorporate them into your own designs, or are you looking to purchase finished jewelry? Please drop me a comment and let me know!

Thanks, and have a great Wednesday!

Mini BSBP Reveal

I'm still working on my Bead Soup Blog Party designs. My reveal isn't until August 25, so I'm not in FULL panic mode yet.

Here is a tiny peak at part of my progress. No spoiler here - your big hint is I'm using toggle(s) in my design(s)! Woo-hoo!

These are the toggles I received from my partner:

On your left, a beautifully textured silver-colored wing, with a smooth toggle ring. On the right, an ornately textured, larger, silver-colored ring with a long, smooth bar.

The wing was perfect for my design, except for being the wrong color. But as I worked some on the design, I realized it actually needed a bigger toggle ring, but I still wanted to use the wing. Lightbulb moment: switch the sets around, and put the wing with the larger, textured toggle. Their textures go together very well, and the long, smooth toggle bar fits in the smaller toggle ring, so that's perfect!

Next, I set out to change the colors of the clasps. By now, I had come up with a design idea using the second, smooth toggle set, so I needed to patinate both clasps:

I decided to use Perfect Pearls, which I have never used before. It had the colors I need, and seemed to be easy to work with (I have issues with alcohol ink sometimes; it tends to run, and bleed, and just in general not cooperate with me!). Whether the Perfect Pearls would cooperate remained to be seen!

To say the least, the Perfect Pearls are messy. The creators need to come up with better packaging! The little round plastic containers look almost the same from the top or bottom, so opening them upside down happened, a LOT. And even when opened correctly, static electricity makes the powder cling to the container, and then it suddenly releases, and goes everywhere (especially if the ceiling fan is on!). So all those stains on my bead mat are from stray Perfect Pearls powder - fortunately, I discovered it washes right out in the washing machine. Which made me worry about its staying power on my metal!

The Pearls has a silky, almost moist, powdery texture. So soft! To use, you first moisten your metal with "Perfect Medium" - it's like a little clear stamp pad of stickiness. Then you brush the powder on with the small brush, and then remove the excess with the large brush. And then use your method of choice as a sealer. I chose Rio Grande's Midas Finish Seal Lacquer.

textured wing toggle after amethyst Perfect Pearls

smooth toggle set after antique gold Perfect Pearls

So, there you have it - a teeny tiny look at my upcoming BSBP reveal. Betcha can't figure out what I'm making!

Worth every minute!

Sunday was Metal Studio Day again, something a small group of us try to do once a month. Often we go in 12 different directions, and just do our own thing, but this time we decided to tackle one project together.

The project on the cover of the Oct-Nov 2011 issue of Step by Step Wire Jewelry had been calling out to us ever since we received the issue in the shop last month. The colors are "my colors" - seems like I am always returning to blue and green when I make jewelry, and green and blue look so fabulous with copper!

This necklace was a mix of cold connections and wire work, and we knew it would take a large chunk of time to create, so we gathered at 9:30 Sunday morning, and started to create.

I have to say that this project was unusually poorly written for a Step by Step Wire project; I can't recall ever seeing such vague instructions in a Step-by-Step project. To begin with, rather than telling you how much wire to use for the base piece, the instructions call for working directly off the wire spool, and coiling until "you have the right size". Yet the "right size" is never specified, and when a group of people are trying to create a project where they are sharing one spool of wire, they can't all "work off the spool" - an approximate length, and a template, would have been very helpful. So we spent quite some time on this step, futzing around, and wasting a lot of wire.

The size of this coiled wire base - its width, the height of its coils, and the number of coils - is critical to all the rest of the steps in the project, and determines the number and size of the beads and domed copper cups that will fill in the design. Without any clear measurements provided by the project, we sort of worked in the dark, cutting and doming our copper cups ("Make as many as you like.") while the base coil tumbled, not knowing really how many or what sizes we needed. But we made several different sized domed cups, and then had fun rummaging through the shop looking for green, blue, and brown beads to add to our project.

I decided to patina some of my copper cups using a method described in my brand new copy of Jewelry Lab.

This is an exciting book for metal workers - loaded with tips, tricks, and project ideas. I am particularly excited about the patina section right now, and after my success with the colored pencil & gesso technique, I can't wait to try more ideas from this book.

These are my colored-pencil patinated discs - I really like how they turned out, and it was so easy!

Assembling the necklace was tricky, as we discovered that getting the beads and copper cups to wrap tightly was not going to work as described in Step 6. We each attached 4 or 5 units according to these instructions, and they slid and wobbled on the base, so we figured out how to use some 24g wire to stabilize their attachments, and then we modified the attachment instructions for the rest of the units, to get a nice tight wrap onto the coil.


We finished the project, attaching the copper chain and S-hook as the last step, at 7:30 PM. So from start to finish, 10 hours. And worth every minute. Though some measurements and a template for the base coil would have saved us over an hour - but, to use my very least favorite colloquialism, it is what it is.

I am absolutely thrilled with my finished necklace, and now that I have completed the project and worked out the kinks, I am ready to make another one!


Edited 10/24/11 to add: In respect to the Step-by-Step Wire project instructions: A customer came into my bead shop on 10/22/11 and perused this particular article after noticing the project picture on the front of the issue. After about 4 minutes, she commented on how badly written the instructions were, and asked how she was supposed to know how much wire to purchase in order to make the project? Good point - I had only looked at it from the aspect of making it as a group; as a bead shop owner, I had not even considered the difficulty a customer would encounter if trying to purchase supplies for this project.