Triple Beaded Necklace

I thought I'd already done a post for this, but apparently I haven't.

My mum spotted a necklace in M&S. She liked the style, but the colours didn't match what the person she was buying for liked so I volunteered to make something for her, in the required green. It turned out I didn't actually have a lot of green beads in my stash.  I asked what other colours she liked: "orange, black, ivory, lemon". This isn't a great combination, so I decided on dark green, amber, and black (the recipient is a green-eyed redhead). Then I went shopping.

It turned out I could buy beads individually at Beads Unlimited, so I went searching for a selection of oval, round, and faceted beads in my chosen colours. The next step was to figure out how I wanted to string them.



On the original necklace the beads were strung on transparent cord, with black cord knotted around them. I'd decided not to replicate this as it was fiddly and also meant some of the beads didn't hang right. I'd decided to string directly onto the main cord instead. Unfortunately I'm a really bad judge of size, so the beads turned out to be smaller than I expected. This wasn't a problem, except I had to go hunting for cord thin enough to string them on, and that meant the cord of the necklace would be thinner than I wanted and risk digging into the wearers neck.

In the end I stuck to the plan of stringing the beads onto their separate cords and knotting between them, and then plaiting the three threads together to make the rest of the necklace a bit thicker. This was the result.



For the clasp I made a loop in the cord, and added a random, reasonably-sized, green bead from my stash as the toggle. You can't see in the picture, but it has a spiral pattern.



One minor tweak later (moving the green beads by the toggle down to where the cords meet in the second picture) and it was ready to go.

Strawberry Earrings

Just a small jewellery project this month, as I'm working on a larger project and learning how to do wrapped loops.

I saw these charms when I was looking for beads for the larger project, and couldn't resist buying a couple.



A couple of earwires and flowers later and I had a pair of summery earrings.



They're a little heavy (the strawberries are quite chunky) so I wouldn't want to wear them every day. I like them though, and for once I got something made while it was the season to wear it. I've been planning winter earrings since before Christmas that still haven't been made!

Wrap Bracelet Project

I've never rage-quit a jewellery project before (although I do have a couple that have stalled until I figure how to make them work) so this was a new experience for me. I'd bought a bracelet kit from Spoilt Rotten Beads because I love wrap bracelets and loved the colour scheme.

The problem is, I'm really bad at judging the size of beads. Normally they're way bigger than I expect. This time they were way smaller. Generally I avoid small beads - seed beads are the absolute worst - but they weren't tiny so I decided to just get on with it.



Now I'm no stranger to making wrap bracelets, but the instructions were far from clear. At one point in the initial steps it had me add a bead and finish on the righthand side, but then the next step started on the left. After fifteen minutes of trying to figure it out, I quit.

Half an hour and some food later, I decided the best thing to do was start again, so I unpicked everything - not an easy task with small beads and thin cord. I couldn't figure it out the second time eather, but I muddled through and got to the next section. Things didn't improve. It would tell you to do things like pick up a bead, then move the thread like so and go back through the bead you'd just exited. Except it didn't mean that bead, it meant the one you'd exited before you picked up the new bead.

When I'd finally threaded on all the beads I hit upon another problem. The instructions tell you to keep adding beads until you're an inch short of the desired bracelet length, which would be 14 inches on average. It only gives you enough beads to make 10 inches. It doesn't indicate anywhere in the instructons or ingredients list that you might need to buy more beads. Finding out halfway through making it did not improve my mood. I had to tie it off there, shorter than I wanted it to be, and hope for the best.



It's supposed to be a double-wrap bracelet, and the beaded part doesn't even go around my wrist one and a half times. I have skinny wrists. The only way the kit as provided is going to do what it says in the instructions is if you make it for a child. It's the day after and I'm still mad. I means, it's wearable but it's not what I asked for. If I'd known I could have ordered extra beads and made it how I wanted.

To make things even more annoying, the cord isn't taut enough so the beads don't sit right. That's entirely my own fault. Although to be honest working with 3 metres of cord at once is too much, frankly, and something else this kit got wrong. I'll need to go back over the finished bracelet and double up on the thread of fix it - except I don't have any more of the cord I need.

I bought another kit at the same time, and I'm dreading starting that one. At least I'll know ahead of time to measure the beads out and see how long the thing will actually be, and can compensate. I won't be buying another kit from there, that's for sure.

Fox Brooch Jewellery Project

I've decided to try and blog about my jewellery projects once a month. Not only will it give me something to post about, but having to post about it will keep me making things to post about. I'm hoping it will help to keep the momentum up on both of them.

This month's project is a brooch I made for my grandmother at the beginning of the year. She loves foxes, and I found this little critter on Etsy.



It's quite chunky, so I thought the best thing to go with was a brooch. At first I was going to hang chain from the loops on the pin and dangle leaves like it was hiding among the foliage, but it pretty quickly became obvious this was unworkable. Whatever I hung from the chain would strike the fox, and probably damage it.



So I got rid of the chain. Not damaging the fox was a major consideration here, as was the fact that glass is quite heavy and I wanted to keep the weight of the brooch down or it could damage the clothes it was worn on. Being a hoarder I have lots of leaf charms. Glass ones were out, and the lucite ones were too big. I have several light metal ones, mostly in silver. However I thought the ones pictured above complemented the fox best, as they're quite small and in a sympathetic colour.

Because it was a woodland scene I wanted to add some flowers, and picked some tiny lucite ones because they're light. I went for red to go with the warm colour scheme, and added a silver butterfly for contrast.

And here's the finished piece.

Metal Jewellery Course: Second Project

I spent the first part of the session soldering a jump ring to my robin pendant. Here's a tip - always make sure you know exactly what your jump rings are made of before you put them in cleaning solution. Mine turned out to be (probably) steel-coated copper. The whole thing tarnished, and turned the pendant pink.

Luckily Roland had some scraps of silver wire on hand, and I was able to make my own jump ring. And solder it on the pendant again. I was still not full of the love for soldering. After it was soldered and in the pickle again, I decided to have a go at drop casting.

Did you ever play the game where you drip candle wax into water to tell fortunes? It's like that but with molten silver. I sat down with some scrap silver, a blowtorch, a bowl of water, and a pair of massive safety gauntlets, and started playing.

You don't get a great variety of shapes from this method, it turns out. Molten silver forms a ball, so a lot of the time the shapes are rounded. Sort of.


And you need to pour it quickly or you end up with things like this.

And yes, it is silver although it looks like copper. Oxides build up on the surface during heating and turn it funny colours.

Eventually I had a piece in a shape I liked, and while it was in the pickle cleaning I finished cleaning up the pendant with pumice powder, tripoli, and jeweller's rouge. It turns out that most of the work in metal jewellery goes towards the finish, and it's easy to see why pieces cost as much as they do.

At the end of the session I had a completed robin pendant, and a random silver shape. Somehow I had to find something to do with this:

Metal Jewellery Course: First Project

It was a breakfast on day two that I finally had the idea for what I was going to make, and made some hasty scribbles.

We learned about texturing and making granules (tiny little balls). Then it was time to start working on our designs. Although we could work in copper to practice if we wanted, I decided to jump straight in with silver. Time was limited, and I had the feeling I'd get bored with making the same thing twice.

After selecting a small piece of silver from the selection we had, I cut the basic shape out with a piercing saw. Having discussed the idea of colouring the robin's red breast I decided against it and had a play around with texturing instead, on a scrap piece of copper.

 

Once I found a texture I liked, I went at the robin and gave him bumpy feathers all over. The eye (which isn't really clear in the picture) was made with another punch, and then I selected one with a dotted line effect to mark out the beak and breast.

The last part of the session was spent polishing the edges and untextured areas with wet and dry paper (like sandpaper for metalwork), and then burnishing the edges to strengthen them. I also punched a hole in the top of the pendant so it could hang from a jump ring.

Part of the next session would be spent finishing off with polishing and adding a jump ring, but that left me wondering what to do with the rest of the time. Luckily Roland had mentioned drop casting - pouring molten silver into water to see what shapes you get - and I had the idea that maybe I cold give that a try and see if it would give me some inspiration.

Metal Jewellery Course: Beginning

In the spirit of doing something different, my boyfriend and I booked ourselves onto a course on metal jewellery for beginners over a couple of weekends. It was a strictly for the love course - although there's a certificate for completing it, it doesn't form any sort of formal qualification.

The first session was entirely devoted to learning about the techniques and tools. We each had a toolbox, and the tutor, Roland George, took us through the tools and explained what they were all for. Because the kits were used by students in other classes each one had a pretty random selection, and swapping items around proved to be a great ice-breaker.

There were five of us on the course, me, my boyfriend (the only man), and three ladies with varying levels of experience: two had been on on a course before but not done any metalwork outside this and the other hadn't done any jewellery work at all.

After the introduction, Roland had us all grab some of the scrap metal from the tool kits - there was plenty of pre-loved copper and brass sheet knocking around - and had us practice cutting out shapes with the piercing saw.

After lunch we learned about how to shape rings, about annealing (heating to soften the metal for working), and soldering. The project was to make a basic copper ring from scratch: select the metal; cut a strip with the saw; shape a ring (annealing when necessary); solder the joint closed; pickle it to clean; and file to remove the excess solder and neaten the edges.

I learned a lot from this, including that I hate soldering. Solder seems to have a mind of its own. When heated it forms a ball which sits there for ages not doing anything. then all of a sudden it flows, and usually not in the direction you want it to. This was not my only encounter with soldering over the course, and I have to say it hadn't grown on my by the end.

My ring came out wonky as I didn't manage to cut a straight piece of copper to start, but that didn't really matter since it was the shaping and soldering that was important at this stage. It photographs well, any way.

After this it was time to go, and we were given our homework for the next day's session: if we didn't already have a project in mind to think of one. I was already pretty sure I didn't want to make a ring, but beyond that I had no idea. Inspiration wouldn't strike until breakfast the following day.