Found a cool challenge at crafster.org to create jewelry to the theme ‘Colors of the Sea’. This gave me the motivation to finally use some techniques from a new book. So I have ventured into working with wire. The technique I tried is hammered wire, it is easy and you just need a small hammer and a steel or marble block. I am lucky to have a special steel block my father in law ‘turned’ himself, but I have been told that an off-cut of marble from a kitchen shop is just as good. The picture shows the same pendant from two different angles.
The fabulous book is ‘Making Colorful Wire & Beaded Jewelry’ by Linda Jones – lotsa pictures, clear instructions and ways to take the basic technique and use it many cool and clever ways.
Some things are just a good design and work well! My sister saw one in a shop so I copied it for her birthday – I liked it, so I made myself one, my sister in law borrowed my one and wants one of her own too! The basic design is a long strand with the big bead, a ring and three dangly bits – the dangly bits do take a bit of trial and error to work. If you like mine, just copy the basic design with beads you have left over from other things – and get ready to make some for friends and family.
I love the layered look of multi strand necklaces. This one has four separate strands all joined together. One strand is all beads the same size and another is continuous beads with three small and then one large. The other two strands are links with beads on each link, one is small uneven stone and the other has a mix of all sorts. Each strand needs to be a slightly different length so they sit nicely, play around with the lengths before finishing to make sure they look how you like.
I love shopping with my sister. We go to different shops that I would never go to on my own, and come across really funky things. One trip a necklace caught our eye – very cool button choker.
We ooed and ahhed over a number of different colour versions – they really were fantastic – and expensive. We whispered to each other that we could make that – as you do. But this time I did, I could only find suitable buttons in black and white in my collection – but they worked fine. Finding the right buttons would be the trick as a number of big buttons are needed.
So I found some buttons, and fortunately I already had lots of beads so had eveything needed. The necklace is made with two pieces of wire/tiger tail. Both threads go through the small beads together, one of the threads branches up and through the button stack and back down to join the other thread going through the small beads.
I always remember the notes in my childhood recipe book, reassuring that your first pancake often fails and it is OK to throw it out. I think I was happy with my first pancake – it was sweet, stodgy and buttery – perfect, but the first attempt failure is a common thing. I expected it with my first beaded necklace, and unfortunately I was right. It was too contrived and balanced and ’colour by numbers’ looking. But I had learnt the skills I needed in the process and studied how the necklaces I loved were designed, and tried again and made the green necklace pictured. So although not terribly original it works!
