Week 6: On a Wire

This week I went back to my long time love and made seven wire wrapping projects.  A lot of these are design ideas out of my "journal", which is honestly more like scraps of paper I've doodled on shoved in a drawer.  Again I'm finding that this "7 things a week" project is motivating me to finally getting around to things I've meant to make or techniques I've meant to try.

For example this bad boy.  I've always wanted to make a wire wrapped container pendant.  This was super fun to do.  I wrapped some glass beads in a fast food napkin, and then wrapped 18 ga. copper wire around it.  I tightened the wire with zigzag twists to make sure everything was locked in place.  Then I ran the whole thing under the faucet to wet the napkin, and just started picking pieces out of the wire frame with tweezers until it was all out.  The effect is very cool; the beads are loose within the wire pendant.  I cant' wait to try this with gemstones.

I got this design idea from the wonderful book "Wire Jewelry Masterclass" by Abby Hook.  In the book she has a design that shows how to build a wire frame for a large round bead.  I coiled the outside frame instead of weaving it (mostly because I suck at weaving), and added more spirals at the top because who doesn't love spirals!  Also the bead spins in the setting, so it's great for fiddling with.

This was a fun combo of different wire techniques.  I make the curvy frame, then added the small round beads, wrapping the wire around some beads like a bird's nest and leaving others bare.  Then I made a herringbone wrapped oval bead dangle and attached it to the bottom.

These are simple top drilled stick pearls that I gave wire caps to.  They make pretty cute earrings.

These web earrings were made by taking prefab oval drop components and stringing small 3mm semiprecious beads with 26 ga wire across them.  Then I just crossed and crossed and crossed the wires until the oval was full.

 These are hand hammered spirals that I wrapped some crystal beads onto.  They were so fun to make I tried a couple of variations, which I'm counting as all one item:

Tighter spirals in copper

And tighter silver spirals that were created and hammered around a mother of pearl focal bead

And finally, what may be my favorite of this week's batch:

These hand hammered copper butterfly wing earrings.  These are also based on a design from "Wire Jewelry Masterclass" by Abby Hook.  I played with the shape a little, and hammered it to make a bit more of my own design, but Abby deserves 90% of the credit.  I'm also excited because this is the first time I've had luck adding a patina to copper wire.  So much of what I get at the craft store is tarnish resistant, which doesn't really patina at all.  But while on a trip to Lowe's I found some 18 ga. bare copper wire, which seems to patina beautifully.  If only they had it in more sizes!

I expect that I'll have a lot more wire wrapping projects in the coming weeks.  I found a lot of old notes and designs while digging through my "idea drawer", and I might be on a wire wrapping kick.  This may be the break in the weekly theme run I've had going.  We'll see.