Week 43: Copper Bonanza!

Copper is pretty much my favorite metal to work with.  I really love the warmth of the color, and I love the way it acquires a patina over time.  Antiqued or natural, I'm a fan.  So I decided to indulge myself this week and use copper in all my designs.

Moss Quartz bead on copper paddle pin with spiral wire wrap.  That's a heckuva sentence. 

Multi tiered copper chain choker.

Embossed copper disc earrings.  I love my Big Kick!  Embossing metal is so much fun, and it's a great way to add texture to your designs.

Labradorite and garnet on antiqued copper eyepins and chain.  Simple, but  fun!

I found this cool copper disc at Michael's, and I knew it had to be a necklace for me!    So  I added some dusky purple crystal beads with segments of chain in between.  I have a feeling this is going to be one of those necklaces I wear the heck out of.

Copper plated aspen leaf earrings with fancy jasper accent beads.

And last but not least, this wire wrapped black agate donut pendant!  I used a piece of scrap metal that I had cut a disc out of as the base, then hammered it and punched holes for adding wire.  I like that you can see through the donut.

I know "copper" isn't all that much of a theme, or even a new theme (it was my first!) but the longer this project goes on I find that I'm more motivated by doing what makes me happy than trying to experiment every single week.  Still, I do hope to have at least a few new themes over the remaining weeks.  We'll see.  : )

Week 41: Dapper Wrapper

I've been wire wrapping again!  When in doubt or too busy to plan out a neat theme for the week, wire wrapping is always a good fall back.  It's my favorite type of jewelry crafting and I'm always behind on making designs that I've sketched out.  So here are seven that went from paper to reality!

Serpentine and Lapis abstract wire wrapped pendant.

Shaded wire wrapped earrings.  I went from Iolite, to Amethyst, to Lemon Quartz, to Crystal  Quartz.  These guys are super fun and sparkly!

Wire wrapped agate and crystal pendant.  I hammered the spirals to give them additional texture, and I'm pretty pleased with the results.

Mosaic-style wire wrapped pendant.  I'm particular fond of this style!  I have so many cute, tiny, semi-precious beads that could be used in this way.  Stone list goes: Rainbow Moonstone, Garnet, Quartz Crystal, Peridot, Labaradorite, White Moonstone, Chrysoprase, Amethyst, Smoky Quartz, Apatite, Rose Quartz, and Emerald Green Adventurine.

Wire wrapped copper tube earrings. I added bits of text tape (Tim Holtz!  Which I always say like "Steve Holt!") to the copper tubing, then wire wrapped it and added seed bead accents.  Then, I added the key charms so the bottoms didn't look so naked.  An empty loop is a sad loop.

Wire wrapped amethyst pendant.  I don't know where this design came from, but  I enjoyed making use of the negative space in the middle of the pendant.  I don't usually leave open spaces in my work, and it was nice to try and incorporate space into one of my designs.  Even if it felt really weird, like I had somehow left the piece unfinished.

Hammered brass washer earrings with copper spirals! Again, making matching spirals is REALLY HARD.  The good news is that making spirals is pretty easy, so it balances out.

Just a few more days until the end of January!  I'll be back at least entertaining the idea of doing different themes soon.  : )  Thanks for sticking with me, and I'll catch you next time!

Week 40: Hammer Time!

Only 12 more weeks to go!  It seems impossible to me that I've managed to get this far.  And while I haven't been all that great at blog updating, I've been sticking to the crafting portion just fine!  As another treat to myself to get thought this crazy busy month, I've decided to break out some of my metalworking tools and go to town!  nothing helps relieve frustration better than being able to (productively) hit things with hammers. : )

These earring were made with little bits of copper tube from Lowes that I threaded onto a knitting needle and hammered. I really like hand hammered texture, and I'm glad I finally found a way to incorporate it into projects with dimensional elements instead of just hitting sheet metal.  Which is super fun too.

The picture isn't the greatest, but I splayed the ends of this copper bar to keep these cool ocean jasper beads from falling off.  I really like "paddle pins" and this was a fun way to use a higher gauge of copper wire without having to loop the ends.

These are hands down my favorite project of the week.  Growing up, a lot of girls I knew wanted to be Rainbow Brite.  I wanted to be Stormy!  I  love thunderstorms, and this was a fun way to incorporate that into my jewelry!  I hand cut the shapes from sheet metal (32 ga I believe), then hammered them, torched them to get the nice chocolate patina, and polished the heck out of them to make the texture really pop.

Fun with ring blanks!  I've had this package of aluminum ring blanks forever, and haven't quite been able to figure out what to do with them.  It was my first attempt using these ring blanks, and as such this ring didn't turn out perfect but it doesn't totally suck either.   The ring band is hand hammered, and then I threaded an amethyst bead on an eyepin and attached it to the shank.

I love copper pipes!  This is a fun stacked pendant using three different sizes of copper pipes from Lowes.  I hammered the edges to give them texture, then drilled holes in the top of each piece with my dremel.  finally, a quartz bead on a headpin attached the whole thing together.  This necklace is cool, and I imagine that as it patinas with age it'll get even cooler!

To go with the ring blanks I mentioned above, I also got a package of aluminum bracelet blanks.  This project turned out much better than the ring did.  I hammered the blank to give it texture, then formed it on an old pill bottle.  (Note to self, pick up bracelet mandrel...).  From there I punched holes and wire wrapped some raw aquamarine chips onto the cuff.  I really think that the ruggedness of the chips fits the bracelet well.  I don't wear bracelets, but I'm going to have a hard time letting this guy go!

The storm earrings just barely edged this guy out for "favorite of the week".    I traced the agate slice onto sheet metal, then cut around the shape in an abstract, free-form sort of style.  Then I hammered that bad boy for texture, punched holes around the stone and wired it in place.  Once I realized that I could fit some quartz square tube beads in between the stitches to make a kind of stone bezel setting I was all over it.  this is one of those rare perfect projects that turns out better in reality than I pictured it in my head.  It was exactly the pick me up that I needed!

All in all, hammering a bunch of items really did help relieve some of the pent up frustration from the past week.  It's nice to take something tense and transmute it into something productive.  Hurray for creativity, keeping me from hammering people since 1995!

Week 37: Gifty Goodness

Ahahahah!  CHRISTMAS IS FINALLY OVER!  Not that I don't enjoy the holidays; I've made my peace with them as an adult.  Having a super cool family / friends group helps a lot, and having a two year old (almost!) nephew really brings the holiday spirit home.  But I've been going crazy because I've made a bunch of cool things that I couldn't post for fear of spoiling some of my gift surprises.  So here's what I whipped up in the last seven days for gift giving purposes:

Shoulder-duster style long quartz crystal earrings with peridot, amethyst, and citrine accents. 

Altered chandelier crystal pendant.  I faux antiqued some text from a magazine using Distress Inks,  then tore up the page and modpodged it onto the back of the crystal.  A little wire wrapping at the top finished it off nicely.  I like this so much that when time permits (haha) I'm going to make one for myself!

Wire wrapped copper earrings.  I don't know what kind of stone  this is, but it's a really pretty blue.  The stones came from the big batch of stuff that Ruby gave me.  It's the gift that keeps on giving! 

Amethyst and fluorite pendant.  I  have a friend that really loves the look of the herringbone style wire wrap, so I decided to see what I could do with a multiple stone style design.  It's big, but it's pretty cool.  I may be the most excited about giving this one away.  : )

And for the nature lover, a very minimalist wire wrap leaf design.  No bells or whistles,  just a leaf silhouette with some curly vines.  My husband thought they were strawberries, which I think would go over with the intended recipient just as well as leaves would.

Copper wire spiral earrings.  I'm terrible at making wire wrapped earrings because it's so hard for me to create a duplicate of a design, and these were no exception.  Making matching spirals by hand is really hard!  :)

And finally, the "ripple" style wire wrapped necklace.  It's a super fun way of getting a lot of stones into one wrap, and I expect I'll be messing around with this design more in the future.

Sorry to be short this week but the New Year is calling!  I've got to go out and buy sauerkraut (it's a family tradition to eat a little on New Years Eve for good luck), and get ready for my sister's birthday.  Whoo!  Happy New Year everyone!

Week 7: Back on the Chain Gang

I have a love for chainmail that far outstrips my ability to create chainmail.  I tried a variety of different weaves when I was first learning, and pretty much had settled on Japanese weaves as what I could comfortably do.  I have a couple of chainmail books sitting on my shelves that detail more European weaves, so I decided to pull them out and see what I could do.

Tiered "Infinity" Links

"Shaggy Loops" earrings

Helm chain bracelet

"Romanov" Byzantine links with rose and crackle quartz

European 4 in 1 thin bracelet

Queens chain necklace in copper and silver

Byzantine rectangle links in copper

So yay!  thanks to my new project I can do some very basic European Chainmail weaves.  I made all these with jump rings purchased from Michael's; I really suck at Aspect Ratio calculation (because I'm lazy) and their consistent ring size really helps me avoid having to re-measure new batches.  I always wander back to chainmail so I'm sure I'll have mroe weaves to post in the future.  Right now I have my eye on Persian weaves and Dragonscale, so we'll see.  : )  Till next week!

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.