Beautiful Brass

Since I was little I loved brass. In those days usually all door fittings were made of the stuff and it was my job to polish them once a month. To be honest, I did not cherish this work at all, but - and here comes the contradiction - I loved the end result, when everything was sparkling and shiny again! And I loved the colour - the look of ancient gold.

So when recently I found 18g brass wire I just went wild and bought all of it! And a good thing I did, because when I went back to get some other gauges, the manufacturer had added something to give the wire a different colour!

Here is my first project in this beautiful wire, a bracelet in the full Persian weave.

The design for this bangle comes from the book "Wire Wrapping" by Linda Chandler & Christine Ritchie. Only that I did not have square or half round wire, but this does not really matter. I just used my round wire for the 5 lengths required (original says 7) and hammered an additional length flat to do the wrapping with! The beads are Chinese crystal rondelles.

Here is the same design again but with silver beads instead - I do like mixing metals.

If you never tried this type of work before I can recommend the book, there are lots of beautiful projects - all worth practicing!

Anniversary Special

This set was custom ordered by a very lovely lady for her upcoming silver wedding anniversary. Criteria were: to match the gown she is going to wear, quality and originality (that is, not common everyday stuff). It is a chainmaille weave called Helm chain which I adapted into flowers. To make them stay round the AR is very important. I used 18g sterling silver wire and Swarovski CAL crystals embedded in the flowers and as the dangles. For these and the earwires I used 20g Sterling silver wire. It took 569 rings to complete the set and I have the blisters on my fingers to prove that all was handmade!

This particular set will never be made again by me as it is. So my customer can be assured that she really has got " one of a kind" jewellery. And I hope she enjoys wearing it as much as I did creating it!

Till next time.

Many Apologies

To all who enjoy my page I apologize for my lengthy absence.

This was due to my crashed computer. So I got a so-called "expert" to recover all my lost data. said expert put the contents of my harddrive onto his own and then put everything back on my new computer. Now I spent time to investigate what was there and what was not. Surprisingly I had now acquired all the stuff that this guy had on his harddrive and my own files were practically gone! Like a demented woman I searched and ransacked every possible corner in every file to locate the missing items. No luck - 90% of my work is lost including all the pictures of the last 3 years, tutorials etc. The rest of all the stuff translated itself into computerese which the system does not recognize. I feel I have been robbed!

On top of this I acquired a new camera and I have to learn how to operate it. So it will be a bit longer before I can put up more photos of all my latest creations and I have not been idle!

Its good to be back and thanks for understanding.

A little disaster

After my last post my computer went down. That was Saturday evening. By Monday I got it repaired, not knowing that it will get worse. Next I lost sound and finally my PC crashed completely! And I did not have any recent backup, which taught me a great lesson. It took the rest of the week to recover the data from the hard drive. And finally today the reloading on to a brand new computer.

Now I just have to sort out the jumbled files and put them back into folders. And I have to find all my pictures which seem to have disappeared! Not to talk of downloading all the software which has taken leave of absence as well. Oh, what a delightful job!!!

So, please be patient and bear with me. New creations have happened and I will show them as soon as I can.

Heavy Metal

I found some heavy gauge wire the other day and I decided that it would have to be a chainmaille creation. The wire is 1.5mm thick (between 15 & 14 g ), hard to cut jumprings, as well as hard on hands, wrists and tools! But I just love the result. The rings have an ID of 5.5mm, almost 6mm after springback, which gave me a bracelet of a whole centimetre thickness. Very substantial!!!

Now I plan to go back to the shop and buy up their supply of this wire, because I have already planned what other weaves I can do. Not to talk of some serious sculpting. We shall see!

In Praise of Wig Jig

This is a lovely necklace set done in 20g copper wire with flattish oval beads. Just a pity I did not have more of the beads for a bracelet!

The design for the wire links is found in the booklet "Jewelry with Wire" and according to instructions was made with roundnose pliers. Beautiful and perfect! But not in my hands; all the links turned out crookedly and of different shapes and sizes. So I decided to try my trusty wig jig, arranging the pegs in the correct order, then draping the wire around them. No problem, but the loops were not closed up as in the original. Again no problem, then I used my roundnose pliers to squeeze them shut. For good measure I hammered the links before joining them with jumprings and linking them to the wired beads, and this is the result. I hope you like it!

Kumihimo in Wire

A while ago I posted some colourful kumihimo braids. Then someone commented how they would like to see a wire version. Here it is! Done in 28g sterling silver with just 8 single strands. For this I used the square braid pattern; to me it is preferable over the round braid which I think is more attractive in different colours.

If you want to try it go easy on your hands! I braided a whole metre of this in one day which was very foolish, given the gauge of wire I used. For the following three days my hands were so swollen and sore that I could only do the something very easy, like coiling wire on a mandrel and no use of tools!

As I was told later by someone much more experienced than myself I should have used 30g wire or finer. Well, we live and learn! As it turned out the necklace turned out just the way I wanted and never mind the pain.

BUT: I would not do it again!