Rediscovered - seed beads

Seed beads have been with me since I was a little girl. You grow up and forget about them. Suddenly you want them again, for a collage work or enticing bead embroidery and lastly for jewellery. Making pieces in the French beaded flower technique is something wonderful to learn, but translating this to jewellery is quite challenging.

Today I will show you just one of the pieces I just made - others will follow because the muse bit me!

Summertime - Berry time

When summer comes around I miss the delicious, juicy berries found in temperate climates. Here in the tropics none can grow! So this year I played "pretend" and sat down to use my beads to create fantasy berry clusters as earrings.

Well, we can't enjoy eating them but wearing them instead!

A Moving Story!

No, I do not want you to start shedding tears - it is not that kind of story. What I want to tell you is about moving house. In a way it is sad to leave after almost twenty years in the same house, but at the same time it is like anew beginning. All the girls had grown up, got married and moved to their own homes. So it was time to think of downsizing, the house was simply to large for just two of us. Not only that, but my daughters found it very convenient to leave behind all the things they did not need or could not accommodate in their houses. So, just after Christmas packing up started in earnest. We had twenty wooden crates made by a carpenter, hoping they would take all our stuff. Not so, we still had to buy lots and lots of sturdy bags to stow everything. This goes to show that all my family are pack rats - we never throw anything away because we might be able to use it again. Oh, but there was serious discarding of completely useless things. Still, some of my daughters' belongings still found their way to the new house. On the brighter side, we unearthed some long forgotten things or items which we had been searching for in vain.

Now in our new house there is really little space for everything, especially my beloved books and kitchen equipment, but we will get used to that. But I am most pleased that the contents of my two crates, five bags and eight large containers from my workroom have found space in my new "Studio"! Mostly beads, wire and tools, a few work related books. I never knew the quantities I had before the move - amazing! As soon as I had put my table in I started bringing out my supplies and resumed making my jewellery. And to prove I will post just two pictures today, promising more shortly!

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 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.

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 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!