Chainmaille - My First Project and Number SEVEN On My "Pledge List"

Seven - for some people a lucky number, for me it is right now another point on my "To Do List" done! I have learned seven NEW jewellery making techniques this year! Yes! 

Today on the menu: CHAINMAILLE (or chain-maille).

Chainmaille has always been intriguing to me - it can be tough and feminine at the same time, and it uses wire. Well - jumprings, but they're made from wire, so there are as many material choices as there are kinds, gauges and colours of wire.

The biggest accomplishment of "Mission Chainmaille" is the fact, that I made my own jumprings out of hardware wire! Very proud of myself. I tried to saw the jumprings first, but I broke one blade, so I have decided to cut them with flush cut pliers. I was just watching some movie and snipped away:)

My first project was a pair of earrings combined with copper washers of two different sizes. My inspiration came from magazine Step by Step Wire Jewelry (Jun-Jul 2011) from  tutorial by Lauren Andersen; but I would also like to give credit to Amy Sanders, who was the originator of the design and who also generously offers a FREE TUTORIAL on her blog here: http://www.crazymokes.com/2011/04/shenandoah-pendant-tutorial/

I discovered the online tutorial after working on this design and found it mainly because I was looking for who to give credits to.

OK, now here is the design:

And here are the finished earrings with earwires and after oxidizing.

There is only one problem with them: they are VERY heavy. Very heavy. So I will not try to sell them but keep them as a showpiece:)

Foldformed Heart Bracelet

I found inspiration in the last issue of Step by Step Wire Jewelry magazine - Abbi Berta's design "Battered Heart" came just on time for my foldforming fever. This is Abbi's design:

Here is my version of the metal heart. I have added some hammered texture to the fold:

Foldforming - I'm at Number SIX Technique

Foldforming seems to be the latest craze in metal working world of jewellery!

In case you missed some of my earlier posts, I made a pledge to learn 12 new jewellery making techniques this year (this is the original post). With foldforming I am at number 6! Half way through!

"Ruegel Fold" looked the easiest to start with, so I tried to make 2 leaves - and I'm quite happy with the result!

Check out the colour magic (second picture) created by mini torch.

Fancy Clasp with Turquoise

A friend ordered a bracelet for his daughter (same design as here). I wanted to make a different style clasp this time, so I added a pair of small turquoise beads:



Sawing OHM sign - Mixed Metals

Sawing is so versatile - it can expand the possibilities of design for anybody working with metal. You can cut ANY shape out of sheet metal and add it to your creations.

It was my very good friend's birthday and I wanted to make something special for her. She loves yoga and works as a massage therapist focusing on energy work - so I immediately thought OHM....



I made a pendant of mixed metals: hammered aluminum sheet, copper sheet and brass beads and rivets. All that hanging on a brass chain. She loved it!

More Sawing - Birdie Necklace

Here is a necklace I have created after seeing an episode of Portlandia called "Put a Bird on it!" I guess all the hype about birds on bags/ pillows/ jewellery .... is because a birdie is non-offensive! The case of dogs and cats could be always up for a debate - if you're a "cat person", a doggie ring might not make you happy and vice versa, however a birdie is just fine. Haha. That was just a thought.

And totally by chance, the second design I tried with saw was a bird too (see it here)!

The bird is copper, chains are antiqued brass and the beads are small faceted peridots.

Sawing - Number Four Technique

Number 4 on my pledge list (http://designbymisa.blogspot.com/2012/02/pledge-i-will-learn-new-technique-month.html) !!!!

I still remember the day when I spent $20 on metal shears in our local hardware shop... I was so excited that I would be able to cut ANY metal into ANY shape! But that didn't quite happen. While it was easy to cut very thin sheet metal and it was good mainly for straight lines, more complicated shapes were nearly impossible. And I knew that if I wanted to continue exploring metal, I shall learn to SAW!

And I did, again in a class in Fusion Beads. This class was tought by sweet Samantha Slater. Such a versatile and absolutely indispensable technique! My first attempt was a butterfly - I like the fact, that I can use the cut shape AND the shadow both. I would never be able to get the same result with the shears and I couldn't possibly get both shapes uniterrupted.

My second attempt, still in the class, was this birdie. I have put a nice rivet where the hole is and voila!

Turquoise Set - Viking Knit Technique

Another bracelet I made with the Viking knit - I just bought these adorable turquoise beads (it's actually dyed magnesite of a brilliant colour!) - hexagon rondelles - and I want to use them in a thousand of designs!

The bracelet looks really nice on the wrist.

...and it comes with earrings!

My First Viking Bracelet

Here is my first finished design with the viking knit technique, a bracelet I made in the class with Tracy Stanley.
Copper wire and copper findings (handmade clasp:) and keshi pearls with handmade headpins.

Thanks Tracy! Such a great lesson! I can do it all by myself now! More coming...

New Technique Number Three - Etching

Another technique I was longing to learn was etching. It is one thing you should learn if you are planning to use lots of metal in your designs as it adds so many possibilities to jewellery. And it's especially nice to use it in designs that are supposed to have antique look. 

It seemed to be easy enough for me to try on my own. I read a step by step tutorial in an issue of Belle Armoire Jewelry - one of my favourite sources of desings - and bought a bottle of PCB Etchant in Radio Shack... easy it wasn't. I still don't know what went wrong with my first etching experiment, but this is what it looked like:



But as they say, don't give up! I didn't and tried it again. I swear it did everything exactly the same way as the first time and the result was just as I wished - beautiful deep etch of a butterfly!!! Yay!!!

And I kept trying with different scrapbooking stamps and it all worked well. I'm so glad I only ruined one piece of copper:) Now I need to think of a nice piece to use the etched metal in.

Second New Technique - Viking Knit

Fusion Beads have some great jewellery making classes and it took me WAAAAYYY too long to discover it. I always thought I will have to go to one of the big bead festivals to ne able to get a class, but then I realized that some of the most talented jewellery makers live right here in the Pacific Northwest. And what more - the same classes they teach at the festivals are available here in Fusion Beads for much less money and right in the neighbourhood!!!

So the first class I took was Basic Riveting, which rocked (it is documented here in the blog too) and the next class was Viking Knit with Tracy Stanley. Aaaaaawesome! I actually learned how to make a Viking Knit (you may say "That was the aim of the class", but with many classes you might be able to walk away with one finished piece, but not be able to recreate it at home).

See photos below:

Start of a new chain (I like the fact that even if the chain here looks irregular, it WILL be 'perfect' once finished):

And two finished chains - both are made with copper wire, one is oxidized, one is not oxidized yet. The oxidized one is also thicker and the shiny one is thinner - see, I can already experiment with different finishes!

I will soon post some finished products!

 



Earrings - beginning of 2012

Copper Balled Headpins - this is addictive

Playing with fire is addictive - making ball head pins, that is! And the best of all (in my wide post-experiment eyes) is that I was able to make the copper heads RED! Yeeehaa!
My plan (call it New year resolution, if you will) is to try to explore more jewellery making techniques than I tried so far (until now it was mainly wire wrapping), so I can expand the possibilities of my designs.

Copper and pearls earrings

So couple days ago there were earrings with copper washers and pearls, here comes yet another design with copper and pearl combination. These earrings are wirewrapped - so far my favourite technique.

They were an order for my mum's friend - her ears aren't pierced, so I worked with leverbacks. The moment I put the photo on Facebook, another friend asked for the same design, for pierced ears. Nice networking:)

Old Design/ New Design - Reworking a Finished Design

More copper washers! Don't say you didn't see it coming (especially after I blogged yesterday how addicting working with washers is).

So there are two different designs on the following pictures. If you think that they look very much alike, you are completely right, because it is one and the same pair of earrings. First photo shows a combination of three different sizes of washers bound together by a copper wire - that was the original idea. I have added some silver coloured wire as an interesting detail, but then I noticed, that the washers are slightly turning while being worn, which caused irregularity in the detail (you can see the silver wire at a different position on the second photo).
I gave it a thougt and as much as I hate reworking a finished project, I wanted it to be 'perfect'. In order to stop the washers from turning, I drilled holes into them and secured with a piece of the same wire used for the contrasting detail.

I hope you like the "upgrade"!

Copper Washers Are Great!

There are so many things jewellery can be made of - things considered junk (or at least "suitable for something else"). But as the saying goes, one's person's junk is another person's treasure.

I have first seen washers used by great jewellery maker Sharilyn Miller (http://www.sharilynmiller.com/,  here is her blog: http://sharilynmiller.blogspot.com/). The ideas Sharilyn has and the pieces she makes with washers are amazing! Following her recommendation, I have bought a kit of 110 copper washers (car repair shops have them, and they're on Amazon too) - that way you get 6 different sizes that you can combine. Hammering them and oxidizing afterwards makes the washers more attractive.

Here is my first pair of copper washer earrings! And they're certainly not the last, I'm already addicted!



Mixed Metals Earrings

It was time to experiment... steel wire, check... brass rivets, check... copper sheet and beads, check, check... MIXED METALS experiment!

I might patina them as well, have to think about it a bit.



Copper Bangle with Ceramic Bead (Variation to an Old Design)

A friend of mine recently saw this older design of mine and liked it a lot, but wanted the same thing done as a bangle. So I dived into my stash of beads (do you remember how Scrooge McDuck used to dive in his money in Duck Tales? Yep, that's what it looked like:) and found another of the Ceramic beads that I used a lot with copper.








So with the exact bead (can a human fall in love with a bead? Because that's what the friend of mine said about the bead and I was worried I didn't have any left...) I had no excuse not to try a different twist on the same design:

So I posted the bangle in my Etsy shop and tadaaa - SOLD! (Well to this friend and nobody else, of course!)

Liver of Sulfur

Oooh, this is fun! I have finally purchased Liver of Sulfur and I keep "livering" (or "sulfering"???) everything with it!
Here is the first pair of copper earrings I have tested it on - the one on the left is already getting antiqued, the one on the right is the original. I really like how it gives the wirewrapped design more depth...



Now it's the one on the right that's getting antiqued (just in the case you didn't notice they switched sides:).

Copper - Patina, Rivets and Stamping

And here is another patina project - a pair of earrings that speak to you. Well, at least if you believe in HOPE and LOVE, because that's what they "say"!
I have combined a number of different techniques to make this pair and I'm hoping to come up with more than this, since I really like the result.

I have used ammonia and salt to add patina to copper plates. I actually forgot about the experiment and left the metal "under influence" for longer than intended (2,5 days to be precise), so if you look closely enough, you might notice, that snippets of the metal have been eaten off by corrosion at the edges. But I don't mind, firstly this was my first experiment with patina, secondly I was trying to make the metal look aged anyway.
The patina was so thick I even had to remove some, otherwise it wouldn't hold on well even after spraying with clear paint. I had removed more patina from waht was going to be front side of the earrings and that created a nice effect of 2-coloured patina; red and green layers.

Then I've sprayed a clear paint over the plates, so the patina wouldn't come off or stain clothes. I have applied 2 coats on each side and let dry for several hours between the coats.

In the meanwhile, I have prepared 2 pieces of copper and stamped them with words HOPE and LOVE, one for each ear.

After the paint dried on the patinaed metal peices, I had to measure where to put holes for rivets and hammer the rivets on.

And then all I had to add were 2 handmade jumprings (how good does it sound, instead just jumprings) and earwires. Tadaa!


Here is front and back of the earrings:




Hope & Love... who's in?