Fusing - Eighth Technique Learnt This Year!

I am at number eight with my pledge (remember ?) - I took class to learn fusing silver. Again in my local bead shop Fusion Beads.
This was far the most expensive class I have done yet - not because of the tuition fees, but the cost of material. Fusing can be done only with pure silver (sterling doesn't work well, sometimes at all) so the wires I have purchased for this class totaled at almost $50! But I did learn to work with pure silver, how to handle a torch and lots of other tricks.

The easiest to start with is a simple chain and that's what was the objective of the class. I chose to make my links oval in shape and textured them with hammed (which you should be able to see on the second picture) before tumbling it. Have a look at the chain, I still need to purchase a clasp for it, but otherwise I am happy with the outcome. And I still have some wire left from the class, so when I buy a torch, I might make some more fused elements.

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!

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 - 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?

Some Simple Earring Designs

I'm going to be traveling for a month now (so you won't see me around for a while) and I'm going to visit my family as well - so what better to bring to family and friends than a handmade gift! In my case jewellery :-))) - what else!
Most of the earrings from my previous post have somebody's name already written all over them. And here are just a few examples of SUPER simple designs that take just a moment to create - all you need is a wire, steel block, chasing hammer - and earplugs!

New Copper Earrings

My love-affair with COPPER seems to be never-ending! Well, there are several reasons for this - copper looks amazing, copper is in vogue right now and it's fairly inexpensive! And as if I needed another reason, I have lots of copper wire at home!
Remember my "trash stash" that I got from our Engineering? I got even more! Lots of discarded copper wire! It's rubber coated (like telephone wire) - so guess what I was doing for hours and hours while watching my fav TV programs? I think you got it: stripping my precious wires off their rubber clothes!

And here is what I've been working on recently:

Copper earrings with lots of copper beads.


Just wires - hand forged and hammered:


Swirls with copper beads:

And simple hammered swirls:

And this is just a bonus - next swirly earrings will be patina-coated! This is what ammonia with salt can do:

Hindi Prayer

I haven't done anything with photo trasfers in a while .... OK I actually can explain this, as I really do not like the word lazy in connection with me and I have already used it in my previous post. Our appartment isn't big and I don't have a fixed jewellery-making spot yet. No workshop, no designated area.
I like working in front of TV, because I like having sound around me while working, but radio lacks the visual stimulation. (Can you believe that we lived for a little over 4 years without TV and now all of a sudden I like it???) So my tools, wires, all that jazz is on a little table in front of the telly. When we have visitors, I try to clean it a bit and stock it in shoe boxes. When the visitors are gone, I take out the shoe boxes and spread everything around again.
I think people like us, because we had a lot of friends for dinner in past few weeks... and I just keep cleaning up and "down" again and again.
And the photo transfers are the messiest (water is involved too), so I don't take it out of the box as often as I would like to.

BUT! Solution is on the way: I'm getting our friends used to the idea that I have started making jewellery and that I need some work space. Some of our closest friends have already seen the "mess", as I didn't clean up. And it actually turned into an improvised house jewellery party! They wanted to see what I'm making, what are the tools and some of them picked what they liked! AWESOME!
So now when this hobby is slowly becoming a part of me, I won't have to clean up that much anymore (still talking only about the jewellery mess, of course :-))) and instead of looking through those shoe boxes I will spend more time making my pieces!


Oh, did you want to know about the 'Hindi Prayer'?
So this time I have added bits of gold leaf to the transfer and it came out very pretty. I would say the leaf adds a touch of antique feel to it.
I have to apologize as the photo transfer doesn't photograph very well (the irony!), because it is shiny and also because the base is mother-of-pearl. I'm thinking that bigger distance and macro on the camera will give a better result - next time, ok?

The text isn't actually a prayer, it's from a calendar, but the name sounded so nice. And most people will not understand anyway...

Coiled Chain with Red Bead Pendant

My new coiled chain got its first use - a horseshoe shaped pendant with a few wired details: coiled beads in the links, glass bead, hammered wire paddles and wrapped citrine bead.

Simple Wire Earrings

As I'm playing with wires and becoming familiar with them, I'm trying to play up some different ideas. Here are quick earrings with hammered wire - you will see this element in a few other projects that I've created in past few days (I just didn't find the time to post them).