Friday 25 April 2014

Copper-Wrapped Pearl Necklace Experiments...

The robins have decided not to move in. I can't figure out if this is normal, that she would build the nest and then not lay her eggs immediately. Is it because it's too cold out here? Guess I could check online...

Here's my blue flowered back lawn... I LOVE these flowers, and forget-me-nots, too.




Meanwhile back inside the ranch sitting at my little TV dinner tray parked in front of my stoopid computer, as a lot of you have already discovered, holes in pearls typically are frustratingly tiny -- 24 gauge wire being about the only thing that will get through them. Unfortunately, at the moment all I have is dead soft wire in that gauge and it makes wrapping incredibly difficult and floppy. I have to say that it is almost impossible to do a decent wrap with dead soft wire. Most of the larger pearls I can use hard temper 22 gauge wire I buy by the pound from The Ring Lord, a great source for wire in bulk, carrying the full range of wire gauges and tempers across all the common wire types. I have no idea why I didn't buy 24 gauge hard temper. Or maybe I did and it's just lost in my messpile.

Anyway, these pearl chains are what I'm playing with these days. I will dig out my wrapped seed bead chains and start seeing about adding them, as well, but I've always wanted to play with the pearl colours. I watched the first season of Orange is the New Black on Netflix while making these this week.

I haven't quite sorted out how I'll join up the different colours on this fuschia, white and deep teal blue pearl necklace. FYI, the two burgundy-ish brown segments really tone down the red, white and blue direction this was going in. Very interesting, the difference with and without. By using jump rings, I can easily balance out the beads if someone requires a different length or if I decide to make it a double choker length.




A little dish of pearl soup. I need more colours. Sigh...


Alas, there was only the one season of Orange, so now I'm watching Once Upon A Time In Mexico for the umpteenth time and hoping that there are plenty of other Rodriguez films to get me through the weekend.  

Thanks for looking!

2 comments:

Nelson Beads said...

Robins started working on a nest on my front porch. They've been here three years in a row. I think I scared them off, because they haven't been back in a couple of days.

Barbara said...

Has the mother bird come back yet to sit? Mine finally showed up this morning (28 April). What a thrill to see a bird only two feet away, albeit just a peek through the window. I dread having to go in and out the door, except my landlord said they build on a bush right next to their front porch where he has to cut the grass. They squawk and fly around, but keep coming back every year to the same bush.