Success!

On Wednesday I wrote about trying the (new to me) "Curl and Swirl" wire-weaving style by Making It Easy With Liz that I'd read about on Pearl Blay's blog. You can read about my less-than-successful efforts here.

Meanwhile, my real job intervened and I didn't get a chance to go back and try, try, try again until a few minutes ago. Yes, minutes. Once you figure it out, and kind of have an idea of what you want to do with the particular stone you're using, this is quite a quick technique to do. Meaning, it either works or it doesn't because if you goink the wires at all then you pretty much have to start over: the beauty of the swirls lies in their smooth, sinuous, unbroken curves.

The primary reason my first efforts weren't successful is because I didn't use two wires in parallel.

Here are my two do-overs, using the same two citrines from Wednesday. Finally the fronts look marginally better than the backs!

As a comparison, here's the picture of my first efforts:

These first two (above) maybe don't look so bad -- but they're very wobbly and look kinda wimpy. You'll also note in the video that Liz is quite specific about crossing the pairs of wires behind each other early on. This interweaving locks the entire piece together, giving you a very sturdy base on which to attach and tighten the stone.

Closeup of the the asymmetrical citrine pendant:

Closeup of the tall citrine pendant:

I will have both of these strung on Greek leather and for sale at the market tomorrow morning. I have a small selection of copper chain, as well, if you prefer. Please email me if you're interested in either (I take PayPal, Interac/email transfer, cash works, too!). I will definitely be making more of these pendants in different stones, and I am always happy to do a special request. Yo, guys? Only five weeks 'til Valentine's Day.

Thanks for stopping by, and hope to see you at the market tomorrow!

Working On A New Wire-Weaving Skill...

The other day I opened Pearl Blay's Beading Gem post on How to Make a Swirling Double Wire Pendant by Making It Easy with Liz, and my immediate response was "Oooooooh". I've been seeing these double wire swirls around the Internet more and more frequently but hadn't attempted any of my own. Time to break out the one-pound rolls of copper wire I bought just before Christmas at Robert Hall Originals in St. George.

In the midst of all my oooohing, I kind of glossed over Pearl's warning about this project not being for beginners. I also didn't really read the part of the title underneath the video on YouTube where it says "Experienced". The result became more Oopsies than Ooooh.

Last night, I queued up the video and watched again as far as the materials list (I'd previously watched the entire video through once). I dug out some very chunky citrine beads I acquired who knows when or from whom, cut some wire and forged ahead doing what I thought I remembered. The first part went well but, yet again, where I screwed up was finishing off the pendants. I ended up with pointless clumps and lumps of twiddles going nowhere. Because the wire was hardening at an alarming rate by now, I also bent and goinked the wire and the whole pendant got really floppy.

With my first attempt, I also ended up with the back looking better than the front and therefore showing the bail (which in Liz's design is intended to be hidden). The second pendant went a little bit better in terms of initial swirls, but failed even more miserably as a functional pendant.

Here is Liz's picture of what the pendants are supposed to look like:

Here are my first two efforts. The fronts of my two pendants, where the top bits are working well... but then it kind of all falls apart, doesn't it!?!?

...and the backs. The swoopy swirls work on the one side of the back of the pendant on the left, but... again, they're on the back, and both wraps kinda fell apart on me anyway:

All I can say is, good thing I bought a pound of wire -- each of these pendants took about two feet of wire, the bottom halves of which are going to have to be tossed. I'm thinking I might be able to recoup the top bits, hammer the wire ends into curves and wire-weave them into something else.

By this time it was getting late. I still had all the citrines dumped on my bead mat anyway, some large matte black obsidian beads were in close proximity, so I threw this together in only a couple of minutes. This is one bracelet I really like:

So far so good this morning: there is no typing, and so it's back to the drawing board, but first I'll watch Liz's video a few more times.

Thanks for stopping by!