Always Make Detailed Notes of What You Make...

Even two days later, I need to refer to them. Last night's set of paddles were made with 16 gauge wire, and 18 gauge wire for the figure-8s with a twist. For comparison, the figure-8 chain above and on the table below were made with 16 gauge wire.

Last night's Netflix and hammered wire output:

These are quite small -- 1/2" and 5/8" paddles and 3/8" twisted figure 8 connectors. I'll play with them tomorrow at the market, stringing them with a bead soup of miscellaneous beads. Stay tuned for more photos.

Now to get my notes along with representative samples compiled into a notebook or binder. That is my downfall -- keeping track of my notes in one logical place... and labelled.

Thanks for looking!

Variations on a Teardrop Chain...

After seeing this chain on Pinterest this morning...


http://www.pinterest.com/pin/30962316162889083/, tutorial available here.

...I was meandering around in my mind as I often do wondering how I could improve on this. Because I tend to not like "open-ended" anything -- if for no other reason than I have long hair that gets caught in everything, not to mention if I'm wearing anything expensive or precious, it's guaranteed gonna get snagged and ruined -- I came up with this variation where the round loop carries to wrap and contain the teardrop end.

I have been making a lot of wire "bone" chains in copper and decided to try this new chain in tinned copper, my other go-to metal since I'm also using a lot of handmade, raw and matte stones, pewter pendants and coin silver anything these days. FYI, I was at Arton Beads in Toronto the other day and noticed that while a bit shiny it's a grey shiny: their white gold plated jump rings actually have a pewterish colour to them, which makes them a bit more blendy than regular silver-plated jump rings with the tinned copper wire.

After a bit of experimenting with the wire and pliers (I arbitrarily picked 20 gauge wire for this, and worked off an 18-24" piece of wire) this is what I came up with. At about 1/2", I found the little ones are too stumpy, although they'd make nice dangles for something with another bead hanging from them. The longer links forming the chain run from 5/8" to 3/4" in length.

This now kinda looks like barbed wire to me... which is interesting, because one of my intentions is to make more guy-ish jewellery and this would make a cool bracelet or choker/necklace for guys and not be that expensive. Looked up barbed wire images on Google and found this...


http://patentpending.blogs.com/patent_pending_blog/2004/11/barbed_wire_.html

...as well as all kinds of jewellery with barbs... so I guess I'm a little late to the party. Story of my life.

Tools:
Pretty simple. Also the hammering isn't that loud. Tinned copper wire is very soft and it only requires a few taps to work-harden the links.

Steps:
Pix are fairly self-explanatory. Let the wire poke out a bare 1/2", then wrap the wire around your pliers.

Bend wire straight back at a 45 degree angle, and 45 degrees to the plane of the teardrop loop.

Do a regular wrapped loop...

(After you've completed your first link and before completing your wrapping on the second link, don't forget to string the first teardrop to start the chain.)

Wrap three times. Cut the wire so that when you squeeze it in, the cut end will line up between the two parallel wires at the top of the teardrop shape. Try to goosh it down in between the two wires a bit. Use a file to smooth off any rough edges.

Ready to hammer...

...et voila.

Chain in progress & some variations:

I had some 6/0 seed beads handy, so I tried a few links with them. You'll need to straighten out the wires at the top of the teardrop so they're parallel and squash them flat a bit to get them both into the seed bead, then complete the wrap up top. Be careful to wrap firmly but not too tightly or you'll break the bead.

Then I got to thinking... my barbed wire has turned into a noose... This would make a nice earring.

This is the part of making something where things get a little fuzzy: as in, have I started to lose the concept? Does this still read as, say, a stylised barbed wire chain, or a noose design... or is it kind of a nothing now with the skulls included???

I'll send this to one of my guy customers and get his input.

What are you working on these days? Thanks for looking!

Memory of Max & Getting Hammered...

Yeah, it was around 1:00 a.m. in the morning, one year ago today, that Max started to die. The day itself, like today, was sunny, Max's favourite kind of day to go running around burrowing and playing in the snow.

Still cannot believe how much I miss my little fuzzy boy every single day.

Wire-wrap chain:
On other fronts, I got a commission on Saturday at the market and put it together yesterday. I had made the chain during one of my Netflix marathons back in the fall and Winter brought me the pendant. Since the pendant is provided, I figure this length of chain (about 44 inches) would cost $50. These are vintage 100-year-old greasy blue Venetian glass seed beads that I got from Naomi at Black Tulip Designs wrapped in hard temper copper wire which I buy by the pound from The Ring Lord. Using the hard temper wire is murder on my fingers, but I find I have a lot more control over the shape of the loops. Soft copper is really mushy for this type of chain. In the closeup photo you can appreciate the depth and lustre. These beads are wonderful. New beads don't hold a candle to them.

Getting hammered:
I'm subscribed to Lisa Yang's jewellery blog and lately Lisa's been posting a series of tuts on basic jewellery-making. I'm always a fan of going back to the basics, if only to find out about new tools and new materials to play with, not to mention the chance that someone somewhere has come up with a new and improved way of doing some simple thing.

I haven't done any hammering for at least two years -- mostly because I was doing other things, but also this past year I'd been living where hammering wasn't feasible. If you've ever lived on a river, especially bounded by cliffs on either side, you'll understand how all sounds are magnified like crazy up and down the river. But now I'm out in the country again and, while I have neighbours on either side of me, we're also bounded on three sides by gravel pits and manufacturing facilities all making their own assorted noises, and a vast golf course to the west. Therefore, I feel free to whack away... although maybe not in the middle of the night.

Lisa has been demoing so-called "bone" connectors, and I made two batches yesterday, trying to beat her time. I'm down to about 2 minutes per "bone". I've said this before: I'm no jewellery designer; I'm a technician. I love to figure out ways to do things easier, faster and more efficiently. Since I would like to sell my stuff, the more efficiently I work the less time it takes me to make things and the greater my profit margin; the less I can sell an item for the better my chances of selling something. Plus I get bored really quickly and like to do repetitive stuff fast.

I used to work in newspaper and printing binderies and know about optimising papers and envelopes on a table in order to stuff envelopes and newspapers. It's no different when one is hammering wire. And I get a production line going.

The first thing I became aware of yesterday was the height at which I was sitting at my folding table. I have a wicker chair I sit at. There was a HUGE difference in ease of hammering when I put the cushion back on the chair as it raised me up 3 inches. I've found I like to sit lower and hunched over with my nose closer to the table top when I'm stringing or wire-wrapping. I found the hammering went much easier, more efficiently (and therefore faster) and I had better control over the effect because I had more arm control when I was sitting up higher in particular because I was using hard-tempered 14 gauge copper wire. I also found I could only hammer three or four "bones" at a time and had to take a couple of minutes' break in between each batch. Even though I'm ambidextrous most of the time, I'm not good at hammering using my left hand. I'm going to look like a lopsided Popeye when I'm finished this. Muskles on top of muskles.

Remove anything you don't need from the table. In mid-whack, a big bin of beads sitting on the corner landed upside down on the floor... absolutely everything jumps around when hammering. Using a doubled over beading mat keeps the noise level and the bouncing down, but I'm still working on figuring out how to keep the bench block itself as well as the mat from moving. The bead mat helps, and I noticed if I hammer wire in the middle of the block, it tends to stay in one place, but when holding short wire "bones" I'd be forever hammering my fingers to a pulp so this time I was stuck hammering closer to the edge of the block. I'm wondering, since I've seen other people use it in tutorials, if using a piece of leather would keep the bench block in place. I'd love to hear from someone if that is true. Makes me wish I hadn't been so hasty throwing out an old purse that I could have cut up.

Note that I use memory wire cutters for the thicker, harder wire gauges and always when I'll be hammering any wire as it cuts off truly square and 45 degrees to the length of the wire, rather than angled as with the regular cutters. I really appreciated the pure efficiency of this punch that I bought a while back and used for the first time. I also have one of those gizmos that you screw down to punch a hole with, but this is way, way faster. Note also the diamond file. I used that to clean off the burrs from the punch, as well as cleaned up any sharp edges around the hammered ends. I thought the pack of diamond files to be really expensive when I first bought them, but I use them all the time for so many different things.

Lacking a tumbler (and having to live with the fine scratches from the file), I opted to use ketchup to clean my finished bones.

Smooshing the pieces around. Takes only seconds to clean them.

Finish with some dish detergent and rinse. A scrubbie and soap got rid of any Sharpie marks. I have filtered well water with unknown mineral content so I'll need to get some distilled water. 

A New Toy for Ruth & Me:
Every show I do I try to upgrade and/or buy one item to make life easier in an away venue. For the March 14th, 15th & 16th Gem Expo in Toronto I bought a dolly. Since hotel luggage carts are at a premium (let alone unavailable in some venues) waiting for half an hour or more to unload and load up my truck is not what I want to be doing especially at the end of the show when I'm looking forward to a two-hour drive home.

Even though this dolly is all-metal, it is still about the same weight as the mostly plastic one that cost $10-$15 more, and is less bulky/bulbous. Plus this one can be used both vertically and horizontally. My trick will be to keep track of those cotter pins that lock the handlebar in place. Since I'm basically hauling bins of rocks, I need the sturdier all-metal construction and the big wheels, essential when moving heavy loads on dirt paths, grass, snow, uneven road surfaces and humping up and down steps which, if a dolly is going to collapse on you, these are the exact places.

I also bought some half-size bins with the flip-flop locking lids -- I'm forever misplacing lids -- so that everything not only stacks, the smaller sizes will hold more-reasonably-easy-to-heave-around quantities of beads and jewellery. My goal is to get everything into two sizes of bins, ditch the open top liquor store cardboard boxes, and anything else will fit into Tyvek shopping bags, still stackable and portable/easy to heave around.

Hammered Tinned Copper Earrings:
I promptly lost the first batch of copper bones I made. Zero idea where they got to. Made a second batch. Then I made these using 14 gauge tinned copper. Very soft wire. See how wiggly and bendy these got compared to the hard temper copper wire that really held its shape, but the tinned copper does goosh out a lot easier.

This morning I was contemplating them and wondered if the "waterfall" effect looks better (the earring on the right). I think it does. My online pal Joanne over at Nelson Gemstones agreed, but also suggested these would look better with the large jump rings in a silver colour. She just got back from Tucson: go check out the new beads she scored on her Facebook page. I'm so jealous!!! Next year!

Now to get off this computer and go make a chain out of the "bone" connectors and make more of these earrings and figure out a necklace variation.

Hope everyone is having a relaxing Family Day here in Canada and President's Day down in the US.

Went to Bulk Barn for the first time in over a year, and since they renovated.
This poster made me laugh. Yummy!!!

Thanks for looking!

Blue Mystery Stone Necklace...

Here it is, my blue mystery stone necklace finished. You can see in the bottom photo how pretty the colour is with the light shining through -- and that no way it can be mistaken for lapis, although it does somewhat have that colour in lower light or against one's skin.

Blue stones, probably dyed quartz, hammered tinned copper, zinc and copper dangles, copper-coloured Japanese and vintage blue seed beads, large copper clasp; approximately 21"; $55 plus shipping & handling. Please email me for availability, and/or if you need a longer or shorter version. I've had so many requests for longer necklaces that my default now is to make them 20" to 24" in length and the oversize clasps are so easy to do up/undo.

Thanks for looking!

My Heart is Pounding...

Whoo hoo! What a rush!!!

What happened? I booked my hotel for The Gem Expo in November. Yeah, I know, I know, I don't get out much. THREEEEEE nights!!!!!!!!!! Be still, oh beating heart.

The Strathcona on York Street. I get the cheapest room possible, and it's verrrrry small, but I'm only sleeping there, right? Next to the elevator shaft, still, it's quiet enough. I think it used to be a utility/housekeeping room. In fact, the room is smaller than the freight elevator at the Hyatt Regency where the show is. But who cares, right? It's super cheap for right downtown, and you can't beat the location: across the street from the Royal York and the train station, a mere six or seven block walk from the Hyatt, and their pub grub is super-good and not so terribly expensive with an open kitchen just as you hit the bottom of the stairs. To me, open kitchens rule. I was talking about the Strath Pub a while back with my sister the Toronto health inspector and she was saying that all the pubs in Toronto have had to really up the quality of their food in order to keep patrons coming. All the meals I had there in July were just great -- and the Alexander Keith's on tap was icy cold. That's all I care about -- good food and cold beer.

Just got some typing in, so I gotta get at that shortly. I was making chain jewellery all last night (I'd used up all my Internet bandwidth for the month, but had finished watching Dexter anyway) and this morning, finally finished one long necklace off. I was in the midst of stringing another necklace with handmade zinc and hammered tinned copper dangles when the typing arrived. I'll post the finished jewellery later tonight, but here's a sneak peek. The preponderance of pink is only because someone wants a pink seed bead bracelet with a hot pink enamel breast cancer ribbon charm, so I figured I'd make a bunch of chains with different pinks to see what they'll look like, one thing leading to another, and this long two-strand necklace was the result. Plus there was this long neglected but lovely string of blue chalcedony from Nelson Gemstones that has been popping up for at least a year whenever I reach for something -- pick me! pick me! -- so I finally broke the string up and committed myself.

Those dark blue beads are anyone's guess. Dyed something or other, probably quartz, and super cheap, but holy moley, do they look nice, kind of a cross between blueberries and lapis lazuli, if lapis were translucent. The two sizes of pink and peachish beads came out of the same bargain bin at Robert Hall Originals (who will be in Ancaster on September 27, 28, 29, as well as at the Grand River Bead Society show October 5th & 6th). The light blue beads are the 8mm blue chalcedony from Joanne at Nelson Gemstones. 

There's a part of me that wouldn't mind moving back to Toronto -- the 6 a.m. to 2:30 pm part of me, if that makes any sense. But once rush hour hits, not to mention the much cheaper rents, I'm just as happy to be living out here in the sticks... for now, at any rate. But man, oh, man, it's nice to be there during the show, at least until I have to get into my truck to go anywhere and taking 20 minutes to drive five blocks...

BTW, does anyone recognise this little guy? He and his zillions of brothers and sisters are just over an inch long, extremely fuzzy and considerably whiter than this one looks in the picture and motors around quite quickly. No idea what he'll become in the spring. I don't remember seeing quite as many of these other years. 

Thanks for looking!

Nathalie's necklace... cleaning up... & rings...

Since it has now arrived at its destination, I can show you the necklace that Nancy made back in December for her dear friend Nathalie in Mississippi. Nancy spent hours and hours contemplating beads in the current incarnation of my "studio"... aka hopelessly chaotic front room.

Tourmaline is an extremely important stone to Nathalie and Nancy picked some nice colours and shapes and echoed and complemented them beautifully with several spiral silver-plated, pewter and horn Dzi bead elements. After Nancy put the beads into pleasing order, I did the wire-stringing and crimping. At the moment, I'm teaching Nancy to wire-wrap beads.

It's been a long, unspeakably lonely and sad six weeks since Max died. He was with me one quarter of my life. Yes, time and life tick on... but. The hardest part to get through are all the firsts -- first time to make something to eat and no one to trip over, then no one to clean the plate off later; first time to wake up to no fuzzy face beside you on his pillow; first time to do the market and no one to come home to. He died at the crap end of winter when we're all sick and tired of the snow, the dark and the cold... and the cold... and the cold.

Spring appears to finally have arrived this week: it's above freezing for at least a few hours every day even if it doesn't feel like it, but the front room is filled with light longer and longer into the evenings. Nancy and Lynn (of Fashion Your Space) are helping me turn this room into a workable and working design studio instead of a hodge-podge of tables piled high with who-knows-what-'cause-I-sure-can't-find-what-I'm-looking-for. Most Monday mornings will find the three of us working away: 2 hours x 3 people = 6 hours per week worth of endless boxes and bags of stuff hauled around for years finally opened, examined and purged. That lawn sale I was always planning to have? Phht. Ain't gonna happen. Week after week those things are off to the consignment store, the Goodwill, to a new and appreciative home or out into the garbage. Each week I feel lighter and lighter walking into the back room and seeing empty space and feeling no desire whatsoever to fill it up again. It's very true: once you start getting rid of no longer useful stuff, the catharsis -- and high -- is unbelievable.

Great inspiration for cleaning up and creating a functional working space can be found here: http://jewelrymakingjournal.com/category/jewelry-making/jewelry-studio/ and of course there's always Pinterest. The studios that some people create!

Last week at the market I made this choker and a handful of rings for a client:

Pewter side-drilled skulls, copper wire spiral tubes, 2mm black Greek leather



"Mystery stones", possibly dyed quartz(?), wrapped rings using 16 gauge tinned copper


Thanks for looking!

Turquoise ring & cake jewellery...

Could anything be more disparate??? I dunno.

Week from hell, and it ain't over yet. It is so hot and humid today. Been drinking gallons of water and sluicing off under the shower. It's like it was in Rome where I'd stand under their tiny little trickle showers and the part that wasn't getting trickled on was oozing slimy sweat. I'd keep turning and turning trying to cool down all at the same time. Half of me would be under shower water, and half of me would be slime. But, hey -- I was living in ROME. Sigh........

Anyway, really fast: Campo Frio turquiose wrapped with tinned copper... and my new design, Confetti cake jewellery, silver-plated wire, multi-coloured seed beads. You saw it here FIRST.

Ring, if it doesn't fit the customer tomorrow, $15. It's just under size 10, available from me.

Cake jewellery, available from Let's Eat Cake.

Thanks for looking!

Nothing new this week, however... some old hammered stuff for funzies

This has been another brutal week for typing. I was supposed to have gone to Toronto on Monday to have my computer upgraded (some of my video files -- just one of the suckers (and I can easily get 5 or 10 or 20 files in one job to transcribe) -- are 1.25 gigs or 1.5 gigs each and my entire hard drive is only 4 gigs with 1.8 gigs of RAM) but another one of those huge jobs came in that I couldn't say no to. But yeah, long past the time to get a bigger better 'puter. NOTE: All I really want to do is up stakes and get outta Dodge...

Long story short, I haven't done anything remotely resembling making jewellery all week. But this coming week, after I drop the computer off on Monday -- and then go shopping at the wholesalers! -- I will have two whole days in which to make stuff, mostly cake jewellery for Rene, rings, necklaces, bracelets, earrings and especially a whole lot of feather earrings, before I have to go back to Toronto to pick up my computer (and do yet more bead shopping... if nothing else to pick up the stuff I forget to get on Monday... at least that's the plan.

In the meantime, here are some things I made a long, long time ago in a land far away... well, 2009-ish.

Base metal dangles, red horn, hammered tinned copper clasp, black leather, sterling earwires

This lady bought the necklace before I'd even half-finished it working at my booth at the Norwich fair: brass dangles, turquoise, brass chain.

Alas... in the old days when bead stores were still (they still are!) selling howlite as turquoise and I hadn't realised the difference. I keep meaning to remake this necklace as I really like it.

Cobra bead choker, so-called because locked in the glass, created entirely by accident, a cobra can clearly be seen. Glass bead, vintage brass beads, brass chain maille. SOLD

A particularly fine chrysocolla bead, hammered brass dangles and clasps, vintage brass chain maille, leather choker.

Chrysocolla bead, hammered tinned copper dangles and clasps, plated chain, leather choker

Bornite chunks (aka peacock stone which is oxidised copper), wrapped in silver, silver-plated base metal feather, hammered tinned copper clasps, black leather.



Facetted pyrite stones, tinned copper pendants and clasps, sterling earwires, black leather choker


Some of these I've sold, some developed little legs over the years... and one or two I may actually still have on my table.

I know these are old pictures because most of them were scanned, not photographed. But it's interesting, the hammered stuff still intrigues me greatly. I am working on doing more of that and refining my techniques, but you know, I still like the rougher, more crude stuff like the last piece, the pyrite and hammered tinned copper. Love the look of the hammered brass, but it is so very difficult to hammer. Not only do I wreck my wrists, it makes great gouges in my hammer and bench block.

Well, this evening it's feeling not quite as hot as it's been the past few weeks, "only" about 30C/90F and with plenty of humidity, but they're calling for thunderstorms, and that would be such a relief. Sure hope they hit. It's brown and crunchy everywhere you go now in this part of southern Ontario.

For now, though, I'm at a good place to leave off typing, the truck is loaded up and here it is 7:10. I am going to have a light supper and head to bed. 3:30 a.m. comes awfully, awfully quickly.

Thanks for looking.