Wire-Woven Crab Agate Pendant...

"Crab" is another wire-weaving meditation done this morning at the market in between customers where I varied the weave from the first one I tried with the Cobra pendant (the modified soumak): instead of wrapping once, I wrapped twice, and developed a kind of organic zig-zag with gaps, to which I added lengths of wire which I first curled and hammered. In the interest of trying to stop being so freaking precise, I did all this adding and subtracting of wires randomly.

When I went to choose a pendant out of a bag of miscellaneous assorted pendants, the light hitting the weave pattern kind of mirrored the crab agate pattern (I think this is crab agate; someone please correct me if I'm wrong), so crabs, water, waves, undulation, and the wrap pretty much took itself over from there.

The back view:

This is the first time I'm doing a lot of hammering of dead soft copper. It gooshes out a lot more than half hard, and I need to keep an eye on that to keep all the hammered bits a little more equal, as the ones that aren't hammered enough look it. I'm seeing this more clearly in the photographs: I'm not getting the curves quite as swoopy and curvy and loopy as I'd like, and I'm still cutting off wire ends waaaay too soon, but it's coming -- and it's So. Much. FUN!!!

The other bonus is this is a great technique to use up all those orphan beads off the mixed strings of budget beads that seem always to have three or four really cool pendants that pretty much sell themselves as is, but the rest of them are.... kinda... meh.

As always, see me at the market on Saturday mornings, or email me for the availability of "Crab" or other items.

Thanks for looking!

Cobra, my first wire-weaving...

Finally, after a week of typing, I got a chance this afternoon to finish my first "real" wire-weaving. Just to remind you, the heart pendant is my first effort made about a month ago before I hunkered down with Debbie Benninger's book and Sarah Thompson's Craftsy video and book Fine Art Weaving Techniques and got serious.

This is so gross. The base wire was 18 gauge, way too small, and I think I used 26 gauge instead of 28 to weave with. And look at the gaps. Gaaaaahhhhh...

However, this is what you get when you follow the pros. Yes, I can see every mistake, but it's so coooooool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As I wrote in the bead show post, with nothing in particular in mind except knowing this was the bead I wanted to use, I started out randomly weaving wires and dropping a wire, and adding other wire bits here and there, and then inserted one wire into the bead hole and started pressing and shaping the woven sections around the bead. If I didn't think something was working, I undid it and went in another direction. The woven wire is surprisingly very forgiving. The bulgy shape started out to be a leaf, but since it looked more like a cobra, I went with that.

I think the best and cleanest view is the side view.

Kind of a dog's breakfast in the back, but I was trying out different things I'd seen and kinda got lost in twirling and hammering and wrapping without considering what it was really starting to look like while I was doing it.

Pendant is finished. Bonus is I got the twisted angle at the top correct and the pendant hangs perfectly. Unfortunately, I think I wrapped too much in the middle there to secure the centre curl to the left hand bit. I should've just done a couple of wraps and left it. My great failing is I never know when to stop. Next time.

It sure looks different in a photo than in real life. All the mistakes show up so very clearly, but, hey, that's good for learning, right?

Other than the market tomorrow morning, I have a whole long weekend free to play. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone (send me some leftovers), and thanks for looking.

Wire-Weaving Course by Sarah Thompson...

Wire-weaving is my latest passion in my ever-evolving style and this particular combination of thick and thin hammering, exquisitely symmetrical and layered wire-bending...

...combined with wrapping revs the machine-like precision-monster in me like nothing else. I just now bought Sarah Thompson's 3-hour video course via Pearl Blay's Beading Gem blog and I cannot wait to start working my way through this tut.

Go to Pearl's blog, make a comment and enter the draw to win the free video tutorial. For me, I'm too impatient (and not reeeeally very lucky) so I clicked the link on Pearl's blog and -- whoo hoo! -- bought the course for half price at Craftsy. I'm currently mulling over buying Sarah's book... but I probably will.

Thanks for looking!

Crunchy, crispy, bouncing rain outside... perfect white paperwhites inside...

'Nuff said:

Groceries have been brought in and I'm permaparked to sit out the duration of the freezing rain currently sitting on top of us. I am so very, very tired of winter and looking forward to turning this little cottage into an even bigger bower of flowers this summer. Meanwhile, I content myself with watching my little shelf garden of paperwhites from the market go nutso next to the french doors.

Since supervising flowers blooming is as productive as staring at and willing water to boil, I'm currently watching a YouTube video which goes into painstaking detail how to layer wire-weaving right from the very beginning of the design. Living in the middle of nowhere it can be difficult to get to classes particularly in the winter, and you gotta love YT. (Which is sortakinda funny, because jewellery-maker yukonreddy is -- duh -- from the Yukon.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DOW1zNYgPg

I'm totally in love with that sinuous, hammered and bead-layered look that so many people on Pinterest make look so easy.

...except now, digging through my stash, I find that almost none of the silver or copper wire I've accumulated over the years is the correct temper for wire-weaving. Sheesh. I could've sworn I had some 26 gauge in dead soft temper.

Go check the link out, and if you've found other good wire-weaving/layering tuts I can to add to my stash please let me know.

Thanks for looking!