Amber Loooove...

I found two strings of older amber this weekend at an estate sale. I'm assuming the original owner bought them in Eastern Europe during the late '70s to very early '80s since there were several souvenir pictures of John Paul II as a young Pope in the house. I knew what the amber beads were immediately, but I almost passed up the dark beads because I thought they were plastic -- I was fooled by the cut of them, not to mention both strings had been stuffed into tiny Ziploc snack bags -- but it was the glimpse of white string in the dark pack that gave them away. 

The graduated string of cognac amber splinters and nuggets is 32 inches long and the string of graduated 4-sided oval dark amber beads is 28 inches long. 

I'm in my usual state of paralysis here, and have zero idea what to do with these. What other beads would be worthy? Where do I even start???

Thanks for looking!

Purple Moon: Wire-Woven Copper & Agate Pendant

This is where and how I work. Netflix most of the time and always keeping an eye on the squirrels, chipmunks, birds and weather outside in the lilac tree. This is Ripper Street. Love the BBC!

I've liked the look of the various chevron and sunburst weaves I've seen on Pinterest, so two days ago, I wove three or four inches using 18 gauge and 28 gauge copper wire. 

Yesterday, I sorted through my bag of assorted pendants, picked out a large randomly faceted rainforest agate because I wanted to work on forming angles -- but the hole was too small. Rule number one? Always check to make sure the wire will go through the hole before you start to weave.

I picked this large round dyed crackle agate pendant only because the wire fits through the hole and which under normal light looks kinda meh.

But hit it with the right light -- there's a whole 'nother world happening inside this magical stone.

Here I've started wire wrapping the bottom two wire weaves on the left, and what will likely become the bail on the right. 

Uh oh... wait a sec. With fresh eyes studying the picture here on the blog as I'm writing I'm thinking maybe I should have incorporated the wire coming up through the pendant to do the bail... Hmm-mmm-mmmm. But there are still two free wires at the top... maybe I'll make those the bail with the pendant wire. 

As you now see, I never have any idea what I'm doing or where I'm going with something (and don't really care, either).

Unfortunately, we'll all have to wait to see what happens next, because it looks like some transcription just came flying through the virtual transom. Gotta go now. 

TTFN and thanks for stopping by!

Copper Heart for Valentine's Day...

I wanted to wire-weave a heart pendant for Valentine's Day, even though it's very time-consuming. It's sure fun to play with.

My big thing at the moment is learning to turn and/or weave around sharp corners without leaving huge lopsided gaps, and I used a design by Nicole Hanna as my jumping off point for the bottom. (The messy top is all mine, though and the bail did NOT work out as envisioned.)

I deliberately left that bloopy loop down at the bottom thinking I'd add a dangle.

Originally that whole circle bit was off-centre and to the right. It looked HORRIBLE! I tend never to plan things. My modus operandi is to weave a length in some pattern and then figure out what to do with it. Sometimes it works out; more often than not it doesn't.

It was when I was manipulating the woven length of wire into shape I realised I'd used too light of a gauge -- 20 instead of 18 -- and the pendant is far too open and wobbly despite its relatively small size: 1-1/4" wide and 1-3/4" tall, including the bail.

I left it for a day and went online and looked at more hearts, and decided to try and rescue it with a bead, found several lighter colours that worked, but being for Valentine's Day, figured go with garnet. Here you can see the way I've trapped the garnet. I also at this point, moved the circle-y bit to the centre of the pendant; one of my fave things about wire-weaving in general is how forgiving it is to move and manipulate. The curls trapping the garnet turned out to be surprisingly secure, but I did weave it in place with a bit of wire just to be sure it didn't pop off.

Here's a slightly different angle showing the curled "prongs". The bead should've been seated further down into the circlet, but I'd already stitched those into place, and there was no more wiggle room.

I'll have this and other pendants and great gifts available for sale at the Woodstock Farmers Market every Saturday, 7:00 a.m. to noon, or email me for availability and shipping/handling cost. You can also contact me via my Facebook page.

Thanks for looking!

Rescuing a Crap Wrap...

The other day, I made a bunch of swirl wire-woven pendants and a couple of them didn't work out. This one...

...I decided was worth rescuing. I wasn't sure exactly what I would do with it, but as I was twisting the bead off thought, hey, it looks okay at an angle: showing just a little bit more of the wire weaving balances everything quite nicely.

Plus, by flipping the bead back to front, the colour blobs now echo and tie together the lines and shapes of the wire weaving, strengthening the overall design in a way that the random blob pattern on the other side didn't.

For all you wire-weavers out there, I recently joined two Facebook groups, and they're both a great read, with lots of good info and participants from all over the world. I'm finally "meeting" the people whose work I've been obsessively pinning for a few years now or even subscribing to on Craftsy. Do check 'em out and join:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/wirewraptipsandtutorials/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/wiremetalstone/

Thanks for stopping by!

Deciding What Works, What Doesn't -- and WHY...

Developing a discerning and analytical eye is a skill that is learned over time -- a long time -- of doing. It is most assuredly NOT the same as being hyper-critical and beating oneself up on failing the first time you try something. I'm better than I was, but still not very good at balancing self-criticism and self-critique. Critiquism?

What I did learn years ago was to put my drawings away as I did them and come back to them six months or a year later -- NOT to sit in immediate judgement and trash them all, and then beat myself up for being a total failure. When viewed from a distance of time, a lot of them weren't that bad (and a few still aren't that bad), and -- most importantly -- by that point I could see with my own eyes the progress I'd made and understand the breakthroughs.

My method of learning a new skill (in fact, working at anything for that matter) is to make variations of one thing over and over, in a sense a moving meditation where I turn off my conscious, decision-making brain, tune out the endless critical noises that burble up telling me I'm a loser and to STOP right now -- and just let my fingers move. This method comes from 40+ years of life drawing when I produced over 4,000 drawings a year. Those drawings were not "art" per se (although many did end up on gallery walls and sold) and most ended up as landfill.

Making drawings then and jewellery now is no different than putting in years of piano scales or guitar riffs for a musician, planting seeds and learning the hard way to recognise which are the weeds (whoops, blew that season) for a gardener, the years of running before a marathon, or even achieving a full driver's licence -- in other words, practice, practice, practice and paying endless often heartbreaking dues.

With my jewellery, after working for several hours, I lay out all the pieces, photograph them and begin sorting and rearranging to see what I can see: patterns, positive/negative space, what jumps out at me that's good, bad or indifferent, the "meh" factor being just as valuable as my favourite feeling: "Wowee zowie, lookee what I did!"

But what if time is of the essence? What if you don't have the luxury of six months or a year to sit on your jewellery or your art? It has to go in a store, the market, gallery or show, posted online -- or, lucky you, to the customer -- today. What do you do if this is your livelihood, or close to it? You have to master a new skill as quickly as possible, at the same time tweaking to make it your own, and start producing saleable work of impeccable craftsmanship. No fake humble allowed: this is business.

So whaddaya do? You find a friend you trust, who understands the difference between critiquing and criticising, understands that what you're NOT looking for is kneejerk, meaningless praise (Oooh, that's beautiful!) or equally meaningless dislike (Eww, I don't like that, it's not my style at all). Tell me why you think it's beautiful, or what I could do to make it your style. And more importantly, this friend understands the jewellery-making process itself. My pal Ruth (who keeps me calm and sane and fed at the Gem Expo) puts on her Ruthless hat and pulls no punches telling me what her gut sees that I'm too close to figure out on my own.

Ruth and me at the July 2014 Gem Expo, Toronto

Yesterday, I finally broke the non-stop transcription/Netflix binge I'd been lost in since New Year's and got back to bending wire (see here and here for the new skill I've been learning). I'm guessing I spent two hours to make these, including time to look carefully at what I'd just done to see if I could replicate elements I liked. I'm presenting them here in the order I made them with my own and Ruth's after-the-fact comments:

1. First one of the afternoon's production. Not bad. Still with the pointless twiddles on the right side of the stone. What I noticed much later was that here I'd inadvertently/unconsciously covered up the wire goes into the bead on top and coming out at the bottom. After looking at all the finished pendants, I realised that this is definitely something that always needs to happen, and most of the other pendants became fails to me because of that. But... there are often mitigating good things going on so we won't be too hasty.

As well, while the goal of this wire weaving technique is to keep the pair of wires together all the time, that swoop that's just barely happening around the bottom is something that could be exploited. Because I've trained as a primarily 2D artist most of my life, it's been a surprisingly difficult battle to move into true 3D.

Pendant #1: Dyed agate, swirl copper wire

2. Total fail. Definitely for the scrap heap. Blech. Move on. BUT... there was still a lesson here: I really liked the vine-y thing that started to happen on the back.

Front of #2 pendant: Rainforest jasper/rhyolite, swirl copper wire

Back of #2 pendant: Rainforest jasper/rhyolite, swirl copper wire

3. This is a strange one. The front here looks okaaaaay and I like the vine-y wrap effect I was trying for that I'd done in the previous pendant, except that it's barely visible. Of course, as per my usual, it was the back that came out really nicely. According to Ruth:

imho, this does not work because of competition.

The stone is really amazing.  The wirework is an interesting work of art on its own.

Put the two together, and the stone and the wire are competing for attention.

My suggestion is to separate these items and showcase each of them. 

The stone in a very plain setting that does not draw attention away from the stone; and the wire around a uniformly coloured, dark stone so the wire is what pops.

I like the shape of the wire here.  A plant, and a treble clef, and ...?  You haven't lost your talent in a month away from wire!

Pendant #3 front: Rainforest jasper/rhyolite, swirl copper wire

Pendant #3 back: Rainforest jasper/rhyolite, swirl copper wire

I'll try to take this one apart and save the wrap.

4. Ruth wrote, "This one says ELEGANT to me." Me, I like the swirls and I'm more consciously using the vine wrapping at the bottom to hide the wire going into the bottom of the bead. The top where the wire comes out? Big boring meh. And again -- see the sequence of small swirls developing on the right side? I tried replicating that in a more controlled way in the next pendant.

Pendant #4: Jasper(?), swirled copper wire

5. This one I really like. It's ticking almost all of my personal boxes: asymmetry, top and bottom of bead covered, and a truly beautiful bead that hasn't been overshadowed by the wire -- and from a purely design POV, the stone is oriented the right way vis-a-vis the yellow bits and the wire -- which was a total accident. Originally, I'd wanted the bead to go sideways. Ruth said, "This one is the most whimsical and says, "PEACOCK" to me."

Pendant #5: Rainforest jasper/rhyolite, swirled copper wire

Pendant #5: Rainforest jasper/rhyolite, swirled copper wire

6. This one I also like very much, I loosened up the controlled swirls coming down from the top and left side, but then the vine-y bit got away from me along the right side of the stone, and the wire coming out of the top of bead kinda sucks. I was able to hide the wire coming out of the bottom in the vine wrapping. Ruth wrote, "Striking!"

Pendant #6: Picasso stone, copper wire weaving

And some people look at this and think it's easy. Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaack. Nope. And oh, do my hands hurt!

Yesterday, there was a hint of sun casting a watery shadow but chilly and damp enough out to make sitting inside making the above pendants (and, okay, watching Netflix) -- stupendous weather for January 31st given that this time last year we were battling -40C temperatures and unrelenting snow.

Now today, it's sunny out, above freezing, and we're heading for a crazy 10C/50F on Wednesday. To my pals down south, phhhhhtttt. I just hope I can ignore the siren call of warm sun long enough to get back to churning out more pendants.

FYI, these will all be for sale at the Woodstock Farmers Market and online here. Prices on my wire weaving range from $18 to $35 and up depending on complexity and the stones I use and include an adjustable leather cord. Shipping and handling are extra. Send me an email for availability and your location so I can calculate exact shipping cost.

These would make a great Valentine's gift!! 

Thanks for stopping by!

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!

Yet More Stacker Bracelets...

New Year's came and went, and I am soooo confused. Today is definitely the 3rd of January -- it says so in the lower right of my computer. Remember the old days when you had to manually reset the date on January 1st and February 29th and when daylight saving began or ended? That was a long time ago in a land far away. I have to keep reminding myself that it's Sunday today, though perhaps Stunday is the better word.

I spent two days making bracelets with all the loot I got from Toronto, and of course I'm sitting here wishing I'd bought more of one type of beads, bought others rather than the ones I did buy... etc. As for the trip, Lacy Tools on Queen East closed -- months ago -- which I did not know. I never made it to the St. Lawrence Market, so no chocolate-covered ginger for me. And Lavish & Squalor has replaced skulls on everything with foxes!?!?!? Not cool. No Christmas presents for me. I'm so sad. Instead, I bought a big bag of howlite and copper-coated hematite skull beads from Hi Beads and I definitely should have bought more of the copper-coated ones.

Here is my New Year's weekend production. All are for sale, the prices are running $25 and under for this selection. Email me for availability as most are OOAK.

Made these New Year's Eve, was told they'd look better with the skulls alternating rather than in a band:

A comparison between the new alternating riverstone (whatever that is, possibly limestone?) and white howlite skull bracelet and the first iteration above:

I think you're right, Winter. Thanks!

Teensy howlite skull bracelets, white and parti-coloured B&W:

Shoulda bought more of these teensy skulls -- and more colours.

With this bracelet, I was trying to pick up the white & sand colours of the "terra" part of the acqua terra beads, and highlight the riverstone with pewter birds, but Ruth thought it didn't work, that it was too big of a jump.

This was kinda sorta her suggestion, to use a pinky-orange bead to represent sunrise/sunset, and to place it asymmetrically. I swapped out the lumpy birds with a turtle:

Trying here to stretch out my rapidly diminishing aqua terra beads with inexpensive dyed mystery stones, variations on a theme...

...and all which ended up kinda meh. If anyone has suggestions, please leave a comment,

Switched over to more skulls (copper-coated hematite & matte black obsidian)...

Lovelovelove the matte black obsidian and the blue titantium coated beads:

This isn't really doing it for me...

...but I like this one:

Really pleased with these!

All these bracelets will be available at the Woodstock Farmers Market on January 9th so come and check them out. I think out of all of these -- I see them with new eyes when they're photographed and put online -- I'll be continuing primarily with the last style of bracelets, at least until I run out of the black, which is going to be quite soon. Guess that means another pesky trip to Toronto goofing off with Ruth.

Thanks for stopping by!