When all else fails, improvise!

Well, I didn't make much jewelry in December but I did make one thing that I ended up really liking:

It's one of those "necessity is the mother of invention" things. I had brought a near-random assortment of beading stuff with me at Christmas, including one of two strings I bought of this stuff from Szarka, which was called "candy jade" but of course is not real jade. I had wire and several other types of stringing material, but nothing like SoftFlex, which is what I would reflexively use for something like this. I had no clasps or anything like that, either. I finally ended up sitting up on Christmas Eve - which was fine since I didn't really have anything else to do, and I'm a serious night-owl anyway - and knotting these beads on thin waxed linen (which was one of those things I got from Ornamentea a while back). I worked the knots with a toothpick, and when that broke, with my aunt's icepick. It worked just fine. The knots didn't make the string of beads quite long enough to go over the head by themselves, and I couldn't decide what to do about the length, so I decided to let the recipient decide, and gave it to her unfinished. As you can see from the picture, she decided she wanted it as long as possible, so I just finished it with a surgeon's knot and added a dot of glue. And I think it's adorable - and better than it would have been with beading wire - and I intend to use the other string to make one just like it for myself!

It's not easy being green

I was supposed to be studying earlier so of course I went and started making a necklace instead:

I've been intending to do a green necklace for ages, and especially so since I bought this green clay nautilus at the Bead Society show. (I'll have to go look the maker's name up, later - I've forgotten.) The beads on the right are what I was thinking of as my "palette" and the beginning of the necklace itself is on the left. I'm really pleased with it so far. The bead at the very bottom, which looks clear but is actually very pale green, is made from a recycled coke bottle. I happened to pick this particular one up and noticed that it was drilled off-center, so I decided to hang it accordingly. The beads are a little bit of everything - polymer clay, glass, stone, even a little bit of plastic. I haven't decided how long the necklace should be - not really too long, I think, but I haven't narrowed that down too much. Oh well - since I started from the bottom I don't have to decide that just yet, anyway!

Is anybody out there?

Just nodcomment if you can hear me, ok? I just get to wondering if anybody's actually reading this, from time to time! (I'm not intending to let it stop me, but some feedback would be most welcome.)

Here are some of the decoupage beads my sister sent me:

These are supposed to be prototypes - some of them are quite bumpy - but I think they are really pretty just the same. I'm intending to put some of them up on Etsy eventually if I can figure out how to get them into necklace form. The main problem is (I think I mentioned this before) that some of them have really huge holes - like, a 10mm rondelle fell INSIDE the hole! And then the smaller ones don't have big holes at all. I am experimenting with chain and cord and such, and we'll see what I come up with.

The aqua-colored beads that I thought were so beautiful turn out to have some fairly serious scratches on them - it doesn't stop them from being beautiful but I think it's going to stop me from asking as much as I would like to for this necklace, when it's finished:

Anyway, the beads are still awesome, and the scratch doesn't affect the color at all, so I'm intending to go ahead and list it - maybe I'll create a "SALE" category just for this, and say it's As Is. I would just take off the one that's got the most serious scratch, if I had more of them, but these five are all I have - I think these may have been Botmo beads - and I don't think it'd look as pretty with less than five. I have no idea where the scratch came from - I actually tried to mar another one up, and I couldn't even make a dent in the thing.

(I would rename this entry something like Imperfect, since that's what it seems to be about, except I sort of like the title I started with, too.)

Off to work on more jewelry!

Halloween leftovers

It's not even Halloween yet, so how can I have leftovers? (you may be thinking) -- well, this is leftovers from my necklace that I posted last Tuesday - I took a bead that I removed from that necklace, and a chandelier finding that I didn't use, and some chain that I had on hand, and made something new.

Here's the bead I took off of the other necklace:

It wasn't because I didn't like it that I took it off. And in fact it's basically a bead that I made myself (out of a bead and a charm - I'll go into that a bit more below). Here it is on an early version of the Day of the Dead necklace:

I liked the way it looked on the necklace, but the problem was that it was the only stone bead on the necklace, and it wasn't in the center, and I decided the weight of it was making the necklace hang funny. The easiest answer would have been to just move it to the center, but by that time I had already put something I really really liked there, and I didn't want to change it. So off it came, instead. But I didn't want to waste it, so I decided to use it to make something new, and this is what I came up with:

The bottom part is a chandelier finding that I already had, and some little jet-colored glass beads I already had, and the chain is a couple of different gunmetal-colored things that I had bought lately. I'm really pleased with the results of my improvising, actually!

=================================

I'm new at writing tutorials for my jewelry, and I'm already wanting to edit the heck out of what I wrote below (which I mostly wrote at about 5:30 this morning). But it gets the idea across and I really have other things I need to be doing right now, so I'm going to resist the temptation to change it all up. Think of it as a tutorial-lite!

Here's how I came up with that bead in the first place: I had pulled out everything Halloween-ish that I had, plus all black beads - and I happened to notice that this charm echoed the shape of this big stone bead perfectly:

I know where that stone came from - I bought it from FMG in a bag of mixed stones that they don't seem to have any more. Most of them looked more like this but there were a couple in that star shape. The spiderweb charms came from one of my local bead shops but I've seen those charms all over the place lately. I don't know if you're likely to be able to find a similar stone bead but it occurs to me that you could do the same thing with other shapes - I was thinking that if you could find a flat black rectangle, a headstone charm might look good on it! I'm sure there are others that would work as well.

Anyway, what I did was, I snipped the bail off the charm with my regular wire-cutters - it came off pretty cleanly, but you might need to file it a little. Then I cleaned both pieces up really well, and I mixed up some 2-part epoxy. If you haven't used it before, it's easy to use, at least if you have the kind in my link where the two tubes are connected - I got mine from FMG but I'm sure other places sell it. It automatically squeezes the same amount out of both tubes, so that makes it hard to mess up too bad! It's good to use something like an index card to mix it on, and a toothpick works really good for doing the mixing and applying. It just takes a tiny amount, and you put a very thin coat where the parts are going to meet - I don't think I put any at all on the stone side, just on the back of the charm.. And you have at least a few seconds to wiggle things into the right place before it starts drying. There was a little epoxy on the front after it dried and I think I scraped it off with a piece of wire. And voila! A whole new bead to play with. And that stuff sticks like a rock, once it's dry. I tried to pry it off with my fingernail, just to see if I could, and I definitely couldn't.

So there's your charm. For the chandelier, you need to add your little beads underneath - I think I used 4mm jet bicones on the two sides and a 4mm and 3mm jet round in the center. I just put them on with simple loops, although of course wrapped loops would be fine too. And then to connect the two, I had a gunmetal (or maybe just dark-oxidized) headpin that was long enough - 2", I think - to do all the connecting I needed to do - I made a loop at the top and the bottom of the stone bead, connected the bottom end of it to the chandelier and then set it aside.

As far as the chain, I had two kinds of gunmetal chain - big links, about 20mm ovals, and a smallish rollo chain, maybe 2-3mm wide. I cut off about 9" of the big links - the most important thing there is that you have an odd number of links - and then attach each end to the rollo chain to that piece with jump rings. I still haven't cut the rollo chain down from what I started with, so I have several options on the length - but I'm thinking it would look really good at choker length or just a bit longer. Anyway, figure out how long you want the necklace to be and cut it your rollo chain accordingly, and then add a connector at the back with jump rings. I'm partial to S-hooks for necklaces, but other things would work just as well. Then find that center big link in the front, pull it downward, and attach the stone-and-chandelier piece to it, and you're done!

Unintended results

A week or so ago - maybe more, now - I was talking about the classes I've taken this year. I've taken quite a lot of them; it's partly intended to be an occational distraction from my real schooling that I have going on. Let's see, if I'm counting right I've taken 8 jewelry classes so far this year, with a 9th coming up next week. In the late spring and summer I took several from Kay Hand - her classes are a lot of fun and I'd like to take more of them if I can ever get my schedule synched up with hers again. The weird thing is that I never come out with finished pieces that are anything like what she taught in the class, really - but I've used a lot of her ideas in things I've made since then.

The first class I took was the Gypsy Diva Necklace - which is essentially the necklace on Kay's home page, if you follow that link above. That was an all-day class and it sort of had several "modules" - one was making painted beads out of Tyvek, which was a lot of fun and I have a whole bunch of them lying around, and I've sure they'll get used in something - or several somethings - sooner or later. The second module was making stamped tags out of sheet metal - those are still lying around too - and then you learned to put the whole thing together and make charms and a wirework clasp and so on. And I was adding charms and such like everybody else, but somewhere along the line I went astray! Basically, what happened was that the Gypsy Diva necklace eventually got turned into the Day of the Dead necklace, for me - at least, I think that was the class where she said something to the effect of, "Just cut into the chain anyplace you want and add a bead, and then do the same thing again and again until you get something you like." And that was essentially what I did with the Day of the Dead necklace. And I suspect that there will be more things forthcoming using that basic technique. The Gypsy Diva necklace got utterly sidetracked for me after I added the skull bead early on. I didn't want charms, I wanted more skulls!

This is pretty much the only existing picture of what was supposed to be my Gypsy Diva necklace:

 

I think that greenish long bead is still floating around my workspace, still attached to that same chain. I really should find it and start over. But the skull was long ago removed and is on the other necklace now. I think part of the problem, actually, was that I felt from the beginning like that wanted to be two different necklaces, but I was too stubborn to admit it at the time!

The second class was called something like Hammered Metal Pendants, and this is what I came home with:

and a second pendant:

They were intended to have lots of charms and things - typically for Kay's classes! - and while I am not at all against charms, I agonized over the first one for a long time and finally decided it was essentially finished. I like it like it is. (And I haven't gotten inspired about what to do with the other one yet. I figure it'll come, eventually.) But anyway, I almost took up metalwork on the spot, it was so much fun playing with these pieces.

And the third class was the Funky Charm Bracelet, which I think is going to have to be a separate post!

Necklace details

I realized I didn't have detail pictures of the skull necklace, so here are a couple. This one shows the rusty bead at the bottom, which I adore, and also features the matching earrings I whipped up Saturday afternoon:

And here's more:

I wish I knew where that bone bead at the bottom right came from. I really like it.

Day of the Dead necklace

I finally quit tinkering with my skull necklace and here it is:

(I lightened the picture up some so you could see it better. There's also a bigger version on Flickr.)

I wanted to write up a nice tutorial with very specific instructions, and I found that I just can't do it - or at least, not very specifically - because of the way I made it: I collected skull beads for over a year and then I just sort of winged it. But I can tell you what I did and how it's put together, anyway, and hopefully you can use some of these ideas to create your own version!

Ingredients:

• Skull beads in various sizes and materials (size range is about 6-20mm) (more on this below)
• Jet crystal coin beads, 6mm
• Antique brass chain – mine came from Michael’s and was unsoldered
• Antique brass wire, if you can find it - if not, antique brass headpins will do the job just fine
• Antique brass jump rings in sizes to complement your chain
  
• Bar and toggle clasp – I used a bright copper bar and an oxidized copper toggle, from two similar sets (but note that if you do this you need to make sure they fit one another!)
• Optional: charms - I used antique brass spider webs, and a brass lightning bolt

I made this necklace in a very informal way – since the chain was unsoldered, I just unlinked it at random(ish) intervals and started adding beads. I looked through my beads and charms for anything that looked suitable for Halloween or Day of the Dead, and anything black or goth. I really intended to use round Czech beads as well as the little coin beads, but I happened to try the coin beads first and they looked so cute I just kept using them. I think they give a bit of unity to the assortment of beads. I decided to put the clasp in the front – and the decision to use two different colors of clasp was mostly driven by the fact that the bar that matched the oxidized toggle had bent and wasn't really usable. I also intended to put far more than one charm on this necklace – I had a whole collection of charms by the time I got done – but when I added the rusty skull and the lightning bolt below that, it just looked finished, and I decided to stop.

As far as how it’s assembled, I just linked everything together with headpins and jump-rings and whatever I had on hand. I used both bought jump-rings and ones I had made myself. Mostly I just used simple loops - I wrapped a few, but since I only had headpins to work with and no wire that really matched, I didn't have enough wire to wrap with a lot of the time!

Sources:
A lot of my sources were the places listed in my sidebar. Manto Fev is an especially good source for skulls. Or just try searching for "skull beads" on your favorite bead-seller's website, or on Etsy.
A few specifics:
Lightning bolt charms (The spiderwebs also came from the same seller, but she seems to be sold out, last I looked.)
Here’s a different rusted skull charm from the same seller I got mine from.
Copper skulls: http://www.magpiegemstones.com/catalog/item/5238630/6693716.htm
I think some of the other skull beads came from Elise Mathiesen’s Beads of the Month program (aka botmo) on Livejournal. I think the black AB glass skulls (which look like they might be pressed Czech glass) may have come from her.

About metals: my intention was to mix up my metals even more than I actually did. I decided that the antique brass chain was more in keeping with the mood of my necklace than the brightly-polished copper I started out with, but antique-finish copper or silver would probably look good too. I did use polished copper in the beads, and also heavily oxidized copper, and polished brass, as well as the antique brass; but no silver, in the end. This was more because of what I had on hand than any real design decision, though.

Note: I added a couple of detail pictures here.

Not quite

You know how I said the skull necklace was done? Well, I changed it again. It was all balanced and then I decided the stone bead was throwing the balance off as far as the way it hung, so I took the stone bead off, and now the right/left balance is off. It's intended to be somewhat asymmetrical but right now the beads go further up on one side than they do on the other, and I don't like it. So I'm doing some more rebalancing before I declare it finished again!

In unrelated news, I really want a pretty picture to put on the header here. I don't really necessarily want to re-do the whole layout right now, but I need to think about the picture issue. I am always loath to play with layouts because I am not really html-literate - although I can do an href link, which I guess puts me ahead of a good many people these days! - and I am too cheap to pay somebody to do a layout for me. Hmm. I guess I'm going to have to decide which one of those is gonna give.

Aaaaand.... did I say that I ordered some more skulls from Ornamentea? Well, they came, and they are adorable. (They should be, really, 'cause they were not cheap, considering their very small size.) They don't go with this skull necklace, because they're very festive, candy-colored things and the not-quite-finished skull necklace is very earth-toned, but there is clearly going to have to be a skull necklace #2, anyway. And possibly some skull earrings, or more likely more than one pair!