Twisted

I got Kerry Bogert's Totally Twisted: Innovative Wirework & Art Glass Jewelry, and all I can say is, I'm sorry I waited so long to get it. I love wirework and I'm always saying I want to start doing more of it, so maybe if I try a couple of these projects it'll get me kick-started. We'll see. But anyway, this book is beautiful to look at and the projects look great and the only downside I see is that it's making me want to go buy more lampwork beads to use!

Meanwhile the Claudine Hellmuth class starts tomorrow, so I'm excited about that. (I'm still missing some supplies - most notably the Cuttlebug, because nobody ever puts it on sale and I'm playing a waiting game on that. I decided I could probably manage without it, anyway.)

Wired and wirework

I just took a test for my class (medical coding) and I'm too wired to sleep yet, so I'll write for a while. I made a 92 on the test, so I'm happy. This is not an easy class.

Let's see, I was productive on my schoolwork but I didn't get any jewelry-making (or photographing, which I also need to do) done today. I had what I thought was a really good idea about what to do with some pretty aqua-colored beads I have - only then I got sidetracked and never tried it out. I am a major procrastinator so that's not unusual, but on the other hand, I find that if I go and just do something right when I have an idea, that often has a better outcome!

I didn't mention earlier that I did work for a long time Sunday night on a wrapped pendant - it looks pretty good but of course (as mentioned above) I don't have pictures yet. I do have one of the piece before I really got started with the wirework:

I really love that teardrop-shaped piece of onyx, and I'm happy with how the bezel was going, although I think I made a mistake with the wirework late in the process. It's yet to be determined if that's fixable - it was late by the time I got to that point and I decided to put it down since I was tired. I figured my judgment was a bit suspect. (I know with quilting I used to think that if I worked too late at night I started making mistakes, so I figure jewelry is probably the same.)

And that reminds me that I was putting out a few fall decorations (they always go up when the Halloween stuff comes down) and one thing that I put up was a little quilt of my mom's:

It was hanging on her door when I took this picture; she had a double door - a wooden one behind a glass one - that was perfect for showing off little quilts like this one. I could have brought the quilt hanger you see here home with me when we were cleaning out her house, but it was rusted and I decided to throw it away, since I didn't really have a place to use it anyway. (I really ought to get another hanger setup, though, and find a place inside the house to hang these.) But since I didn't have anything set up to hang it with, I draped this little quilt across the back of a recliner that we don't usually sit in, and it looks very nice.

Funky Charm Bracelet, sans charms

I wrote an entry where I talked about two of the three classes I took from Kay Hand - then I ran out of time and never talked about the third. So here's that, for the first day of NaBloPoMo!

The name of the third was Funky Charm Bracelet, and it's, well, just what it sounds like, a funky charm bracelet - it's a sort of multi-part wirework base, with (naturally) charms of various kinds. The supply list called for bringing a focal or two to put between the wirework pieces, and the night before the class when I was looking through all my stuff, I found a copper watch face I had almost forgotten about, so I decided to make one of the focals a watch face. Or in other words, I'd be turning my charm bracelet into a watch/charm bracelet. Kay thought this was a great idea, as I had sort of assumed she would - she's very open about things like that. For the other focal I bought a big green stone flower bead. (Actually it was out of the same bag as the one that ended up in my "Leftovers" necklace.) And I brought a variety of charms and beads with a green theme, because I just like green and because I thought it would look good with the copper.

And here's what I came home with:

We had time to make the three wirework pieces, plus the clasp, and get it all assembled, and get started on the charms. (As I recall, other people got a bit more done than I did - I always do work rather slowly.) The wirework parts are made of 16-gauge wire, as I recall. And it's really very freeform - I had the watch on the other day, and somebody asked me how it was made, and I sort of went blank. I really couldn't think what to say. You just kind of bent the wire back and forth around your pliers, and you sort of had a basic idea about the dimensions you wanted - sort of 1" wide and maybe a little longer than that - and you just made a squiggle til you got there! (I hope the person I was talking to didn't think I was hopelessly rude. I just have moments like that, I'm afraid.)

Well, so I came home really happy with what I'd done so far, and intending to add more beads according to plan - and then somewhere in the next day or so I changed my mind. I think part of it was because I was thinking I'd get more wear out of the watch if it didn't have colored beads on it. And besides, I thought the wirework looked really pretty - so the end result was that instead of adding more beads, I disassembled it and took all the beads OFF. Even the stone one, which I also liked a lot.

So here's the state of things after I took it apart:

 

I knew the two segments attached to the watch-face were fine as they were - and in fact, they needed to stay put because I had specifically made them so they'd match up with the connectors on the watch. (Oh, and it looks at a glance like the stone flower is still attached, above, but it's not. It's just sitting there loose.)

Here it's partly back together again - I'm trying to remember why, exactly, but I decided to put the clasp on the side instead of the bottom. Maybe it was just because I liked the way it looked!

And here's the final product, more or less - although I know I tinkered with it in small ways for days after this. Notice that I had to make another wirework segment, since I didn't have any focals. I made all the jump-rings myself - and I used them in pairs, both for strength and because they looked good that way. And I also fashioned sort of an extender on the end, to make it adjustable, a bit. So except for the watch face, I made every bit of this myself, out of wire. I was very proud of myself!

Oh, and I did start on another bracelet, to be a proper charm bracelet this time - but so far I haven't finished it. I decided to use silver instead of copper for this one.

It did get a little further along than this, actually. And one of these days I'll pick it up and finish it!

Classwork

Here's the piece I made in class last week - this was Annette Kinslow's intermediate wire class at Bead Boutique. This is probably the most labor-intensive thing I've done yet, but I have to say the results were worth it.