(Not) Working (Well) With Wire

I recently started trying to work with wire to make rings and perhaps move on to pendants and other items. I'm wondering if I'll have the patience to keep at it! So far my early attempts take forever and, well, mostly suck. Here are three of my better efforts - but I'm not entirely happy with them.

Copper and leopard skin jasper - the wire setting for the pendant was made with 20 gauge wire and a Wig-Jig.


Next are a couple rings in silver. The first is three spirals in a V shape.

This is a tiny pink faceted Czech glass bead wrapped wire ring.


I'm doing better with making loops for connecting beads together or to chains and that's taken me some serious practice. I may just have to convince myself not to give up and eventually I'll get better at it.

I've made three sales via Etsy this year. If you're not familiar with Etsy, it's a great community and there are so many wonderful hand crafted items for sale there.

I went to one of the workshops they provide the other day, and had my shop reviewed. Took the advice I got, too. One of the things I was advised was to post a "teaser" type picture first rather than the view of the lanyard on a bust or the full sized mannequin. The top items listed in the shop are using new teaser pics, lower (posted earlier on) ones are the ones I haven't re-shot yet. What do you think?

Today I finished the piece shown below. It's lapis lazuli with silver and gold metal bead accents. This one uses the most expensive materials I've used so far, so I don't know if it's too pricy for my shop at this point. Besides which, I love lapis and don't know if I can part with it.