Hot Air Balloon Earring Experiment

I spent quite some time experimenting last night with wire mesh tubing (Rings & Things) some brass beads (Blue Moon Royal Boheme at Michael's) and glass disk spacer beads (Rings & Things) in an attempt to create an early hot air balloon style earring. I went searching for an image to give you an idea of where I got the balloon inspiration - found a pretty close one on some Tissotti wrapping paper on the Amazing Papers site.

See how there's a mesh of ropes holding the gas balloon to the basket? That's what I was hoping to at least suggest by covering the beads with the wire mesh.

I'm not sure if it's worth the effort - the mesh doesn't stand out that much on this bead and I'm having problems making it neat. See the little stray threads? I was trying to trim some tiny openings in the mesh so the little balloon passengers would be able to get on board...

While I realize that's a bit crazy sounding, I was going for as much realism as I could with the materials at hand. If I thought I had the skill and patience to create (or if I could find some to buy) a tiny rope net and wicker basket with tiny bags of sand ballast, I'd probably try it. I do have enough sanity left to know I shouldn't. The idea is to make something I can create relatively easily, and in a reasonable amount of time, for a reasonable price that looks enough like a hot air balloon, and make several pairs that I can put up for sale. (And wear myself because I like the idea a lot)

Anyway, it's quite difficult for me to do the trimming well because the scale is so very tiny - the disks are 6mm to give you an idea of scale, the whole earring isn't much more than the size of a quarter. I think just attaching the disks to the brass bead will accomplish the suggestion of the balloon without the mesh since the bead itself is made of open work that looks like mesh. I'm not completely giving up, though - I'm going to try the mesh over a large glass bead and see how that looks next.

Then, with the mesh I have left over, I'm going to try some necklace or bracelet ideas that have come to mind as I was working on this.

Well, that's it for today. I was able to buy a membership to the World Fantasy Convention (it's in San Jose - quite near by) from someone who ended up not being able to attend, and I have plans to visit it tonight and tomorrow. I expect I'll see some great jewlery and interesting costuming. I'll try to remember to take some pictures and tell you about it!

'Til then -

Mid-Week Mutterings - A New Lanyard + Kyanite and Vintage Swarovskis from The Beadin' Path

When I was in L.A. one of the strands of beads I bought was a set of glass coin beads in a light blue with subtle white stripes that reminds me of blue lace agate. I decided to make a new lanyard and strung it with light sapphire Druk beads and a matching light blue opaque Czech glass bead between 4mm scalloped Tierra Cast bead caps. Since it's a lanyard I put two lobster claw clasps on it and it's 29" long.

The next piece is a necklace, 24" long with a silver flower clasp. I noticed how well the kyanite beads I had also purchased in L.A. went with the Indian Sapphire vintage Swarovski Sunflower beads from The Beadin' Path, so I used some of those and matching Swarovski bicones. There are floral decorated Bali silver tube beads from the Rings & Things road show, silver disk spacers and Tierra Cast scalloped bead caps as well.

The Rings & Things Gemstone Index has fascinating historical information on this stone and notes that it is also "widely used for industrial applications, especially in the manufacture of spark plugs, electrical insulators and heat-resistant ceramic (to reduce shrinkage as it expands)." I particularly liked this part of the introductory sentence "kyanite can become the sparkle in a necklace or the spark plug in an engine." I could use some spark right about now!

I'm working on something with the charoite and peach sunstones right now, hope to be able to share it soon!

Monday Miscellany - Rings & Things June Blog Partner Review Continues: Three Soft Flex Trios Necklace Experiments

Over the weekend I experimented with my Soft Flex Trios which were my choice for the June Rings & Things blog partner's review. The first one used Amethyst colored wire and an assortment of purple beads I got from a bead of the month club run by Elise Matthesen. I curled a couple of the wires using my round nosed pliers to add a bit of a sculptural look. I also figured out the Figure-8 knot, thanks to the SoftFlex website.

The next one I did using Quartz (white) Soft Flex from the Romance Trio and a number of Swarovski drops, beads and briolettes as well as some glass roundel spacers. I used an Opaline bead in the center, from a strand I got at the Rings & Things bead tour plus clear, translucent white, and opalescent beads I've collected from various sources (including a great Etsy shop, Prolifique) for this one.

The final one uses two shades of green from the Renewal Trio - Emerald and Chrysoprase. I used some sea-green pressed glass and Czech Druk beads, as well as a silver plated shell charm that came with May's The Beadin' Path bead club. I wanted an 'under the ocean' look to this one, so I again used the round nose pliers to curl the wires. I thought that would give the impression of a bed of seaweed and I thought the circles of Chrysoprase Soft Flex, with the Jonquil Druk beads looked rather like bubbles.

As always, I'm very interested in your thoughts about these ideas.

Don't forget to write reviews of products on Rings & Things
to be entered in their June-July contest.
Deadline is July 31.

Black Sand Beach Bracelet

Before anything else, I'd like to thank Lisa at A Bead A Day for picking me as her featured designer this week - I'm so honored she liked my work!

Also, there are still some Rings & Things gluable challenge bracelets showing up here and there - Katie Hacker of Katie's Beading Blog (and lots of other great sites around the web) showed two ideas earlier this week.

There are lots of great kits and tutorials out there - I just bought one from Rock Creek Creations at Art Fire - and the Beadalon site has some good ones as well. Sometimes though the concept is what inspires me more than the actual item being taught.

Like back when you were a kid, and it was time to sit down for Arts & Crafts at camp or with the Scout troop, were you one of the people who listened carefully, checked the step by step drawings often, and at the end of the hour had a perfect replica of the craft's director's sample? I was one of those more often than not.

When I was a teen I worked for the summer recreation department and taught swimming in the morning and arts and crafts in the afternoons. I had a set curriculum and the department provided the supplies. I never varied from the program and there wasn't much opportunity for the kids to improvise, either - just didn't have the materials and I couldn't afford to bring in anything extra, either.

When I got older, I often volunteered to be the crafts teacher for various summer recreation programs, all the way into my early 30s. There were often themes to these programs and the crafts usually aligned with the themes. I didn't create the curriculum for the crafts and pretty much followed the instructions given. Not that I didn't encourage the kids to improvise somewhat if they wished - I tried to supplement the standard pre-packaged kits with some different materials, so the ones who wanted to be unique to some degree, could.

Today I was reading blog posts on my Google reader and saw that Katie Hacker had posted about a new Beadalon wire SilveRose and that there was an animated tutorial posted, so I checked it out. Cool tutorial and a lovely necklace. I wanted to try the idea, but decided to go in a different direction and made a bracelet with some black Soft Flex, gunmetal findings and black Czech glass beads.

I believe I'm going to get some other colored beading wire and make more like this - it's a fun look!

Now a message from our sponsor:

Dawno

Buy Handmade

Polyclay experiment #1

I should have taken pictures, but it was late* and just I dove in and didn't think about the camera until it was too late. I am using Sculpey III clay. I learned that it gets very soft and sticky. I kept having to stick it in the refrigerator to get it a bit less squooshy for the cutting parts of the design I tried.

*I hadn't felt well earlier in the day, so I took a nap and that meant I wasn't able to get to sleep at a reasonable hour, so I just started experimenting with the clay

I wanted to make polyclay patterned disks to glue onto the gunmetal bracelet form. I decided to use black and pearl and shades of gray from mixing black and pearl. I got out a book I'd purchased and flipped through until I saw a picture of a design I liked. Kaleidoscope canes. Looked ambitious, but I jumped right in anyway, 'cuz that's what I do - and I have lots of experience in making things that didn't work out right at first, but learning a lot in the process.

Besides, how hard can this be - making snakes and triangles and stuff? (famous last words, huh?)

Made dark gray triangles, put snakes on them going from darkest (black) to lightest (light pearlized gray), put a sheet of medium gray over the snakes and triangle. Reduce the cane. ummm...

Read up on how to do that and thought I'd reduced it pretty successfully, cut it in half, re-assembled the halves into a new triangle per instructions, added more snakes, this time going from light to dark, needs another sheet over all that - hmm, made a pink-ish gray by mixing in a little red, just to add contrast. Cut again and re-assembled.

It was huge now. Read up again how to reduce. Tried it. Didn't do such a good job this time. I think the problem was that I used too many snakes in the canes, so I ended up with barely a pattern in the reduced cane that didn't show much detail, so it just looked like grayish streaks. Oh well. Will try again tomorrow, I decided. Put clay cane in baggie and went to bed.

Today I played around with the cane, making different slices at angles, lengthwise through the center, flattened the slices, made cuts and re-arranged the pieces - I could see how there could be potential designs out of the concept in some future effort, but this one got chalked up as a learning experience.

I now have a good sized lump of an odd purplish-gray color - I hope I can eventually use it - probably will have to mix it with another color to get something prettier.

I'll try again some time soon. I found a detailed 'how to reduce' tutorial at Polymer Clay Central and hope that, plus fewer, larger snakes is the key.

Tonight I may just read and relax and try to get to bed early, only got 5 hours of sleep last night and am already fading a bit.

Just Checkin' In

Hi - sorry I've been quiet for yet another week. I am still a bit blog-challenged and have not been in a very creative place lately. I appreciate all the great new connections I've made recently through your blogs and Twitter, and really want to keep the conversation going, so I'll try a bit harder!

I've started messing (and that word is quite appropriately descriptive) around with the gluable bracelet forms - here's one work in progress so far. White metal bracelet form with gluable discs and hammered links to which I have, so far, added 5, 14mm long by 10mm wide hemimorphite beads. there are 7 links in the bracelet, but the final link on one end is the clasp link and the other end is the loop link through which the clasp locks so I couldn't add the beads to them.

and here's how I did it

Supplies

• glueable bracelet form (Stock#: 40-337-1. 7.2" disk-and-loop bracelet forms for gluing. Hammered oval loops. Length may vary +/- ¼".)
  
• soft silver tone metal wire (used what I had for experimenting, an inexpensive 20 gauge from Michael's, no metal info on the spool, which I bought to practice wrapping and making loops),
  
• flush cutter,
  
• chain nose pliers,
  
• oval beads small enough to give some 'clearance' inside the link and the 14x10mm beads fit fine.

Snipped about 3" of wire and shaped a "t-pin" shape using the chain nose pliers (and flush cutter when I had excess to snip)

make a right angle bend about 3/4 inch long

bend back over itself about 1/4 inch from the center (long end of wire)

turn over, bend the other side the same way - there's a bit of overlap, trim with flush cutter

flatten the folds as much as possible

Now, for the assembly stuff

1. Open the connector bit on one of the gluable disk links
   
2. Remove the oval hammered link and thread wire through the vertical opening in the opened connector bit (I bet there's a technical term for that)
3. 
4. Put the oval link back in, making sure the bead and the wire are on "top" of the link, otherwise you have to thread the wire back through the link, and the less bending the better because (as I'm sure everyone knows but I tested the concept strenuously, and often, to the failure point...) soft wire gets brittle and breaks the more you work it
5. Close the connector bit (there I go with those highly technical terms again) over the wire pin and link - it's a tight fit and will make the bracelet a little less flexible, unfortunately.
6. Thread the wire through the open connector bit on the next disk.

This part is extra tricky. I had to do all the folding and bending and trimming of the wire that I was able to do easily when it was just holding and folding the wire, inside of the open connector and then close the connector over it and the oval link. After finishing, it sometimes stuck out too much so it showed on the right side of the piece, and I either had to try and squish it in, or open the whole thing up again and trim it then bend and squish a much smaller piece of wire, inside the tight confines of the connector.

Then I closed up the connector bit on the other side.


Finished work - so far.

Still need to decide what to do with the gluable disk part. I'm thinking about investing in some resin and molds and trying my hand at little round resin domes with something embedded in them - not sure what to embed (but edging closer to a vintage-y concept), nor what kind of resin to get. I have the MagicGlos stuff, but I need a cure light for that. Also thinking about polyclay, but I need a better working surface than I have right now, which would entail lots of re-arranging the office/beading room and purchases of things I need not be purchasing right now, like new shelving and a nice long worktable/bench (that I've been wanting for some time now).

Made Some Earrings While Watching Obama Speech - So, Is It Too Corny to Want to Name Them "Hope"?

I decided to make a pair of earrings that matched a lanyard using teal and aqua glass beads. Started out just putting the beads on a long sterling headpin in the same sequence as the lanyard. Decided it needed a little something more and since I'm on a curlicue kick, I took some wire and made two curls and hung little teal faceted glass beads off of them.

The thing I really like about how they turned out is that the curls move around and the earrings have a very dimensional look, which I try to show in the picture below.

And here's the pair with the matching lanyard.

I think I'm going to put some goals on myself for tomorrow and Thursday night that I won't make any new pieces until I've worked on the things I need to finish for the convention. Things I need to do - put labels and prices on the pieces, finish off the standing displays and get all the other stuff I need to take on Friday out and at least gathered up for packing.

"It was here that I decided to quit before I went embellishment mad"

Before I dive into this, thank you again to Margot Potter for the link to my "Mondrian" inspired choker, in her latest blog post, and to a whole bunch of new crafting/beading/jewelry artists I am following on Twitter and who so kindly have followed me back!

Speaking of Twitter, I tweeted this last night "I'm always wondering, while making vintage-style pieces, when I should stop adding stuff. It's like Granny Ogg and how to spell bananananana".

I really like baroque and complex work, but I also like symmetry, simple lines...it's like having some kind of multiple design personality complex. So when I use intricately textured or ornamental components, it's challenging for me not to just keep adding and adding more chains and dangles and detail, or alternatively, not to add any.

I think last night's work (which was the finishing touch on the pendant I'd started working on weeks ago and put aside unfinished to think about) turned out as a balance between my impulses.

I'll start with the pendant - I received a set of different colored cabochons (all called 'jade' but I think they're another stone that's been dyed, so I'm calling this one 'faux yellow jade') and thought I'd try using some of the brass stampings to wrap them into pendants. I chose a rather large stamping called Maltese Cross (Item S40, Accessories Susan) for the base, and another one called Filigree to Wrap Stones (Item S38, Accessories Susan).

I wrapped the filigree around the stone with the Maltese cross in-between to hold all three pieces together. Then I bent three arms of the cross up and then curled back over to get the setting seen above.

The next thing I did was start experimenting with the chain. At first, right above the pendant, I used some Japanese glass beads with pale yellow rose decals on them, and then put the filigree beads you see above, on the chain as well. I wasn't happy with the rose beads, so they went, but I liked the filigree beads. By the way, there are three tiny yellow faceted Czech glass rounds inside each of those filigree beads to give them a secret inner glint.

I still found the chain a bit dull, so I added the pale yellow faceted Czech glass bicones. Then I looked at it again and wanted to embellish the pendant just a teensy bit more and added the chain loop and then the two chain dangles with the same pale yellow bicones at the ends.

It was here that I decided to quit before I went embellishment mad.

My shipment of silver ox filigrees came the other day, so the next vintage style pieces I do will probably use those. As I mentioned in a previous post, I think the silver will be a better color for Spring and Summer, the brass just seems to say Fall and Winter to me.

Many hours have passed since I wrote that last paragraph...

I think I'll have one more choker frame idea to share soon - been working on another experimental piece, trying something new again, and the way it's deciding to design itself (yes, this piece is growing rather organically since I didn't know where I was going with it, I just started playing and off it went) is looking like it belongs on a choker form. I've been absolutely obsessed with this since about 9 PM and it's now after 2 AM. I think it's nearly done...

I'll leave it a mystery for now and you'll just have to come back and see what it is sometime this weekend.

It Was Longer and Curvy-er but I Twisted It Up

Been busy, busy with day job - had a business dinner last night, lots of meetings today. Did manage to finish a glass bead badge lanyard to match my outfit, and I wore it with a brass stamping and bauble necklace into the office today.

The beaded badge lanyard uses pinched sphere Czech glass beads in peridot and tiny (2 or 3mm) faceted jet black Czech glass rounds. It's about 29 - 30" (my tape measure has wandered off, maybe a cat stole it?)

The necklace features one dangle on a bit of chain made from two peridot Czech pressed glass flower beads with tiny pearlescent seed beads. I used a long headpin to stack the beads, and a tiny brass bead just above each yellow seed bead that is mostly hidden in the flower, so the yellow ones would show.

The other dangle is a freshwater cultured pearl. I then looped them both together through a jumpring with a glass teardrop in peridot, and that through another thicker jumpring attached to one of the swirls in the stamping.

The brass stamping (Accessories Susan "Poppies in the Wind") started out much longer and curvy-er but I wasn't satisfied with how it hung as a pendant, so I gave it a twist to shorten and center the piece at the top where I fasten the chain through another jumpring.

Did you notice that I got a cool new graphic to add to my sidebar from Rings & Things? I'm a blog partner - nifty! They're having a comment contest there through the end of the month (and each month) - leave comments on their posts and be in a drawing for a surprise goodie pack.

Experiment with Steampunk and Vintage Style Embellishments on Retractable Ribbon Lanyard Badge Holders

I was trying to go to sleep last night and was thinking about the upcoming Potlatch SF Convention, and had a 'voila moment' about some badge holders ("C-line retractable adjustable neck lanyard" @ $3.54 retail each) I bought last year thinking I might be able to do something interesting with them, and never got around to it.

So, I'm experimenting with adding embellishments to those badge holders, which come with a retractable ribbon lanyard. I'm going to display these at Potlatch and get feedback, but I would only sell them if the buyer understood the caveats. These are prototypes, they need to be tested. Right now, I don't know how they'd hold up under different types of use - could be a bit delicate for anything but very occasional stress-free use - so, caveat emptor, no refunds, returns or guarantees.

The top one is the "steampunk" style idea using tiny watch parts and a tiny glass 'gem' from an old re-cycled costume jewelry brooch. I painted the retracting part with Classic Gold Liquid Leaf and glued on the parts using Aleen's Jewelry & Metal glue. I want to seal it with MagicGlos, but I still need either a sunny day (not having many right now) or get the right UV light bulb. I bought a flourescent black light blub, but it didn't seem to work on my test piece - might be the wrong wattage? Anyway, I will need to seal that one before it could be used.

The other two use brass filigree from Accessories Susan and some glass gems from the same re-cycled costume jewelry brooch. The one on the right has chain and a dangling Swarovski crystal and a bead cap on the ribbon retractor bead. The other one is just one filigree and two little glass gems. I used clear E6000 glue for those. I show an un-embellished badge holder with the ribbon (16" on a side) pulled out. There's a button on the back of the holder for releasing and retracting the ribbon.

I'll probably replace the silver jumpring that came on the holder with an antiqued gold one and maybe add a dangle...

I'd love to hear your impressions...