Bead Shop'n !

Stopped by Walmart recently and was amazed, no actually floored, to see the huge selection of Cousin beads and supplies.  That aisle was literally bursting with all kinds of design possibilities and beady goodness!!

Lots of shopping to be done here for stringing supplies and storage stuff including canvas bead organizers, jewelry displays and plastic trays.

 



And the beads... Oh my! I thought I was strolling through a craft store.

 

 

And the wire! Did I tell you they had wire? Did I tell you it was 16 gauge colorized copper wire in every gorgeous color you could possibly imagine?

 

 

I've been busy...

 

 

Making some things ...

 

 

 

Gotta go and make some more things!!

 

Holiday stuff... ;)

 

 

And yes, I do believe I have found my favorite store for buying Cousin bead supplies.

 

 

 

 

Okawa Bead Bracelet

Here is a flame colorized wire work bracelet I made with Okawa beads. You can find out more about where the beads came from by stopping here, Work of Our Hands.

 

Enjoy your Sunday!

Art Jewelry Boot Camp #4 - Jewelry Clasps

Welcome to the 4th Jewelry Makers' Blog Hop sponsored by Love My Art Jewelry. This month's assignment was to construct our own clasps. For this challenge I decided to make a few standard wire work "S" clasps as well as work with some new textures and shapes I had not tried before using copper sheet.

To start here is a version of the classic wire "S" I made recently and like to use with copper wired bead bracelets. They are fairly easy to make using needle nose pliers and a steel mandrel. The copper wire has been patinated with liver of sulphur and then hand polished.

Here is another variation of the classic "S" clasp hammered flat.

The next piece was an experiment in bending a small rectangular strip of copper sheet to form a hook and hinge and then wrapping it with copper wire to secure the ends.

For the fourth clasp, I tried cutting out shapes from textured copper sheet made for a previous boot camp. It took a hammer, texture materials, jeweler's saw, drill bit; as well as a needle file and sandpaper to smooth all the rough edges after they were cut.

Here is what it looks like closed.

Now all I have to do is make some jewelry to go with these clasps. I have a few ideas... ;)

Click the Love My Art Jewelry Boot Camp button to see more beautiful

handmade clasps:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Boot Camp #3: Wire Work Out

Love My Art Jewelry is running its 3rd Boot Camp Blog Hop today with a mission for us to expand our skills in wire work. Over the past month, Artist Members offered up some great tips and techniques for making wire jewelry. They also challenged us to move forward with our own new designs.

I started by making a pair of copper wired earrings. I really enjoy working with copper, it is so soft and easy to form.  The copper links were a snap using just flat chain nose pliers. The ear wires are nonallergic anodized niobium which is a lot stiffer to work with then copper. However, niobium's qualities for ear wires are tough to beat, in my opinion.

Having so much fun making these copper squares, I decided to move on to a copper chain (link) necklace. And I should add here that there are good and bad aspects of working with soft metals like copper. Yes, the wire is soft and easy to form but that also means it could bend and become "out of shape" (need to go back to boot camp ha ha) after being worn for a while.

As a work around, I decided to add silk ribbon to the part of the piece that lays along the back of the neck which typically takes the most stress. Second, I was very careful to work harden each individual link with a small rubber tipped hammer. Great for building boot camp arm strength don't you think?

Last but not least, the ribbon connectors I made came from a great wire work technique provided by Kelli Pope at the Love My Art Jewelry Blog. Am planning to keep this necklace in my personal collection for testing. You can always contact me  to find out how it is holding up. I love hearing from you!

 

And now please click below for more great Boot Camp jewelry wire work:
 

 

Love My Art Jewelry