Well, I have been making jewellery for around four years now and it's only taken me this long to work out where I've been going wrong with wire wrapping! Haha! I love...I repeat...LOVE wire work. I know a lot of people on the forums and sites I go on do beady stitching and that is fine but I really don't have the time or the focus to do this! I also think a little metal, be it silver, gold or bronze gives your work a really professional look, like someone has just walked out of a jewellers with it! Ok, I may be deluding myself a little here but hey ho...back to the original point. I adore Eni Oken's stuff -
www.enioken.com and she is a pure genius and goddess and I have many of Linda Jones books. I have been dabbling in wire work for a while but wire wrapping has always deluded me! I have always found it really difficult to keep it neat and get it to go where I want! That is until a stroke of genius (note the sarcasm which I can't do on a computer!) hit me. I have been using 20 gauge wire to try and wrap with....and I should have been using 24 or 26 or even 28....People who know me will realise why this has taken so long for me to realise....I am not the kinda gal who sits down to read and follow instructuions to the letter...I am more of a hit and hope....have a go and muddle through...type!!
Anyway, at Christmas I invested in a 'Wire coiling gizmo'......droooollll! (I wish I got there first!!!) Its so simple but such a genius idea! Its 2 mandrels in different sizes and a three sided stand (see
http://www.coilinggizmo.com/faq.htm ) which is used to create coils and make wire coiling and wrapping easier and quicker. I have been trying to think of what to use it on and how to adapt some of the more 'unwearable' designs into my style of simple and wearable jewellery and it is the UK Beaders challenge this month that inspired me. The challenge is called 'Spring has sprung'. You have to submit a piece for this challenge that involves the use of a spring or coil or spiral. A perfect opportunity for me to break open the wire and gizmo!
So....last night I sat down to make a necklace and earring set I had been cooking up for a while! I consists of a wire ball (not make by me...possibly sourced from Jem Junction I think!?!) focal bead with 5 hand wire wrapped (with 26 gauge!! wire) tassels with purple Swarovski bicones on the end. Oooh this hurt my fingers....I had been cleaning the flat before this and my fingers were dry..even to the point of one bleeding half way through (plasters ahoy!). The wire wrapping was very neat...even though I do say so myself and MUCH easier with thinner wire!! The 'chain'...when finished...will be 4 2 inch coils of 26 gauge wire with 2 purple swarovski bicones at either end mounted onto 20 gauge wire and finished with a turned loop at either end. These are fixed together with jump rings and a set of these are added at each side of the focal to create an 18 inch chain. The earrings are simply gonig to be 3 wire wrapped dangles on a jump ring and attached to an earring post.
I am around 3/4 of the way through the necklace with 5 of the chain bits to go but I am hopeful of finishing it today so piccies will follow and hopefully it will be entered into the UK beaders challenge.
Before signing off for this post I must just point out an ironic thing that has just occured to me! Last night I settled to read the beginning chapter of Derren Brown's book. I love Derren Brown! Growing up with a fabby magician in the house I have always been surrounded by magic and always watched magic programmes etc. and I think Derren Brown's magic is so fresh and really something to make you think. Anyway, I don't read much but the first chapter hits upon another of my loves, philosophy of religon. I am not religous but was brought up in a religous household and still hold a lay interest in philosophy and religion and how religion has become so big and all consuming in our society and why/how people believe so passionately. I got to the end of the first chapter...23 pages and sat musing over the points Derren had made and the way that he had managed to expand his points so elequently into 23 pages....thinking about how novelists and writers manage to write 1000s of words in their novels and how this was done and how I don't think I could do this.....
The irony.....
Ok, I've just written a rather long post on the fact you should use thin wire instead of thicker wire to wire wrap!!! Haha! Prehaps I should change jobs.....!!! :) :)
The first, from the left to the right, is an 8mm cats eye bead topped and tailed by 2 4mm swarovski bicones in opal. The next two are charms made of swarovski bicones. They are beaded beads from Issue 5 of Bead magazine. I love these charms and want to make a whole set (necklace etc.) with them at some point. The other two are bronze glass beads - one flat oval and the other round, both 8mm topped and tailed with 4mm swarovski beads in bronze.