Things have been so crazy around here with the holidays coming up that I just can’t seem to get it all together sometimes. I did find time to do a few more videos, but being so scatterbrained lately, I completely forgot to update the blog to let you guys know about them.
Sooooo….
Hope you guys enjoy them. 🙂
And… yep, you guessed it. More swirls. 🙂
This is a design I’ve been playing with for several years. In the video I teach a very basic version of it, but at the end there are some photos of other rings I have made using this base design as a starting point to give you some more inspiration. Hope you enjoy it.
It’s finally ready. This is the longest video I’ve ever done, and I probably will never do one this long again (it’s almost 2 hours long).
Not the greatest video quality. My recording set up is still a work in progress.
I’m also trying to work on getting more comfortable speaking on videos. So if I sound a little flaky at times, that’s why. I’ve never been good at talking for more than a few seconds at a time. Hopefully you guys can ignore all that stuff for now. 🙂
The four heart necklaces shown at the end of this video are currently available at ShutUpAndCuffMe.com
Find handmade polymer clay heart cabochons, and other jewelry supplies at WireAndBeadSupplies.com
And don’t forget about the Fall Sale! All jewelry, supplies and tutorials are 10-20% off at all of my web-sites and Etsy shops.
Supplies:
51″ (1.30m) 20g (0.8mm) dead soft round wire
16.5′ (4.9m) 28g (0.3mm) dead soft round wire
1 Flat backed heart cabochon (the one used in this video is
approximately 35mm wide and 31mm long)
Tools:
Wire flush cutters
Round nose pliers
4mm or 6mm mandrel or bail making pliers
Needle tool or small awl (a thick sewing needle may work)
Nylon jaw flat nose pliers (optional)
Normally, when I decide to teach a design, I do my best to strip it down to it’s easiest, most teachable, basic design, while still keeping it visually interesting. Once I have that part down and the tutorial is done, I have to see where else I can go with it. I like to push the limits on it and see how far I can take it. What will it look like on a different shape of focal? How many more curlicues can I add before it starts to look ridiculous? The design I teach in my Woven Crystal Point Wrap tutorial is no exception.
This piece is made with a kite shaped polymer clay faux labradorite cabochon I made, then front drilled in order to add the wirework. I didn’t change the wirework too much from the tutorial, except to adjust it to the shape of the focal. I wanted to keep it simple so that it didn’t compete with the colors in the “stone”.
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For these two, I still kept it somewhat simple. I did add a little more detail to the design on the teardrop, but mostly it was just to take it farther down the stone. For the agate slice, I kept it neat and tidy near the top and added a few beads.
This one is one of the earliest versions of this design. I made it back in 2011. I had this really thin agate point that I wanted to wrap but I wasn’t sure how to do it without making it too bulky looking. I kept the wirework close and tight and used an open style weave. To keep it from looking to plain I added beads tot he frame wire between the wraps for one section of it.
If you’d like to learn how to add beads onto the weave same way I did on this pendant, you can see my Seed Beaded Frame for a Focal Bead tutorial. It uses the same weave as this, with beads added.
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These are two of my favorites. In the right kind of light, these Opalite points seem to almost glow. I don’t like covering that up, so I prefer to keep the wrapping on them close to the top of the pendant. This doesn’t give a whole lot of room for variation, though. So to mix it up a bit on the one on the left, I used the Zig Zag Weave from my Advanced Weaving Techniques tutorial for part of the weaving. For the one on the right I made tiny double spirals and wrapped them onto the frame wires with the weaving wire to give it a filigree effect.
At the time I made this one, I was playing around with different ways to incorporate stamped metal sheet into different designs. I attached it to the pendant by drilling holes into the sheet that line up with the hole in the stone. The wire is then inserted through both the stone and the 2 holes in the metal sheet, then worked as in the tutorial. I only did one woven wrap around the stone and finished both frame wires off in the back to keep the front simple.
I made this one a little more complex. I added a skull bead to the top (both wires fit through the bead) and started the wrap above the skull instead of at the top of the crystal point.
As with most things in life, as much as I say I love to keep things simple, I’m never really happy until I’ve mucked it up and made everything way too complicated. Do you really think jewelry design would be any different for me?
These agate claws have rather large holes in them, so it was easy to put extra wires through it. For this piece I took advantage of that and used the extra wires to make a much wider bail. This made it possible for me to trap a small quartz cabochon against the front of the bail with a woven bezel. The bezel I used is similar to the one I teach in my Odyssey tutorial, except that I used the weaving wire to attach it to the bail in several places as I went along. From there I continued to weave along the length of the stone as in the Woven Crystal Point Wrap tutorial. To make it more interesting, in a couple places I curled the frame wires back over themselves as I wove the wire over them to create curls and spirals.
If you are interested in purchasing faux labradorite polymer clay cabochons, I still have a few available in my supply shop on etsy, WireAndBeadSupplies.
If you would like more information about the first pendant shown above, you can find it at Fairies In The Forest.
