Amazing What You Can Do With Beads!

This is a beaded garland that I finished up about 3 weeks ago.  It just sold at the local gift shop.  It's approximately 4 feet long, with a mix of brightly colored beads spun on craft wire.  The embellishments range from french beaded flowers to Swarovski crystal dragonflies and lots of stuff in between.  It's a great way to let your imagination loose.  The woman who bought this is using it on her Christmas tree this holiday season and then will use it in her sun room, looped and swagged in front of the windows so the crystals catch the light.

Earrings!

A few easy-to-make earrings created by yours truly. All of these have hand-made earwires. Making earwires is easy. I would strongly suggest that you never buy another earwire, since you can make them yourself much more cheaply.

 All you need is wire, pliers, a mandrel (I use both of the ones shown in the link image and they are well worth the money), a bench block or steel block for hammering. Make sure your block is smooth and free of gouges. If yours is like mine was, you may need to use an angle-grinder to get it back to smooth. More about that later!

 I also suggest using a rawhide mallet or a hard plastic mallet so you don't mar your wire. Years ago, before I bit the bullet and paid what I thought was an atrocious amount for my rawhide mallet (it's invaluable to me now), I would place a piece of suede over my findings before hammering with my chasing hammer. Still not a great way to do it. At least purchase a hard plastic mallet. Beadsmith makes one and it's very affordable. You can buy it here: Dual Head Plastic Mallet and you can also purchase replacement heads for it.  I use this for smaller items rather than trying to work small with a big rawhide mallet.  :)

These are turquoise beads with a "bezel" of 2mm sterling beads

These are copper tubes, freshwater pearls, sterling and copper beads with sterling earwires. 

These are some fun earrings I made with copper wire and garnet beads

These are freeform sterling wire earrings - not my best effort, but fun and easy to make.  They terminate in copper and garnets.  I probably should have soldered the top loop and my camera is better than the human eye, because it picks up things like cut marks made from my flush cuts.  That's a good enough reason to file and solder.  

These are twisted 18ga square sterling wire, hammered and formed (with half-round pliers), and garnet beads on pure copper head pins. 

None of these earrings required soldering, but if you want to make absolutely positive your jump rings won't come apart, you should probably hit them with a torch and solder them closed, if possible. 

I also find that when making earwires, a very easy way to smooth the "pointy" ends is with a metal nail file.  Seriously.  This actually works better for this purpose than any jeweler's file I've used. It's quick, easy, and you're not as likely to take off as much of your fingernails with it as you would a jeweler's file.  :)  

If you have a steel-shot tumbler, it's a good idea to throw all your findings in it for a bit to harden them up, especially if you're working in dead soft wire.  If you don't have one, though, you can work-harden by straightening your wire with a polishing cloth - just run it the length of your wire several times, and/or by lightly hammering when you're finished making earwires.  Jump rings and pins should be put in a tumbler or made with half-hard wire if at all possible.  

I use fine silver or Sterlium for my earwires and other findings.  Sterlium is alloyed with Germanium and doesn't show firescale the way sterling silver does.  Sterling will show firescale when heated because of the copper alloy.  You'll see a darkening after you fire it, and although pickle will remove a bit of this, you'll still be left with some dark spots.  The only time efficient way to deal with that for something as small as a finding is to tumble the item to polish it.  Fine silver won't show fire scale because there's no copper in it.  It's .999 silver which is pretty darned close to pure silver.  

Beaded Christmas Ornament

This one does double duty. It can be hung on the holiday shrub and it can be hung in a sunny window year-round to add some rainbows in your life. I went a bit overboard on this - the frame is 18 ga twisted square sterling silver wire. All the beads except for the cloisonne heart are Swarovski bicones.

And from a different angle:

Beaded Wreath Christmas Ornament

Just finished this. I'm very happy with the way it turned out. How is it made? Simple! I used a round base that had holes in it, but you could just as easily use heavy gauge wire for your base. The greenery is a mix of green seeds (greenery isn't all one color of green!) spun onto 24 ga brass wire. I spun just enough for each "branch" at a time, wired it down to the base, and then spun the next branch. The red beads are round garnet-colored czech glass, 6mm. I'd add one to the wire every few branches and then spin the green seeds on. Each branch is twisted for texture. I simply kept wiring around the form until I got it looking the way I wanted it. The loop is 4mm garnet Swarovski bicones.

This one is Swarovski crystals attached to a 20 ga copper base. I simply coiled copper wire around a dowel, pulled it off, and then carefully stretched it apart until the loops created by the coils showed individually. I looped one end with my pliers and hooked the opposite end of the stretched coils to it to make a circular base.

It's important to hammer this type of base to flatten it, but you don't want to hammer too hard because you may weaken it. Just give it a few whacks with a plastic or rawhide mallet.

PMC Dried Out? Try This

I tried this on a lump I've had for four years, because I'm getting back into PMC/Art Clay. I dug up my lump and it was rock hard. Okay - what is PMC made of? Fine silver, binders and water. Why does it dry up even if it's still in an unopened package? Water evaporates. Doesn't matter what it's in, really - it will evaporate.

All you need to do to get your clay workable again is follow these instructions. It works. I tried it - it's from Tim McCreight's PMC Guild website.

PMC is made of particles of precious metal, an organic binder, and water. The precious metal and the binder stay the same, but it's possible for the water to evaporate over time, even though the PMC has never been opened. If, when you open the box, the PMC is stiff and hard to form, it simply needs more water.

I've successfully re-hydrated PMC that had dried out rock-hard. It's easy to do: open the box and hold the lump of PMC under running water for a few seconds so its surface gets totally wet. Rewrap it in cellophane and set it aside overnight, periodically kneading the lump through the cellophane. The goal is to get the moisture into the PMC. This takes time because it is a very dense material. Unwrap and test the PMC: you should be able to flatten it into a disk without cracks appearing at the edges. If it's still too stiff, wet and rewrap it again and let it sit longer. Two treatments are usually enough, but you may continue until the PMC returns to its original, soft, workable consistency.

Also you can grind the clay up in a spice grinder or pepper grinder into a fine powder, then slowly add water drop by drop allowing time for the moisture to absorb.

This totally works (Tim McCreight is AWESOME) but you MUST be patient. Don't try to work your clay if it has cracks in it the first time you test it after adding water. Just add a few more drops of water, wrap it up again and let it sit overnight - knead it through the wrapping just as you did the first time and test again. You may need to do this a few times depending on how dry it is, but it DOES work. PMC and Art Clay are way too expensive to throw out just because they dried out. So be a smart artisan; rescue and reuse!

SQUAWK! Bird Houses Like You've Never Seen them!

This week's featured Artisan, Syd Baker,a former Hallmark Artist, is using his gifts to give our feathered friends lovely custom homes. Syd's shop, SQUAWK, is chock full of avian architectural delights.

These birdhouses are specifically built to attract the smaller birds. These whimsical custom homes will bring a smile to your face as well as to all the chickadees and goldfinches in your area. Keep a close watch and you WILL see a bird smile. Truly. Keep an eye on his shop, too, because he'll have Squawk miniatures for your holiday shrub later in the year!

To learn more about Syd and his wellspring of creativity, check out his website: Other 3D Lands. You will be amazed, amused and I bet you'll giggulate as much as my friend, Becky, does!

Bead Crochet- Literally!

When bead artists talk about bead crochet they're speaking of crocheting with some sort of string that's been strung with beads and on the yarn-over, feeding beads down. Me? I took it a step farther. I spun around two yards of Supplemax with a seed mix, and tied off the ends. Then I literally single-crocheted the bead string itself. No yarn-over, no feeding of beads. This one is an experiment. It's a row of chain stitch to 6.5 inches and a row of single crochet back. Next one will be two rows of single crochet and then I'm going to fold it in half, length-wise and stitch the side closed with supplemax. It's clear so it can't be seen, especially if you're feeding it through beads as you go. Go up and down the seam two or three times for strength.

On this one, I'll make the clasp loop out of stretchy so that the loop doesn't have to be huge. I kinda like this idea. I'm sure "true" bead crochet people would gasp in horror, but hey - what's art about if not creativity and innovation?