Jewellery – Hopefully Creative

Silver Leaf

Little silver leaf bracelet.

[I forgot to hit publish on this one, this was finished before the third project]

The second project in the jewelry course (check out my first ring!), was to make something with a fair amount of soldering. The examples I got were a link bracelet or necklace. Since I still don’t wear much jewelry, I didn’t necessarily want to acquire a lot of silver for a necklace that wouldn’t see much wear. So I opted for a bracelet.

After a bit of heavy Pinteresting, I settled on a leaf design, inspired by this pin and this pin. I made an example link in copper wire to see if it was possible and then measured how big I wanted it to be. I had to size down the design a little because my wrist is quite thin and I wanted to have five links. Then came the endless period of stretching a bar of silver to a much longer and thinner wire. It was a very interesting process that involved annealing (heating up and cooling down), lots of manual turning of cranks and pulling through tiny holes, but I ended up with enough wire to make my links.

After I had the links, I made some little loops to connect the links together. All was soldered and I only melted one bit a little, something that a little sanding can make much less obvious. Once it was all connected, I had to think off a closure method and settled on an elongated pin that could pull through the loop on the last link. It works quite well so far. Some more sanding and polishing and then it was ready for wear.

I like the jingling it does, but it will probably not see much wear.

Silver Bass

A silver and mixed metal bass guitar earring.

After finishing the Silver Elephant in the pre-final class of the year, I had to think of a quick project that I could do in 1+2.5 hours. Luckily, when I was trying to decide on the elephant, I’d also found a pin of a somewhat abstract bass guitar that really struck my fancy. My mother plays bass guitar and wears earrings so I figured I might try to make a bass guitar earring for funsies.

Silver earring shaped like an almost abstract bass guitar with two strings.

Low poly head and neck on a base made out of white paper with a silver earring shaped like a bass guitar

To make it, I flattened a piece of silver in that first hour and did the shaping and finishing in the final class. The plan was to bend it into shape, then solder the one pointy bit, drill holes for strings and finish it with sanding and polishing. I knew that it wasn’t going to hold the correct amount of strings for a bass, so I just drilled two holes in top and bottom. At home, I found some metal wire, made those strings and attached the earring hook. It turned out pretty well and so far, she’s enjoying it.

Silver Elephant

Silver elephant for a necklace.

The aim of the third project in my jewelry course was to do more soldering to get more faith in that. I had to think of something that I wanted to make and in the days preceding that class, I started looking around for inspiration. My one party trick is that I can fold an origami elephant from almost any piece of paper, for example a receipt. I’ve also got one of those elephants on my desk, and I thought, why not immortalize this in silver?!

Silver elephant next to a piece of paper with the original plan.

So I looked for a line drawing to base my elephant on. In the end, I combined two different pins (one and two) and set out to make an simplified elephant. I used square wire and made the different shapes by filing sections away in the corners, bending those and then soldering those joints. The order of operations was purple first, then blue then green. Attach those three together. Make the orange and attach it. Make the brown and attach it. Put the red on and attach a longer bit of lavender and saw that to length. The end of the trunk was almost completely filled in, so I used a drill and my saw to make the hole a bit more obvious.

Order of the silver sections added to the Silver elephant

Lastly, I added a little loop to the back so I could hang him on something. I didn’t want him to be high shine, so I kept the front and back slightly matt, but polished the outside edges to a shine. I found a spang (I don’t know the translation, but it’s a round cord for the neck) in my stash that fit perfectly and would put him at a nice height on my chest. My instructor was very proud that the final product looked so close to the plan and of the finishing and soldering that I’d done. I’m also happy with it and hope to wear it sometime.

Fuzzy Earrings

One step fuzzy earrings to liven up your face.

Have you ever wandered into a shop, saw some very cute fuzzy balls and immediately wanted to make earrings out of them even though you do not wear earrings? Well, that’s exactly what happened here.

Purple fuzzy earring balls with gold hardware

Pink fuzzy earring balls with gold hardware

I found the last package of five fuzzy balls, two pink, two purple and one in another colour that I have already forgotten. They had some gold-coloured hardware on top with a hole in it. So I bought them, some gold-coloured earring hoops and hangers and asked a colleague if she would be interested. She was, so I just attached the two pieces and called it a day. I think they are adorable.

Waves Ring

Making a shiny wave ring.

I’ve been taking a jewelry making course for the past couple of months. It’s been fun and I’ve been severely challenged in the patience department. The first classes were about reading measuring tools, how to saw, what soldering entails and how much sanding is going to be required for any project. Then we got started on our first item.

For the first project, we needed to make a ring composed of a simple inner ring and an outer ring with some sort of decoration it. Since I never wear rings, I didn’t want to make a giant thing, but it needed some size in order to get a decoration in it. What I settled on is making a short-ish inner ring, and then make an even shorter outer ring with a flat bottom edge and a wavy top edge. Once I managed the sawing of the outer ring, I also decided to drill some holes and saw some lines for more wave action.

Then there was some amount of sanding and polishing before soldering the two rings together. There’s one line decoration that came out great, and two that were partially filled in during the soldering process – can’t be perfect when you’re still learning. On to so many sessions of filing, sanding and polishing the thing to a high sheen. I learned about something that translates to ‘skin spots’, which is apparently copper coming out on the surface of the silver and looks like a dirty spot. I managed to get them all out in the end though. I have still not managed to wear it for a full day and I’m not sure that I ever will, but the process and the people in the class make it very enjoyable.

Jingles!

A while ago, I was going around the shops in town and found some really nice beads and a bracelet with rings to hang things on. I also found some bells.. So once I got home, I added bells to the bracelet, and three bells to some earring hooks. I also added the beads to earring hooks, so within an hour I had three sets of earrings and a bracelet.

Since I don’t have holes in my ears, the earrings went on to be presents for my mother and a friend. My mother phoned me a while later telling me that the bell-earrings were impossible to wear, since they jingle so close to the ear. The bracelet is much easier to bear since it’s further away. I do enjoy wearing it every now and again.

Put a Bow on it

[Update below!]

At some point I saw a girl with a large bow in her hair. I immediately wanted one too. This was… 2 years ago. Now, I know bows are not the most difficult objects to make, but apparently I was to lazy to actually do something about it. Until now!

I grabbed a bit of felt, cut a long strip, cut pointy bits on the two ends, did a bit of folding, a bit of sewing, some more cutting and I had myself a hair bow! Then I figured out that my hair is so dark, that my bow doesn’t actually show up very clearly in it… I may have to remedy that with another 5 minute bow in another colour.

img_20161029_111026968

I put a hair elastic on the back so that I could wear it. This seems to work fairly well. So I’m happy with it. Now I just need to see whether it will swoop down or fall out during the course of the day. On to testing it is!

UPDATE:

I decided that I indeed needed some more, after wearing the black one all day yesterday. So this morning I set out to create two more. One identical to yesterday’s but in red, and a blue bow with a clip on the back and no .. pointy end bits? Here they are!

And here’s how I wore it, for about 2 minutes (never do this in real life….). Also, in case you are wondering, yes, my hair is partly grey; natural highlights or so they say.

Watching the Watches

You may recall my first self-made watch-band (here), which has been in constant rotation since first assembly. I did change out the watch face at some point for one with clearer numbers on it. Now, what I found out was that watches that have non-movable supports, in the picture below the one on the strap and the middle and bottom one on the right side, fit perfectly fine in this. They don’t slide around and stay put. However, the watches on the left, weren’t so keen. They would move and therefore I never really put them in this band.

Watches

Thus, a new strap started to take shape in my mind. It is an alternative design, with the opening at the top of the wrist instead of at the bottom. I know this sounds weird, but the pictures make it make sense, hopefully. The buckle is attached to approximate middle of the band, then goes through a loop attached with a rivet on one side, then on goes the watch face, you put it on the wrist and pull the strap trough the riveted loop on the other side and through the buckle to close.

Open front Open back

The reason why I’m liking the idea and not the execution so much anymore is because I dropped the watch face every second time I put the watch on. Also, because of the heaviness, I ended up with the watch on the underside of my wrist more often than not. I want to have my watch on top. Left, the watch as it was when I’d just made it, and right after wearing it for a week or more. You can see the points splaying more, and that, and the stretching of the thin strap was most likely what kept pulling the watch down.

Front begin Top end

Below you can also see the bottom buckle and the side view.

Back Side

I do like the idea with the single rivet loops and I’m planning on making a band that opens like normal at the bottom, but does have pointy bits on the front. I wanted to make the new one today, but I got distracted by new ideas. What if I didn’t use loops or rivets to make the watches interchangeable but created built-in loops in the band itself?!

Looping

I created a sort of wave-ish design with pointy bits around the watch face on cardboard. Added slits for the thin strap to pass though and copied it all onto leather. Simply cutting it out, and riveting the buckle on, and done it was!

Front Back

Apparently there were two different types of leather in the bag of offcuts that I bought last time. I quite like the look of the back, although the front is similar colours. I’m going to have to wear it more to be sure, but I think that the movable support will stay put in this design.

Front Other loop

So that’s it, two new watch bands. My fingers hurt from cutting the leather so I’m going to postpone making the improved version of the top band. That way I can also test if the bottom version actually works to my liking.

Next up, a knitted gift.

Interrobangs and Cats

A while ago, I was browsing the internet (and pinterest) looking for interesting earring inspiration. I found a few pins that I really liked, namely this one, this one and this one. And some others, what the heck, here’s my entire board of crafty things. Anyway, a friend of mine had her birthday a while ago and I still wanted to give her a small present. So I delved into the fimo stash and produced ‘inspired’ by earrings from the three pins above.

Let’s start with interrobang. The interrobang is a symbol used to ask a question in an exited manner, expresses excitement or disbelief in the form of a question, or to end a rhetorical question. It was a marketing idea in the sixties and never really took hold (Wikipedia), but I for one love both the name (BANG!) and the idea it expresses. Nowadays, the interrobang still isn’t used, but we do use the two symbols the interrobang is composed of separately. Say what‽ or She’s pregnant?! (Again Wikipedia). I came across the name at some point in the past when I was reading a post about (potentially) useful punctuation marks. That might also be where I learned that the &-symbol is called an ampersand. Which is information I actually regularly use in my day-to-day life.

So, I didn’t make the interrobang, I just really wanted to talk about it. I did make earrings with a loose ? and !, one for each ear. Black & Metal, a good combination right? I deviated from the original by putting the pin through the question mark completely. I actually like this maybe better? Anyway, here they are:

The second was an adaptation from the other two pins, one for each ear. So one dangling cat, and one graceful jumping cat. Well, my cat faces aren’t nearly as nice as the inspiration, but I still quite like them. The friend did say they were heavy, so we’ll see if they work out. It was mainly for fun anyway. So the pictures you’ll see will have a plastic cookie box in them. My ears aren’t pierced and I couldn’t find anything that would work well to show they were supposed to look, so a pierced cookie box it was.

I also need to improve on cat faces and I still want to try the biting shark, and maybe mix it with a surfboard or something. For now though, I liked the results and I think my friend was somewhat interested in them. I had to wait until I’d given them to my friend before I could post them, you understand. On a different note, now I can already tell you that my next installment will be about the pants I finished yesterday and test-wore today. Very high waisted, woolen red pants. I love them.

Changing Times

Sometimes you find something online that you really really like. You wonder if you should buy it or not. So you ask the seller the question that’s haunting you, but receive no reply. What do you guys do?

I decided to create something that would give me a similar vibe, but from scratch. This was my inspiration picture:

Dawanda shop "My old Watch", click the picture for the listing — DaWanda shop “My old Watch”, click the picture for the listing

I really liked this item. The leaves, the thickness of the belt, the vintage-y look, but there was one potential snag. How would it close? The reason this is important for me, is that the last time I bought a watch online, the band was both too long and almost too short at the same time. It was one of those studded wrap watches that wind around your wrist three times. Well, with three times I had so much band left over that it was still studded, so no holes yet. So I decided to have holes added at the end and then I could wear it, but wrapped four times. Depending on the day, this can be just that little bit too tight. So if the watch didn’t have the possibility of having extra holes made to fit my chicken wrists, it wouldn’t work for me.

In the end I purchased six separate watch faces from another DaWanda shop. I bought some leather, a clasp and rivets from a local haberdashery shop. I wanted to be able to change the watch faces depending on my fancy of that day, this would mean that the face wouldn’t be attached completely.

I ended up cutting a 14 cm by 2.5 cm strip of leather and rounding of the edges. Second bit was a ~20 cm by 0.8 cm strip of leather.
I made a hole in the thin strip to thread the clasp through, the leather was then doubled at one end. I made a hole in the double end and another in the thicker strip and riveted them together. I then added supports using a rivet on either side under which the thin strip could pass to keep the watch face in place. I added the watch face for that day and attached a small oak leave pendant using a jump ring. This is the result:

On the left, you can just about see the supports for the thin strip to pass under. Because of the design of this specific watch face, these supports are adequate to keep the face in place. For the next iteration of this design I will place the supports closer to the actual watch face. You can just about see the rivet underneath the end on the right picture. To get an even better idea, you can see it laid out below, with the alternative watch faces. The top right one doesn’t fit in this design, so I’ll have to think of another method for that one.

I think I found a new hobby. I like cutting out leather with sharp tools and using my hammer to whack things. Now I just await the new smaller rivets that are coming my way and create a similar design to this. Maybe I’ll use the wrong side of the leather for some added contrast or such. I might also round of the support edges to make it a little cuter. Use a different colour leather. Add another pendant.. So many possibilities!

Category: Jewellery