Copper Wire Jewelers Issue 4

Open publication - Free publishing - More wire wrap

The Week's Work

  My brief fling with ordinary jewelry appears to be over already:)

The weeks work turned out to be only an excersize, rather than a finished design. I was 80% done when I suddenly decided to scrap it and start all over.

I wasn't prepared for how strong and dense the twining weave would be. I had been advised to use smaller guage wire, but did I listen?  lol

Other mistakes and lessons learned besides wire guage issues were, pulling too tight on my spoke wires and the LOS cannot be cleaned from between the weave, so I better want it to be black!

Also got biggest blister ever! 

I'm Back

   I've recently begun to feel some of that old excitement about wire and jewelry stirring about in my solar plexus area:) Even though I have been feeling dry inside, I have never been without ideas to work on. So I would not call my dry spell 'artist block' I guess. The christmas present is nearing completion, and I am happy with how it has turned out, but I can see that the design is really just a precursor of things to come and not the final idea. Still it will be loved by it's future owner.  

  Ever since I made 'The Buried Treasure" necklace I have been fascinated with mixing vintage glass or plastic with gemstone and sterling There were actually two failed projects still on my desk from a month ago. One was an octopus bead in vintage glass and sterling and another was an attempt to set a vintage button in an attractive manner in wire. This mixing idea led me into viewing more 'found object' type jewelry online and in books at the bookstore. I discovered that Richard Salley has a free tutorial on making a found object locket. Of course, my locket is better:)  I'm just kidding!!  Go look and enjoy!  http://www.rsalley.com/  Just click on "Tutorial' on the left hand side.

  During my visit with my parents, my mother and I dived into a Mary Hettsmansperger project from one of my mother's quilting magazines. Mary was making these pieced fabric banners and then embellishing them with found object stuff, like pieces of wire, sticks, buttons, rusted bottle caps etc etc

  So we put together two banners, one for each of us, and searched her craft room for found objects, trash, even a vintage silver fork. My mother lives near the beach and she has collected driftwood so I was even able to get a piece of that to hang my banner on at home. Here is my banner and a pile of the stuff I collected from her house to maybe sew on to it.

  The whole time we did the project we were encouraging each other to be sloppy, and to not care overly much about perfection so that we could be like Mary;) At least this helped us get it done in the short time we had:)

  Last night I faced the dreaded task of cleaning up the craft table:(  I decided it was high time I cleared the way for new ideas and projects and made space for a new mess. The vintage celluloid button I had tried to set in wire a month ago was laying on the table, and I suddenly knew how to finish it. So in between a small effort to clean the table I made a necklace using mixed elements, of celluloid, tourmaline, sterling and copper accents.

  When my daughter came home that evening I enlisted her aid to determine a proper length for it and she became so feverish in her desire for this design that I gave it to her. The poor girl tries so hard to not get attached to the jewelry that I make, but I haven't seen her this excited in a long time. Sometimes you just know when a particular design belongs to someone, don't you?

  One of the things she liked about the necklace was, as she said "it's so accessible". She was warily looking at me for fear of how I would take that. I found it awfully funny, I know many of my designs are not great for every day wear, and are kind of arty;) But as she pointed out, this very accessible design has so many of my latest ideas and my strong hand print on it and she loves that as well.

  I still have not met my daughter's challenge to make every day earrings for her birthday. I think I actually thought that cleaning up the craft table was a less dreadful task than facing the 'ordinary earring' lol.

  More button jewelry and 'every day' designs to come I hope;)

Quick Update

  I've made some progress technique wise and I'm working on a new design (which of course takes forever to accomplish).  I'm thinking of saving this new design to use as a Christmas present, which means I can't post it until late December.

  My daughter's birthday is coming up in a month and she asked me to make her some every day earrings. Oy! I haven't made earrings in almost a year and I have no every day designs! So that will be a challenge. I did think up another nifty wire idea for her birthday, but I won't be able to post that either until early November.

I'm headed to Oregon this weekend to visit my parents, so I don't think there will be any wire happenings getting done this week.

I just wanted to let you guys know, it might be a little slow around here for a while but I'm still in the game!!

The Tangle

  I'm still not feeling very enthusiastic about wire. I did submit some work to a juried website last week and got rejected. This only deepened my lack of enthusiasm:(

  I do trust that my excitement and interest will return in time if I am patient about it.

  I have seen some wire artists over the years abandon wire for metalsmithing. It's not like wire workers have any where to go to get advanced teaching and personal one and one training at the level you are at. There is just nothing like that out there for us.

  It can be tempting to ditch wire when it gets tough or you struggle to bring your ideas into reality and have noone to help you.

  I'm not ready to ditch wire yet.

Spiral Brooch

I continue to be fascinated by the spiral in all its forms, both open and closed, coiled, straight, flat or in 3d.

This brooch design allowed me to bring another idea to life without being thwarted by trinket boxes:) I wore it to the office today on a black top and it  feels unique and special;)

Rebellion

I know it's been a long time since I posted, but I am going through a rebellious phase right now.

Just 6 weeks ago I was smugly patting myself on the back for having so much patience to do these long projects. I thought I had conquered myself. But, I was getting tired and I wondered about other areas of my life that were getting neglected because of it.

My daughter got a job recently and since we are sharing only one car in the household, this has disrupted the daily routine of my life. I've never seen anyone so happy to have a job though!

I'm not sure what direction I want to go in next with wire and jewelry, and due to some recent failures, my motivation is low.

I know that things will turn around again. After I regroup;)