[ A length of weathered and slightly rusty steel wire, in the shape of a very rough arch; one end has been curled into a spiral, while the other, slightly longer end is bent around into a rough loop. A spiral of hammered copper wire sits just below that end; an s-hook of the same material sits above the arc. Two gently curved lengths of hammered copper wire sit between the arms of the arc, the lower one extending beyond it on the left side. ]
I haven’t done one of these posts in SO LONG. But I actually remembered to take pictures! My brain must be kinda working? or something?
Anyway I don’t tend to do much hammering at home these days, there’s nearly always someone else around & it’s LOUD, but there’s a nice shady spot with tables just outside our one doctor’s office, so when I’ve given Jasper a ride there & I’m gonna be waiting a while, I bring my jewelry bag & work on stuff. I’d gotten the copper for four faery home decor pieces cut & bent, the beads all picked out, & everything for each one stuffed into a separate ziploc, so I stuck two in with the jewelry stuff & brought em along.
… & then once I’d hammered the copper for the first one, I got all caught up working on it & didn’t get to the second one til the week after, welp.
The pic up top is all the pieces laid out, once I’d gotten the hammering done. & just below are the beads I picked out, & the gold-colored wire I decided to use.
[ Sitting on a work surface that looks like someone sewed blue fabric to a mouse pad are a spool of gold-colored wire, a pair of round-nosed jewelry pliers, a little plastic jar with faintly yellow-tinged round beads which are clearly meant to evoke pearls, and another little jar with blue glass beads and larger conical faceted beads that are sort of clear with blue overtones. ]
I knew I was going to use the cone beads for danglies — I’d known that as soon as I saw them — so it was just a question of how to put them together. The upper cross piece by necessity was going to need shorter danglies, since it’s close to the one below it, & those went together fast.
[ Three danglies, each with one of the cone beads at the bottom, point down, with three of the blue glass beads strung onto wire above them. They’re sitting just below the shorter copper cross piece; two have already been hooked in place by wire wrapped around the cross piece, and the third is waiting its turn. ]
Then longer ones for the bottom cross piece, but much the same theme.
[ A single dangly; it’s similar to the shorter ones, but instead of three small blue beads, there are two, then one of the not-pearls, then two more of the blue beads. ]
Five of those, & then I needed to figure out how I wanted to handle the extra-special one to go on the sticky-out end of the lower cross piece.
[ Three of the longer danglies sit next to the extra-special conical bead, which has a fancy metal bead cap on its wider end. ]
The problem was that the not-pearls & the blue beads are the same width, even though the not-pearls are round & the blue ones are flattened circles, so the not-pearls stand out a bit, but not enough. I dug through my jewelry bag to see if I had anything larger that would work there instead, but there wasn’t anything suitable, so I tabled that & moved on to the next bit.
Which is where I made a mistake. See, the next bit was winding wire around the steel piece, & I wasn’t sure if I wanted to use the blue beads or the not-pearls there, so I quickly wrapped one of each in place to see which one my brain liked better.
[ A close view of each of the little jars; the one with the blue beads doesn’t have any conical ones in it, now. There’s also the spiralled end of the steel wire, which has thinner gold-colored wire wrapped around it, holding a blue bead in place with one wrap and a not-pearl with the next. ]
My brain, predictably, say ‘yes that looks amazing just like that, perfect’ & thus I was required to do the whole thing with alternating blue and not-pearl beads.
… I’m not unhappy about that. tbh I think it looks pretty damn good.
& that’s where I stopped taking pictures, because I couldn’t finish up the rest until I got home & found a good bead for the last piece, at which point I forgot all about the existence of cameras, as I usually do.
But you can see below how it turned out. It turned out GOOD.
[ The finished piece: it’s arranged as it was in the first picture, but now the upper cross piece has the three short dangles hanging from it, the lower one has the five longer ones, the extra-special dangly has a clear round glass bead in place of the not-pearls in the longer ones, and the entire hunk of steel wire is wrapped round with gold-colored wire holding alternating blue and not-pearl beads in place. ]
In fact you kind of have to look here, because it’s not listed on my site; someone bought it five minutes after I posted it.
… yeah, I’m pretty proud of that.
