The Pilot's Daughter

I have been having some pretty terrible luck with cameras recently but, I felt the need to share these new pieces so I finally went out and got new batteries. Again. Let’s hope this set lasts a little longer than the last. I finished up the steampunk necklace from the other week – it had been bothering me a bit; it just seemed incomplete and undramatic so I added a second layer of chainmail, this one is gunmetal.  I love the look of antique copper and gunmetal, unfortunately the copper does not show up very well against the hemp necklace display but if you look closely, you can tell that the small rings are coppery. I’m not totally sold on the three  charms on the triangle but without them it, again, seems unfinished. I could definitely use some feedback on this one.

The next piece was inspired by my birthday present and the color combination and variety of beads and colored jumprings makes me happy. These are Skullcandy Ti headphones and they are VERY nice. I never knew an iPod could actually sound so good, with REAL bass and all! This particular set is a collaboration with Tokidoki, one of my absolute favorite designers. I just adore the combination of bright, vivid colors with skulls (and killer sound). Something about his designs is vary chaotic and happy with appeals to me deeply. My ideal mindset is to be carefree in the face of the chaos that is life; sometimes I achieve this and sometimes I fail miserably but these headphones (and now this necklace) remind me of my goal and help cheer me up so I can realize it.

This one of a kind necklace features a wire wrapped white plastic skull, purple fossil beads, striped and frosted furnace glass, silver fiberoptic stars, yellow and green Muzkui glass cubes, a handmaid (faux) toggle clasp, silver chain, blue and fuschia 1/2 inch jump rings, a re-purposed pink sparkly star hair clip (w/wire wrapped blue glass cube), and a black wooden tab. I say faux toggle clasp because, although it almost works as one, the bar is slightly too long and so I have added an adorable silver star clasp above it to make life easier on myself.

This necklace went through about a dozen variations before I was finally completely satisfied and I wish I’d had a working for the process; it was a really fun project and I got to use a bunch of odds and ends I had lying around.  I’d love to hear what you think!

From now until Valentine’s day, any order including one of these pendants will get a small, free, surprise for your beading pleasure! For your convenience, I have linked each one of our vegan ivory hearts right here, in amongst these little Valentine’s jewelry ideas.

Hearts Keychain
For something a little different, why not try use one of these heart shaped pendants to create a beautiful and strong keychain, sure to remain beautiful even after lots of use.

Two Hearts Necklace
A beautiful way to say “I Love You”, this easy necklace incorporates hearts of two different colors, representing you and your significant other. Personalize it by choosing each of your favorite colors and adding some sparkle with silver or gold accents. Simply string a slider (that fits snugly) around both ends of a long piece of leather, string a heart on each end , and secure them by folding the leather over and wirewrapping it tightly.

Key to My Heart Necklace
A common theme is to combine a heart shaped pendant with a key accent. Strung on ribbon and tied at the side with a bow, this idea can be dressed up or down with ease! Replace the ribbon with chain for a more grown-up look or, for more color, create a beaded ribbon by stringing seed beads.

Happy Valentine’s & happy crafting!

]]> http://www.fortheloveofbeads.com/blog/emilys-projects/hearts-color/feed/ 2 http://www.fortheloveofbeads.com/blog/emilys-projects/steampunk-backgrounds/ http://www.fortheloveofbeads.com/blog/emilys-projects/steampunk-backgrounds/#comments Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:59:21 +0000 Emily http://www.fortheloveofbeads.com/blog/?p=1291 Hello! While Antonio keeps the blog up-to-date with useful tips and interesting interviews, I have been working away in the background on some upcoming changes to the store as well as gettng in new products and spending some time on actual jewelry-making! Isn’t it nice when we have time for the things we love?

Fancy Background & Props!

As much as I love all things steampunk, (hence my deep love for the Wunderkammer blog) I have never really done much of it myself so I took the opportunity to change that when I found these wonderful antiqued copper and brass jumprings. Paired with some gunmetal rings I already had lying around, they were just begging to be made into something pretty. I dug around in my stash and came up with some brass wings as well and that’s when I suddenly had an image in my mind of what I wanted.

Really this necklace took very little time to make once the sudden inspiration moment hit; well as little time as opening and closing all these tiny rings can! Of course, the effort and time put into something doesn’t always equal the results and I am fantastically happy with this piece despite its relatively simple construction.

The big challenge came in trying to photograph it. See, I work half the time at an office with the rest of my team; the programmer, the designer, etc, and the other half the time at home. At the office I have a nice tripod but rather yellow artificial light and windows that generally don’t let in much sunlight even at the best of times. At home, however, I have nice big windows that face west and therefore lots of natural light even on crappy days… but no tripod. The tripod isn’t such a big deal when its really bright but in partial brightness and with a macro lens and fancy DSLR, my hands are just not steady enough. I was also playing around with more interesting backgrounds and props having been inspired by Heather’s photography; I want to find a set and props that are fun and distinctive and neutral enough to complement any piece.

Simple Hemp Necklace Display

Needless to say, I have not quite found what I want yet and the one picture that turned out mostly ok (a little fuzzy but we’ll blame the aperture for that) seems to me a bit cluttered and busy – its hard to know that the necklace is the focal point. Still, I think the background has some potential if I can find the right way to use it… maybe further away and more out of focus… and I like the dragon despite its tendency to let chain easily slip between its head and wings and then refuse to come back out!

The second photograph was taken at the office in artificial lighting and then adjusted a bit in Photoshop to correct the color balance. While its technically a pretty nice photograph, I can’t help but feel its a little boring and certainly doesn’t tell anyone, at a glance, who took it.

What do you think, dear reader? Does my collage of Da Vinci scribblings have some potential or is it just too distracting? Is the necklace display unbearably boring or is a technically good photograph enough?

Take care & happy crafting!

Spring Comes!

I have been doing far too much looking at pretty things and not enough making of pretty things lately so, over the past few nights (while waiting on video game buddies) I have been working on this charm-heavy bracelet. I love the little blue fiber optic stars; the pink flowers with their fossil bead centres, and the silver butterflies add a lovely touch of spring to my otherwise dull, chosen-purely-for-warmth, ensemble. Just looking at it sitting around my wrist is enough to remind me that the winter won’t last forever! Of course it will be a lot more comfortable once this long-sleeve weather is over but I can’t help but wear it anyway -  there is something really nice about bracelets because you can see them as you wear them; the rest of my jewelry feels like it is for everyone else to look at and admire whereas this bracelet is for me.

The purple stars are made of my favorite material ever – vegetable ivory – and were a bit of a challenge to connect. See, everything else has vertical holes making headpins easy and convenient to use with them, but, these adorable purple hearts, they are drilled like charms with the hole through one point – what to do!?

At first I tried to find some jump rings that would fit through the fairly small holes but, even when I could get them on the jump rings, they did not move very much and seemed altogether too static so I went back to the headpins. I knew I didn’t want to just hang them sideways and I played around with a few different ways of attaching them before settling on this: I simply wrapped the headpin around the star and back under itself then pulled it as tight as I could – luckily vegetable ivory is quite strong so I knew I wouldn’t break the stars as I pulled.  Unfortunately the headpins I had when I started were too short to be easily attached to the bracelet once they were secured around the bead so I had to wait until today to get some longer ones.

Now that’s done I am left with only one thing on my to do list for this week – to get my Bead Journal Project piece done! I had a really hard time deciding what I would do each month, and even toyed around with the idea of cheating a little bit and doing something seasonal instead of monthly but… I have finally settled on something that I think will be easy enough to complete monthly and still true to the idea. I’m not going to spoil the surprise yet tho – I have more work to do this weekend now that I have read about a bazillion tutorials and guides on working with seed beads but you’ll see this months piece soon I promise!

Before we get started, I completely forgot to mention that we are offering FREE SHIPPING for the holidays so order now!

I hope you enjoyed yesterday’s Christmas Tree tutorial ’cause here we go again! Its time for part 2: Christmas Wreaths!

Materials
- 66 green 18 gauge  3/16″ID anodized aluminum rings
- 5 yellow 3/36″ID anodized aluminum rings for decoration
- 1 red 24 gauge 1/2″ ID anodized aluminum ring (helps hold shape)
- 6″ green cord
- 4 red beads

Step 1:
Close ten green rings. Loop ten more green rings through the closed rings to make ten interlocking pairs as shown.

Step 2:
Connect your pairs together into a long strand. Use three rings to make each connection as shown in the first picture below. Now, add a third ring next to every other interlocking pair to add some stability to the final piece.

Connect the strand to the large ring by looping a single ring through a set of three. Remember this connection is through the connectors, NOT the interlocking pairs, as shown above.

Step 3:
Once your strand of chainmail is connected all the way around the large ring, close the circle with three more rings and connect this set of three rings to the large ring. Add some cord with a few beads to one side and you’re almost done!

Step 4:
Add the small rings as decorations. Remember from the tree tutorial, these small rings only fit around a couple larger rings so you will likely have to force them in between some rings to fit them in.

All done!

Happy holidays!

Don’t you just love the holidays? My mom sure does and her spirit is certainly infectious.  This year she asked me to make some Christmas charms for her to give to our family on Christmas Eve. I really like what I eventually came up with and so I thought I would make a tutorial for any chainmaillers who celebrate Christmas (or want to give a small but handmade gift to someone who does.) These are also pretty fast so they make good last minute oops-I-forgot-someone gifts too!

I am working in more of an office situation with the rest of the team (as opposed to in my living room in my PJs) and I am having a hard time finding a place where the lighting is right for my incredibly finicky digital camera. I have honestly considered going back to my 50 year old Minolta SLR and buying a scanner just because I know it actually knows how to focus, but I digress.  And now that I have digressed I have an urge to go take some high contrast, black and white, late fall pictures in High Park… I think its the little bit of goth still in me that loves the look of gnarled, old, bare trees surrounded by their fallen leaves. ANYWAY – tutorial time. (Sorry for the wandering mind, I recently rediscovered World of Goo and have been playing a little bit too much… and far too late into the night!)

Materials
- 55 green 18 gauge  3/16″ID anodized aluminum rings
- 4 yellow18 gauge 3/36″ID anodized aluminum rings for decoration
- 3 red 18 gauge 3/36″ID anodized aluminum rings for decoration
- 1 large red ring to hang it from (the size of this ring doesn’t matter very much but if you like the look of these ones they are 1/2″ ID, 24 gauge)

Step 1:
Close eleven green rings. Loop ten more green rings through 10 of these closed rings to create 10 sets of interlocking rings and one little loner: (see below)

Step 2:
Connect one of your interlocking pairs to the large red ring.

Step 3:
Connect two more interlocking pairs to the first one with two green rings. Connect these two pairs together with a single green ring.

Step 4:

Now connect the loner pre-closed ring from before to both of these new pairs. You will now have a little diamond hanging off your big ring. Make it into a triangle by adding interlocking pairs to each side of the loner ring and connecting them to the row above. If you want to make these trees into earrings, skip to step 5 now, otherwise continue your tree by adding a fourth row. You will be running out of room to go through the center loner ring now so just use one ring each to connect the two middle pairs of the bottom row (see picture).

Before making it back into a triangle, connect the middle two pairs to the outside rings of the row above for extra stability.  Add two more pairs to the corners to complete the triangle shape as above.

Step 5:
Add the final pair to the middle of the bottom row to create your tree trunk. (This pair could be brown if you are so inclined.)

Step 6:
Add your decorations! These tiny rings will only fit around two of the green rings, and just barely around the interlocking pairs, so pick your locations for them carefully. Once they were closed, I turned them carefully so any tiny little open gap would be nicely hidden inside.

And?

Voila! All done your mini Christmas tree!

Tomorrow I will have a similar tutorial for the mini wreaths in the first picture. If anything is not clear or you have any other comments or suggestions, I’d love to hear them!

Happy crafting and happy holidays!

I am not one of those girls that gets hugely excited about fancy designer purses but, I have been looking for the ‘perfect purse’ (and spent a small fortune on them in the meantime). The problem is that I can’t seem to find one that matches my style and is interesting with enough pockets for all my stuff and so, it in spirit of DIY, I am making one exactly how I want it. This is the first of series of posts chronicaling my purse’s creation, complete with learning a few new techniques. Coming up there will be some knitting, felting, possibly some embroidery as well, and today: chainmail!

Enough blabbity blab – here are some pictures of the chainmail section which will eventually be a small, secure pocket for money or cards on the outside of the completed purse.

Tools of the trade: chain nose and bent nose pliers, black and blue 3mm anodized aluminum rings (approxiametly 1300 blue, 600 black total).

And the finished chainmail section which measures just under 3 inches square, the perfect size for credit card, ID, cash, etc. For some reason my camera thinks the background is pinkish… which it isn’t.. but you get the idea. This section took probably the longest of all and I am very relieved to have it done, micromail is so fidgety and eye-crossing.

In a couple weeks I will make the main section (knit) and then a couple weeks after that I will share the decoration (felted) and make some final decisions about the strap and extra pockets etc for the inside.

Thanks for looking, happy crafting!

Coming on Monday: part 1 of my first big cross-craft project! This one involves knitting, felting, and chainmail but the project will be revealed on Monday.

TGIF & Happy crafting!

I made the above necklace for Halloween as I have always loved the combination of orange and black, the symbolism of the harvest and the respect for the dead play off each other well; a celebration of both life and life’s impermanence. Loki is a shape-shifting Norse god of mischief who is currently suffering endless torment in Hel, awaiting the coming of Ragnarok when he will lead the armies of the dead against the other gods. (Norse mythology is pretty interesting, like their Roman and Greek counterparts, Norse gods were far from perfect and had a multitude of personality flaws.)

This second piece features an asymmetrical chain closure with two star shaped charms, one red with a silver lightning bolt, one black leather with a dark silver star and silver wire. All the coiled wire beads were crafted by me (and they are lots of fun to make, especially with the bead accents, I still have a bunch I have not used for anything). The focal bead is a coiled wire bead accented with crystal Swarovsky’s.

Both of these pieces are listed in my etsy shop.  You can click on each picture to be taken to that listing.

Coming up next in this series, an interview with a talented wire artist as well as my final thoughts and tips on wirework and wirewrapping.

Happy crafting!