New Copper and Swarovski Pendant

This is another piece I created in the metal studio last Sunday:

 Here is how the copper looked after all the cutting, drilling, and sanding, in preparation for adding the frame and crystals:

This pendant actually was inspired by a distressed, rust-colored frame that I found in the scrapbooking section of Michael's. Love the scrapbooking section! So many inspiring objects and fascinating tools and ingredients there!

I noticed how the frame matched a 20 mm Red Magma Swarovski Cosmic Square I had, both in color and in shape, and started designing the pendant on paper. Once everything fit and worked on the paper model, I cut the copper and did all the smoothing, sawing, and drilling.

Next, I textured the bail, then annealed it and rolled it into placed, then grommeted it to secure it. (The rivet is hidden in the front by the frame.)

Next, I placed the Swarovski Cosmic Square in the center, and then I attached the frame to the pendant. My initial plan had been to rivet the frame to the pendant, but the frame itself was way to thick for me to pierce, so I decided to do a little free-form wiring instead, adding Swarovski crystals (in Crystal Padparadscha) as I went. I love a little bling with my pendants!

So this is the back of the finished pendant, everything all tucked away and smooth!

And the pendant is available in my Etsy shop!

Metal Dogwood Cuff

This cuff was truly a labor of love! I wanted to create an ornamental metal cuff, and had the idea for a sterling silver flower with leaves, and made several sketches, but initially balked at working with the sheet sterling - it's so expensive, and I was so afraid I would make a mistake!

Eventually I screwed up my courage, and started cutting the silver; I annealed, and folded the edges, and then deeply scribed the leaves for texture, following this up with liver of sulfur to enhance the ridges I'd created.

Attaching the flower and leaves was problematic, since I had already folded and textured the cuff. I was finally able to solder the leaves to the cuff, but I wasn't confident in my joins because only small areas took the solder, so the leaves were also riveted to the cuff. The height of the leaves prevented any soldering of the flower to the cuff, so I wired the flower to the cuff using Swarovski crystals to create the flower's center, with a pop of color. Graceful copper tendrils were then wired around the flower and leaves. I ultimately affixed a leather swatch to the inside of the cuff to hide all my rivets and wires, and protect the wearer's skin and clothing (even though everything was carefully filed down and smoothed!)

The cuff is malleable, so it will form to your wrist easily, and will fit up to size 7.5.

This elegant, contemporary piece of wearable art is now available in my Etsy shop.

Wine Cork Necklace

This cork bears the W. C. Fields quote: "What scoundrel stole the cork from my lunch." I ran sterling silver wire through it (it is an unused cork), capped each end with textured copper and steel washers, a copper bead cap, and a piece of sponge coral, and hung it from copper cable chain.

And it's available in my Etsy shop!

This was a fun project, and they'd make great key fobs, too. I'd like to make more!

New Tie-Dyed Copper Cuff

There is a brand spanking, shiny, new copper cuff in my Etsy shop this morning.

It started as sheet copper.

I cut a narrow strip, and deeply acid-etched it to achieve the texture, and then colored it with alcohol inks. Then I gently sanded the surface of the strip to take all the color off my texture ridges, so that my lovely etched texture, and the beautiful copper,  showed.


This picture shows the strip before I shellacked it to achieve the permanent, colorfast, shiny finish shown in the picture above. See my beautiful texture?

Alcohol inks are wondrous (yep, alcohol inks from the scrapbooking section!) While their color selection is quite narrow, there are so many different ways they can be used to color metal!

I loved the look of this "tie-dyed" strip of metal, and just wanted it to be shiny. Is that asking so much?? I already knew from previous experimenting with the alcohol inks that if I used embossing powder to seal the finish and give it shine, all the colors would bleed together, and I would end up with the hippie version of my "Spinach Omelet" pendant:

Alcohol inks LOVE to bleed, and blend, and comingle.

And that was not what I wanted. I pondered for several days before figuring out how to achieve my shiny, colorfast finish while preventing color bleed. The method I finally hit on still allowed a small amount of bleeding where the color blocks meet, and unfortunately it was just enough to partially obscure the beautiful texturing I worked so hard to achieve, but if you look closely, the texture is still there.

So anyway, I cut and prepped a much wider piece of copper, and deeply etched it again with the same texture as the color strip, attached the color strip to the cuff with decorative grommets, shaped the cuff, and then folded the corners up to provide a more comfortable fit. No rough edges!!

I tumbled it for hours and hours to achieve this brilliant polished shine, and here are lots more pictures of the cuff:

It is 2 inches wide, and approximately a size 7. It is malleable enough to be shaped to conform to your individual wrist comfortably, and can be shaped down to a size 6, or up to a 7.5 (not repeatedly, mind you - but if you aren't a size 7, it can be adjusted by its new owner for perfect fit!)


And while I was waiting for the acid to etch, and the inks to dry, I made a lovely, whimsical pair of unicorn earrings for the Regretsy fans out there.

I haven't listed these in my Etsy shop, but will, upon serious inquiry. I have pics from multiple angles available!

Cold Connections Studio Day

We took the summer off as far as our monthly cold connections studio days, and today was our first day back in about 6 months. We have a terrific, cozy, compatible group who try to get together monthly, and make fabulous cold connections creations, and we all help each other out, and share ideas and tips. It's a lot of fun, and I have really missed it.

Today was a terrifically productive day for me - the ideas were flowing, and I completed 5 projects, and didn't leave anything halfway done, waiting for next time.

I started the morning by tackling the project I dreaded the most: I needed 2 more of these intricate copper flowers that I have used before in necklaces; this time, I wanted them to go on either side of an elaborate, colorful Dutch spiral woven necklace that I finished stitching over 2 years ago, and have just been waiting for the perfect way to finish. (And Yes, I am counting these 2 copper flowers as 2 cold connections projects, because they are a giant pain to make!) This particular Dutch spiral is very fat, and I didn't have enough of the pearls to make a full-length necklace, so my plan is to use the copper flowers to accent each end of the spiral, and then hook into the back of them with chain to finish the necklace.

The liver of sulfur patina turned the flowers almost the same color bronze as the seed beads in the spiral, and I chose 8mm round Sapphire Satin Swarovski crystals as the center of each flower, to bring out the blue in the spiral. It feels great to be clearing out the backlog of partially finished projects I have stored up! 1 down, 725 to go!!


Next, I created this copper pendant, which is acid-etched for texture, fold-formed for more texture, then cut in a crescent shape, with the top portion given a rich blue patina, and then reattached to the copper section with twisted sterling silver jumprings. A hammered sterling silver bail was then wired to the pendant, and all that awaits is the attachment of 2 sterling jumprings to the ends of the bail, and the addition of chain. I have some blue-patinaed copper chain which I plan to mix with some sterling chain to finish this necklace.

Then I moved on to this beaded, fold-formed copper pendant:

This was a lot of fun, probably because I love designing free-form jewelry. I used a couple of different shapes of blue Picasso Czech glass in this piece, and hung it from copper chain, and hope to get it up on Etsy in a couple of days.

I still had an hour to go, so I moved on to a project that the other girls had worked on earlier this morning - these great wine-cork pendants, which could also work as key chains. There are so many different ways to embellish these corks; everyone's looked completely different today.

I used a mixture of copper and stainless steel washers which I texturized with a hammer, a big sponge coral rondelle, a copper bead cap, and wrapped it all together with 16g sterling silver wire. It would definitely be sturdy enough to function as a key ring, but I plan to hang this one from a chain.  

Fun day! I feel so productive!

Loving the Cold Connections!

I have become addicted to Cold Connections - it is the process of creating metal jewelry using basically any methods except soldering. You rivet, grommet, weave, etch with acid, hammer, saw - lots of fun!
This piece is my latest, and in my opinion, my best - it took days of planning and work, and is 3 dimensional. I used copper, sterling silver, stainless steel, and brass, plus a few seed beads, and I just love its asymmetry.

I ended up opting for a simple chain to hang it, because I didn't want to take anything away from the pendant.

This is one of a pair of Cold Connections earrings that I made recently, and heavily embellished with Swarovski crystals, Swarovski pearls, freshwater pearls, and seed beads - embellishing is one of my favorite things to do in ALL of my pieces, but cold connections really allows me to go wild with it.

The earrings were designed to match this pendant - where I actually set a cabochon into the copper sheet without any soldering or weaving - really cool! And, of course, lots of embellishing (or "crapping it up") as one of my friends calls it...

This set is actually available in my Etsy shop - but I just can't part with my 3-D masterpiece!

Cold connections will probably never be my favorite medium - my heart really belongs to Chainmaille, but cold connections is a close second.

If only it were portable, like chainmaille projects....

And on a non-related note - I am currently reading "Open" by Andre Agassi, and I just have to say that this is one of the best books I have read in a long time - I hate to put it down!

Finally

I have been playing around with cold connections for about 7 months now - Cold Connections is the process of creating designs from various metal components without soldering. Heat is still involved, as the metal has to be annealed with the torch frequently because it hardens quickly as you work it.

I have so little time to work with my own designs anymore that I hardly ever finish a project. I have probably 200 or more "WIPs" - Works in Progress - where I have started something, but been interrupted, and never gotten back to finish it up. This can be really irritating!

So most of my cold connections ideas have not fully made it into finished pieces - I think I have one pair of earrings up in my Etsy shop, and one necklace available at my bead shop, but otherwise just a big pile of unfinished stuff.


I created this copper flower at the end of September, during a weekend Cold Connections workshop at my store. It took most of the first day to complete (including tumbling), and features a freshwater pearl at its center.

I had originally planned to simply hang it from a copper chain, but could never even find the time to do that - and the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do something spectacular to show off my beautiful flower, so I spent most of 2 days this week designing this multistrand necklace, which features some more cold connection work (some textured copper links), and some wirework and just plain old beading.


I decided to go all-out asymmetrical with it, and I like the way it turned out. A lot.

I used leopardskin jasper, aqua terra jasper, muscovite, copper, and 3 different colors and shapes of freshwater pearl - and the pictures just don't do it justice. The colors are magnificent.