Wire Whatchamacallits - Wire Wrapping

Trying to come up with some ideas that were mine, not from other people's ideas. Am I the first to think of these? Of course not! But most of these are my own designs, not from a tutorial. Or at least I put my own spin on them! This post is picture heavy, if you have a slow connection or data limits!

"Copper Kiss" with an AB Swarovski crystal.

The eye, below, is not hand painted, I purchased it, but I love the idea and will probably try making my own one day! What I thought was cool is how it follows you, no matter which way you tilt it..:D

Looking at "Eye Of The Tiger" from the left side.

"Eye Of The Tiger" viewed from the right!

And head on, after patina. Odd, right??

This set of photos is a little different. The Celtic design is NOT mine, I saw it on Pinterest. I love the intricacy of the design and decided to try it. After I showed it to my husband, he said that it was probably a Celtic cross...hadn't considered the idea! But I designed some earrings based on it, as well. I made two of them, one I patina'd, one I did not.

"Celtic Crossover"

This one is not patina'd but I made a fancy bail for it. The Viking Knit necklace is for another pendant I made, which I will picture below.

Here is the set, with earrings...but I added dangles to them after I took this photo.

After adding the dangle. I also made another with no patina and considering making it sit so it looks like a heart. With or without the dangle? Right side up or episdn uwop? ::D Let me know what you think!

This pendant is called "Autumn Winds", and is wrapped around one of my polymer clay Mokume Gane pendants that I made based on Marilyn's tutorial. It is reversible, and made of copper, with the Viking Knit chain from above.

Reverse side.

I'm still making resin items, too. This one contains real beach shells. These are the first bracelets I've made using the mold I bought at Michael's. Works great...you can even put the finished bracelet in the mold upside down with more resin to get rid of the ridge on the top if it's too deep. Or to fill in a bubble. :)

This one has a sort of luminescent glow. It's faux lace with a sort of neon yellow background.

Purple dried moss with gauzy ribbon flowers.

 Back to wire!

This is an adjustable quartz ring made with antiqued copper wire. These rings WERE done with a tutorial...more about it below.

Adjustable laboradorite ring with copper.

Adjustable Ruby Zoisite ring. Love this one!

The tutorial for these adjustable rings is on my Facebook group Wirewrap Tips and Tutorials. It's a little general in the instructions but I love how you can make it your own!

From a Youtube tutorial...just love her designs! (Link below)

This is another design by the same artist on Youtube. Her link is:Lan Anh Handmade. She has such unusual and original designs!

And last, but not least, here are my InSPIRALed Angel Wings. They are still a work in progress...haven't decided on how to connect them to the necklace. But I love that together, they resemble a heart...THIS design is mine....

After patina.

But ... the original idea I had was to use them to cover another design. I love that they look like a heart when closed...but what if I put something behind them? And then I remembered my "Celtic Crossover" pendant...

Peekaboo! Now it looks like a Celtic ANGEL...:)

Even more pronounced when you put the wings behind...:)

Let me know what you think! Thanks for visiting! Drop me a line on Facebook if you like what you see!

Did Vikings Really Knit? - Wire Wrapping

I've gone off on a new tangent...no one who really knows me is surprised! I have to have a way to make my MG cabs into pendants, after all! So I got tired of the beaded bezels which take so long (although they look so pretty!) and joined a new group on FB for wire wrapping. I've done some basic wrapping, as you can see if you browse my blog or my Pinterest page, but nothing so detailed as this! Whether my arthritic hands can handle it is another story, though!

The group, Wire Wrap Tips & Tutorials, is run by a lady named Nicole Hanna, who makes some incredible wrapped jewelry and has some great tutorials for sale, as well as a few freebies she throws in once in a while on her group. She was actually having a sale when I joined, and I couldn't help but buy several of her tutorials! One of them that I really like and doesn't take TOO long to make is a clasp that I loved - actually decided to learn to make Viking Knit to do justice to the clasp! :D I've tried Viking knit before but it never came out that great and I wasn't too thrilled with the whole process...but, it's not too difficult and goes faster than you'd think...I am still trying to get the stitches even. Once you run it through the reducing thingy though, a lot of your mistakes and unevenness just blend in...And to me, it's actually a little faster than beading....

This was the first one I made, so it is very small..a child could wear it. :D

To make Viking knit, you loop lengths of wire around a dowel or other tubular shape to make a sort of netted tube, and then you run it through a wood or plastic paddle type thing that has a succession of smaller and smaller holes. You pull your netted tube through the holes, starting at the largest and ending when it gets to the size you want. which compresses the weave and makes it more flexible, and longer and thinner. I was unsure how long it would be, after I completed it, so my first came up rather short! I understand that some folks just make as long a knitted tube as they can, when they have time, and cut it in parts later...some use shorter ones for earrings or multiple small sections for bracelets, which looks GREAT. It is hard to do colored wire though because the paddle tends to rub the colored coating off. UPDATE: Nicole has a channel/tutorial on Youtube to teach this technique...along with many others! Here is the link to her video on Viking knit and you can subscribe there as well. 

I didn't compress this one much so I filled it with turquoise chips. I made the clasp using the tutorial by Nicole Hanna.

There is a way to make the weaving more dense by weaving back over the original netting but I can't do that one yet! It's very confusing to me when I try and I get lost. Maybe as time goes on and I get better at this I'll figure it out! If you have any helpful tips on double or triple knit, let me know!

I wanted a thicker tube this time so I added more wire to make it longer before reducing and reduced it less. 

This is my first copper one. I had a hard time finding copper that was not coated so I could put a patina on it. I used 24 gauge wire, which is pretty thick for this technique! It's very hard on the hands to pull it tight and make the loops. I'll probably stick to a thinner, more easily bendable gauge of wire in the future!

This is the bracelet before patina.  Learned how to make my own end caps for these bracelets finally!

I haven't bought any patina yet, but I had a bottle of Novacan Black Patina on hand from when I did stained glass, and decided to try it on my copper bracelet and it worked great...especially considering it is at least six years old!

Here it is with patina. I found out the first wire I used to make the end cap did not take the patina at all so I had to make another set with different wire.

One thing that's very cool about Viking knit is how forgiving it is...my loops are awkward, out of line and all different sizes...but once you pull it through the paddle, it all evens out!

One more shot of my bracelet. I love how it came out!

I am on a Viking Knit group on Facebook, too, and one of my fellow group members came up with a wonderful idea using paper clips and a rubberband to start the knit. Usually you make a daisy petal kind of thing with wire and add your copper or silver wire to it for your VK, then cut the daisy off. Welll,,, I am kind of a cheapskate and didn't want to make a wire thing every time and toss out all that wire. So using my group members idea, I adapted it to make a gizmo that works to get me started. I didn't have any paperclips, so I made my own out of stiff copper wire. (Probably the stuff that wouldn't take the patina above!) And I had seen someplace online how someone was using a hex key to hold their VK. I happened to have one just exactly like hers, and went to work!

Here is the hex key. It IS a little heavy. There are different sizes of these things, though...we have a whole set. I imagine you could use smaller ones to get a smaller tube...though it would be hard! Forgive my awful weaving! 

The hex key I am using has an indentation around the long end that the "doohickey" I made from stiff wire fits into perfectly, as you can see below. The hex key has six sides, which is also helpful for eyeing your loops and keeping them more even (do as I say and not as I do! I can NOT get the hang of making those loops even! I did see a video online where he takes pliers after every round and straightens up the loops...gonna try that next time!)

The loops sticking out of the top belong to my homemade doohickey, I use them to fasten it to the hex key.. The loops drooping down  below the hex key top are the doohickey's loops I hang my homemade paper clips on. Then below the paper clips, above my thumb, you can see the actual Viking knit that I made into the copper bracelet above. Notice the clips are all facing the same way...

Below you can see my homemade paper clips and my doohickey. :) I made it with round nose pliers and some stiff wire. The loops sticking up are to fasten it sort of like a safety pin in that I can open and close to put it on the hex key...the loop from one side (sticking up) hooks into the other side and makes a complete circle. This is not a tutorial but you can hopefully see how I made it here.

I bent the paperclips end to make it easier to placing the knitting wire on for the first round. I put them on the doohickey all facing the same way, with the outer pointed end UP so I can slip them off the weaving after it is stiff enough to hold onto the hex key by itself.

That's about all I have to say about my doohickey and VK...other than that you might like to try making one of your own if you like to Viking knit. It isn't permanent but if it breaks you can always make another. :)

Viking knit isn't the ONLY thing I've been doing. I have been learning a lot of techniques for wire weaving from various sites on the internet, and one I've learned a lot from is CSL Designs on Youtube. The woven bracelet is from a tutorial she taught. Love her accent, too! 

Just a simple clasp on this one...mostly because it got kind of big! :D

This cross is based on one of Nicole Hanna's tutorials. It is pink coated copper wire with a glass bead.

Then I cheated a bit by just drilling a hole in some of my cabs and using a pinch bail. :)

This is a five strand braided bezel on one of my Mokume Gane pendants (based on Marilyn's tutorial, of course!)...I got this bezel tutorial from CSL Designs again! She has such great ideas.....

The agate donut below I've had for ages. I got a tutorial from Shaktipa Designs that I had seen someone on one of my groups use and I had to purchase it! My rendition leaves a LOT to be desired though! It's a first try, what do you expect? :D Turns out it was my second purchase from her; I had also purchased her Soutache tutorial, too!

This bail was patina'd.

I also did SOME beading recently, with the other donuts that I've had forever! This time I used some Super Duo beads I got at a local beading store...they just aren't available near me!  #SupportLocalShops   I saw a bracelet someone made with Super Duos on one of my groups and thought it would be perfect for a bail.                                     

This one is beaded with Super Duo beads.

This one was beaded with Twin beads. I like the Super Duos better but the copper are the only color I have and I wanted to see how these did...:) Not that great, lol!

And last, but not least, here's another necklace I completed recently. It is one of my favorite Mokume Gane polymer clay cabs, wrapped in satin brass wire. Brass is very difficult to wire wrap with, and let me tell you, my poor hands know all about it! :) I found the tutorial to wrap the cab online at CLS Designs...love her stuff! I think, now that I know how, I have to go make some end caps for this necklace! Cya! If you have any questions about anything, leave me a comment!

Now you know what I've been doing lately! Let me know what you think in the comments! And make sure to stop by my Pinterest page to see a lot more of my creations, and please give my Facebook page, Karmic Confetti, a like - I just need a few more to reach 100!

Stained glass, engraving and polymer clay

After making the stained glass windchimes the other day, I had several pieces of iridescent blue glass left over. I'm slowly learning to combine the different skillsets I've learned - some are coming as rather "duh" moments....as in, why didn't that occur to me before! For instance, one of my FB groups is a microwave fused glass group and someone mentioned using his ring saw to make an awesome Minion pendant...I have a ring saw AND a grinder and never thought to use them to make shapes for the MWK (microwave kiln)! And another group member mentioned using a Dremel to engrave on glass with no water. I just got a rotary tool and have been wanting to test it out on something and knew it had some diamond bits that came with it, so I decided to give it a try. Do yourself a favor and don't "try" stuff on items you like! I had taken one of those bits of leftover iridescent stained glass and put some polymer clay around it and decided to etch a saying in it after it was baked. let's just say I learned my limitations with a rotary tool! I would never try it without the flex shaft, but it made me too brave! My handwriting isn't that good to begin with because of my arthritis and I ended up screwing up my pendant quite badly. So I tried to fix it by writing my saying in clay and rebaking. I want to antique it to match the frame but I am afraid the lettering will come off so I'm leaving it alone! 

After that little mishap I started playing around some more with the rotary tool and I am pretty happy with the results. I found that using darker glass is better than clear...which really didn't take to this technique too well, although I am still experimenting! I rubbed some paint into the engraving to make it stand out better. Some paints didn't work at all. The one that worked the best was a green metallic paint. I believe the metal flakes in the paint lodged themselves into the engraving. They sparkle in the light, even without the paint. I think there are tiny chips that give it that sparkle. :D

 At this point, I have a choice in how to frame them. I can just use copper tape and solder but I am not sure that that is safe to wear against your skin as a pendant! Maybe as a decoration for your tree, or hanging in a window? I could also grind the edges and then wire wrap them. I made the one below using some metallic green polymer clay and giving it a good antiquing with some brown paint after baking. I pressed the back with some coarse sandpaper with a dusting of cornstarch on it to texture it. I may make others with no back so the light can go through. I really loved this glass - it's sort of mirrored, as you can see the in the left photo. Wish I had more!

Back to experimenting! :)  Thanks for looking! Make sure to stop by my Pinterest page and like my Facebook page! 

2014 Christmas Cards and Beaded Ornament Covers

It's been a while since I posted, thanks to Christmas and other household projects. But I've been making new things all along! I guess I'll start with Christmas!

I had never made any beaded ornaments before, but this year I was determined to make one! I had no pattern, I just saw a few on the internet that I liked the components of and combined them to make a couple that I liked. Love the little snowflake, they are very quick to make! Here is the link to the pattern, which is from a Russian site. The panels I made by looking at one similar and guessing it was brick stitch. :) The one on the right does not have wings! The wings belong to a wire fairy I made - behind it...for another post. :)

Then in the middle of my beading, I had to make my yearly Christmas cards! They weren't as involved as in other years but still took a bit to design. What do you think of the outsides? I have some wonderful embossing folders and had a lot of fun with them this year. The ones that looked like a reindeer sweater were my favorite. Middle right is one of them. Click the picture to enlarge! The metallic paper was cool...looked like metal when I was done embossing. Doesn't photograph too well though!

Here is a closeup of one card. I made the green patterned envelope to match the size of the card from some crappy Christmas scrapbook paper. I have stamped/embossed papers that are just a little ugly with some pretty glittery embossing powders before, but I decided to hold back this time! :) I cut the mats and used an embossing folder for the embossing on the white paper but cheated with the little ready made glittery chalkboard chipboard figure on the lower right. 

Here is the inside of the card! They all had a fireplace inside. Saw it on Pinterest where someone used a crimper to make the border of the fireplace look like paneled wood. Came out cute! (There are other examples of fireplaces like this on my Christmas Pinterest page!) Used another embossing folder to try to make the background by the fireplace look like wallpaper. Stamped the Merry Christmas over the fireplace. I used some kid's holographic large chunk glitter for the fire, and it sparkled nicely! I used a punch for the "doily" and cheated with stocking stickers - they were cuter than anything I could have made! I did break down and buy a die cut for the fireplace grate. I love 40% off coupons! I also used snowflake peel-off stickers from Hobby Lobby to decorate the card and some had this type of wreath - which is also a sticker - and some had a different type. I didn't use my Cricut to make this card, it was pretty easy to do the math since they were all the same. I just used a ruler and a blade to make the few cuts there were. 

Snowflakes were the theme for most of the cards. I used an embossing folder and some very old Christmas paper I'd been holding on to for a long time. Wasn't sure about using pink glittery snowflakes but I think the card worked, don't you? :) The "Season's Greetings" on the bottom right were a stamp/diecut set I had.

Another inside. This was the other type of wreath I ended up using. No doily on this one. 

 I liked this set of earrings, I made several. They feel Christmassy to me!

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Now, on to more recent stuff. I've been playing around with my polymer clay again. I love making the bone/ivory canes! They look so beautiful when they're done right. And I've fallen in love with this one particular mold, which I like making into sun faces. You can see below the difference when the finished clay has not been antiqued! It really brings out their features. 

This is a recent sun I made, using one of the molded faces above. I love playing around with the faces after I mold them, before baking. On this one I only made it one sided but sometimes I sandwich wire between two of them so I can make two sided pieces out of them. 

I had a problem with the edges of some of the clay beads I had used the Lisa Pavelka Magic Glos on, and also when I had two suns that I wanted to meld back to back after baking (below). So I recently tried using this flat wire I found at Hobby Lobby (I've seen it at Michael's, too) as a bezel wire, as you can see in the photo. I glued a black one around my fauxpal in the photo below. I guess I could have done a better job with the seam! In the future I am going to bake them right in the bezel...this was my first experiment! I will also be able to drill holes to hang them by. I am going to use the others I made to cut out and bake the next clay pendants I make in so they'll fit perfectly. Has anyone else tried this? 

This sun is a good example of my bezel idea. I had two of the suns, which I glued together, but the sides showed, so I made a bezel that encased them both. So this little guy is two sided. :)

In the photo below, you can see the black bezel I made a little better. This is the other side of the one above.

While I was looking for my sun mold, I found a couple of other molds I had bought that were supposed to be for fairy and female forms. I wasn't fond of the fairy face but I loved the female one. Once again, it's fun playing with their features, although these are so tiny you'd need a magnifying glass and very steady hands! I had recently joined this cool Facebook group for polymer clay and saw someone using these intricate metal filagree plates to back a pendant and thought I'd try it with these flower filagrees. Love the butterfly one! They have a rather weird cast on some of them because I used pearl clay and it left a pattern on their faces, but I think it makes them look aged! Rather haunting, aren't they? Not sure if they should be pendants or pins...

Here is the butterfly one before antiquing. Big difference, huh! What a beautiful mold!

Another thing I played with was a contest I found, also on Facebook, on a DIFFERENT polymer clay group! I am so excited because Lisa Pavelka is actually a MEMBER and I think she's so talented! She has a different little contest every month - I just joined so they were doing a Valentine's Day Carmex jar challenge. I made the little doohickey below as a decoration for the jar but didn't use it. I made it from a clear rubber stamp! Once again, antiquing made a huge difference! Isn't it cute? It's only.about 1.5" square.

And finally, to end this long post! I made some of my sun faces into ladies. What do you think? Maybe a redhead? Brunette? Lol.

For some reason, this reminds me of the Les Miserables girl. :)

That's it for now! Look for me on Facebook. Karmic Confetti, or my Pinterest page! There is so much more there that I haven't uploaded here yet. Soon! Later!