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!

F-etching Copper - Metal working

Lots of pictures and lots of info in this one! I'm on another Facebook group called Aspiring Metalsmiths. I don't know about anyone else but Facebook is terrible about showing posts to me from the groups and people I am interested in. But recently, I happened to catch a post where someone was talking knowledgeably about etching copper sheets with ingredients most people have in their homes. I was immediately interested because I've seen some beautiful etching and have been wanting to try it but didn't want to buy caustic chemicals or special equipment. I have some 34 g copper sheets I've been holding onto for a while now and decided to give it a try. Mixed results - but the final result is the important  one! I hope you are a patient person because I go into some detail about this!

Apparently there was a coating on the "clear" side of the copper sheets I had. The other side had a bluish-green paint or something so I started on the side that looked like it didn't have a coating...erf. Then I made the mistake of trying to remove the coating on the etched side with 0000 steel wool instead of wet/dry sandpaper, which was a biiiig mistake....left a lot of scratches...so I started over on the other side of the sheets. Used sandpaper to take off the blue coating and restamped everything. Not a great picture but this shows how awful the first try was. :D

Fail!

I guess I should talk more about the method I used. Equal parts of vinegar and hydrogen peroxide - I was told 100 ml of each and 7 ml of salt, which is something like half a teaspoon, I gather. I am pretty sure I used more. I bought fresh supplies of vinegar and peroxide but had sea salt on hand.  The original person said to use iodized but an article I read said don't use iodized so I used what I had. :) The first attempt I tried with Staz-on ink and stamps only. It wasn't a total failure but I saw several sites that said using a Sharpie and/or Staz-on is not tough enough to survive this method, and I agreed after the first attempt's results. So the second try, I used a Versamark embossing pad (yep, same one I use with my fused glass technique!) and embossing powder with some of my many rubber stamps. The problem with using embossing powder is that it is hard to tell how deep the etching is.  I decided on a Christmas, my mermaid, my favorite tree stamp (as seen on many of my glass pendants!) and some other odds and ends stamps. 

This is my setup. Sea salt, vinegar, peroxide, takeout containers with lids (don't use the lids except for storage),  nitrile gloves, wooden stick for stirring, plastic bag for protecting the surface of my washer and under the bag, a heating pad...more about that later! NOT pictured (and not absolutely necessary): citric acid.

I did finish off my vinegar so I am using the empty bottle to store this solution in. The solution is blue in the photo above because I had already used it on my first failed attempt...it starts off rather clear! The blue is the dissolved copper in solution, believe it or not. I had been told there would be a LIGHT blue color so that tells you there is a LOT of copper in my solution! A word of caution....yes...these are household ingredients but once the copper is dissolved in the liquid, it is VERY TOXIC. Do NOT just pour this down the drain OR into the ground! Some said to take the solution and use it to make concrete with then throw the brick away. Others say you can clean the dissolved copper from the solution by submerging balls of aluminum foil in the solution, which then captures the pure copper and makes the liquid clear again but I haven't tried this to see if it works, yet! That sounds like the way to go, though. I have also been told you can just take it outside and let it evaporate, then dispose of the dried residue in a regular garbage landfill. You can also call your local garbage company and see what methods they recommend. Wear gloves, goggles, don't breathe it in, keep away from pets, and take any other precautions you think you should! Yes, it is less toxic than using other methods (like muriatic acid, etc) but does require sensible precautions!

Okay back to my experience with this science experiment! :D

I did this out in my laundry room because I think the solution is an irritant to breathe in. It should be stirred frequently and I believe this is because it tends to bubble up a bit and an area under the bubbles might not etch as well. Some use a cheap aquarium bubbler to agitate the solution but I did not go that route...yet. :) Do not use metal utensils or containers for this. I used a wooden popsicle stick and plastic containers I don't care about. Don't put a lid on it unless you want to transport or store the solution. I was impatient about this process and did two layers in each container...one face up and one face down. The directions for etching usually tell you to take a Sharpie around the edge of the metal so it won't get bumpy (which I did and which worked well) and put clear packing tape on the back or anywhere you don't want etched. Makes sense. Since I did mine twice (the coating preventing the etching from working well) the tape did not seal the already etched back well and I got some leakage. I didn't really care though since I plan to use these backed with other materials. I suspended one facedown, using the long tape ends to support it and keep it from touching the bottom, and put the other one on top, face up. Both were backed with tape for ease in handling plus protecting the back. I don't know why the directions to etch metal ALWAYS tell you to etch facedown but it seems to me that you could see it better face up. :D I didn't see any bad reactions from doing it this way and got more bang for my buck doing it this way. As you can see from the picture above, I got a little careless and made so much solution I had to use two containers. I picked them because the sheet fit into them nicely, they had lids, and they were free. :) I had four copper sheets on hand and cut one into slices so I was able to etch them all at once this way. 

This is my first try at this method and I am sure I made mistakes all along the way! Most directions I could find using this were for circuit boards and I don't have access to a lot of copper sheet but I certainly want to do this again! A few more notes: I discovered some saying that heating the solution makes it work faster. I didn't find that out until mine had been in solution for several hours, but you can see I put a heating pad underneath my setup, under the plastic. I also heard that adding citric acid to the solution could speed things up as well, so that was also added to the mixture during the last hour or so. I can't tell you if it helped or not...all I know is I didn't die! :D I put my metal into the solution with the intention of only keeping it in there for a couple of hours (the person on my FB group did hers for 90 mins but said she would do it for longer next time) but kept them in the solution for about SIX HOURS. As you will see, it didn't seem to hurt anything.  I left mine in the solution much longer than I needed to because (as I read around the time I read about the heat and the citric acid) I should have been running a sponge across the surface to encourage the etching to reach deeper into the metal.. it seems like it forms a skin or gunk or something and unless you do that it will only go so deep. I think if I had sponged them off during that time it may have gone faster. I'll try it next time.

Sorry about all the text - this is dangerous stuff and you should know as much as possible if you are going to attempt this! And please don't just rely on me and this article, I am a newbie at this! Go do some further research, as I did, before attempting! I just wish to inspire you to try new things! - but on to some pictures! 

Here you can see me testing one of the face up pieces.  Oops, wasn't wearing gloves but you can see them in the photo! :P This would have been a good time to run a sponge over the surface to see how much it has etched and possibly to give the etchant a fresh surface...As I said, hard to tell when using embossing powder how deeply it is etched...

If your mixture doesn't seem bubbly enough you can spike it up with additional peroxide or salt, which will give you a slight foamy reaction after you add them. As you can see in the photo above, the lighter color is the bare, etched metal, while the stamped trees are where the melted embossing powder protected the metal. If I had run a sponge across it, maybe the etching would have gone deeper. It etched far deeper on the bare 1/2" copper pipe I put in there than the sheet did, and I am not sure why. As I said, this is only my first (and second!) attempt so I have more to learn about it! If any of you reading this can contribute to this discussion, please do in the comments!

You can see how bubbly it got at first. I added some 1/2" copper pipes that I had on hand already - and ran over a stamp pad and embossed. It seemed to be a different kind of metal or maybe there was still something on the sheet metal because the pipe turned black in the etchant (around the embossing powder) while the sheet did not.

If you have been following my blog at all you will remember that I used thinner slices of 1" copper pipe as a bezel for some of my polymer clay pieces in the past. Guess what I will be doing to the pieces of pipe I have already cut, ready for my next mokume gane? :D  All I did to these besides the stamping was coat the edges and inside with Sharpie ink. The last step after etching is complete, before using patina, is to neutralize the metal after removing it from the etchant by putting it into some water containing a good amount of baking soda. I also used it as a paste to scrub off the embossing powder, and then rinsed and dried the metal well.

Here is one of the pipe pieces as I put the patina on it. This product is what I've been using to patina my copper with since I had it on hand already to use with my stained glass!

I had to remove the embossing powder to get the patina to reach the metal underneath. I tried to find out what you can remove embossing powder with but couldn't find any info. It came off the pipe much easier than the sheet, for some reason. As I've been saying all along, the pipe acted very different from the sheet in every step of this experiment! The embossing came off easily on the pipe but the methods I used on that didn't seem to work on the sheet...I used acetone first and then alcohol, and then scrubbed it off the pipe but the embossing didn't want to come off easily from the sheet metal! I was afraid to use the sandpaper at first but even that really didn't seem to do much. I then used baking soda as a scouring powder and it finally came off with some more elbow grease. Weird that I didn't need to do all that with the pipe.

Here are the pipe pieces I etched. I used alcohol on the one on the right and it seemed to take the embossing powder off easily whereas I used a scubbie on the one on the left, which left it duller than the alcohol did. This is before patina. The stamping shows up pretty well though, doesn't it?

After patina. the one on the right is not perfect but I still like the way they came out! They are laying on the stamp I used on them. I don't know what to do with them but great experiment! Can't wait to try it with my clay copper bezel slices!

I am going to cut this one up into pieces. Fresh out of the solution.

You may recognize my tree stamp from some of my mica stamped fused glass pendants. I love that stamp! The Christmas stamp matches one of my embossing folders that I used to make Christmas cards last year! These are fresh out of the etching solution., too

Here's a couple of the slices I cut the metal sheet into before etching. The floral one is the same stamp the pipe was etched with. I think I'll try to make bracelets with these.

Here is the same mermaid from the fail in the beginning of this post (the other side, of course, after sanding off that blue crap - well, most of it...you can see some around the edges in this photo!) You may recognize my mermaid as the inspiration for the glass painting I posted about back in June or so! 

I really thought you'd be able to feel the etching when it was done. It is not very deep and it is hard to feel it if run your fingernail across the metal, but the results show up nicely when you put the patina on! I am very happy with the end results...especially since I didn't have to invest any money to do it! :D Now I just need a cheap place to get copper sheeting...I believe this also works on brass, but not silver.

This is the scary part! (Well, one of them, lol!) As you can see I had gotten the embossing powder off that piece to the left better than the others as it turned completely black!

After patina. I love the way they came out! I still have to seal it...and figure out what to seal it with! I keep hearing people talking about something called "Kamar"...

The last step is to sand off the excess patina. I used 400 grit wet/dry sand paper that I had on hand to use on my polymer clay. I could probably take it through the smaller grits to polish it some more, if I want to.

Love my trees! The Christmas stamp did not come out perfectly but somehow I still like it, imperfections and all. :)

And my favorite, the mermaid! Very happy with the way she came out. What does not come out well in my pictures is that they have many colors in them, as a real patina would/should. There's even some blue in the one below. 

I hope you enjoyed reading about my foray into the world of metal etching...are you having trouble keeping up with all my many different skillsets yet? Lol! Stained glass (although there hasn't been much of that discussed on this blog!), fused glass, clay, scrapbooking, Christmas cards, stamping, wire work, beading, and now etching. Have I left anything out? LOL! Thanks for looking and come back soon! Please give my  FB page a like if you haven't already!

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!