A super easy how to

Want to know how to make these earrings? A few of you did when I posted them as part of my contribution to the Ears To You blog hop on Saturday.  The hoops for these earrings are fairly simple to make and are an upside down, no solder variation of the hoops used in Stacie Florer's  Ranch Hand Earrings that she taught in a class I took at ArtBliss last September.

Let's get started, OK? You don't need a lot of tools or supplies to make these hoops. I imagine you have most of these in your tool box already.

heavy gauge wire (14 or 16 gauge. I used 14 g copper)

scrap fine gauge wire

jump rings (I used 18 g sterling, 8 mm outside diameter)

Something to form your hoop on (sharpie, glue stick, top of nail polish remover, the world's your oyster here)

flat nose and round nose pliers

wire cutter

hole punch

chasing hammer

bench block

Cut two pieces of wire. Mine are 14 gauge copper a wee bit over two inches long. Length depends mostly on how big you want to make your hoops and a little on what you are forming them on.

Use your chasing hammer to make paddles at the end of the wires. Be sure to make your paddles plenty long enough. You'll be punching holes through them later and too short makes that a small nightmare. I like to do one wire and then do the other along side of the finished one so I can get approximately the same size paddle and overall length on the wire.

Mark the centers of the wires with your sharpie. I kinda judge by eye but it's important to be close or your hoops are going to end up a little skew-whiff when you go to close up the ends of the wires.

Center your wire on whatever you are using to form your hoop. Use your fingers to pull the wire around the form. I'm using the top of a nail polish remover bottle. The ends don't meet on the other side. This is just getting a nice curve set up for the bottom of the hoop.

And yes, my nails are often in a disgraceful state. I don't actually used the polish remover on my nails. I use it to remove sticky things like labels.

Use your fingers to squeeze the paddle ends of your wires together. You are going to have a kind of fat U shape when you take it off your former. I just put my fingers on each side about in the middle and gently squeeze the wire into something life a tear drop shape.

Next you need to get out your flat nose pliers. On the paddle ends of the wire bend them out just about 90 degrees. Try to keep your pliers square across the wire and make the bend on both sides the same distance from the end of the paddle. Like everything, there's a little fudge room but life will be easier if you get pretty close to spot on.

Pinch the paddle ends of the hoop together with your flat nose pliers and hold them closed while you wrap it up with fine gauge wire. I don't know what gauge wire I used because it was scrap floating about my drawer. But it's reasonably fine, maybe 24 gauge. Doesn't really matter as long as you can wrap it around the end to hold the paddles tightly together. Then use your hole punch to pierce both paddles at the same time. The paddles should be quite thin enough to get your punch through and doing both paddles together keeps the holes lined up nicely. 

I use a plier-type punch that I got from Fusion Beads. You can replace the pin that punches the hole if they break. Really big bonus there, as I've had other punches in the past that once broken the whole tool was wasted. 

I like to file the ends of the paddles at this time to get them more refined to the same shape, and get rid of burs and sharp bits. 

I insert a jump ring through the holes at this point  but that could be done later if you like. I do find it easier to do while the paddles are still wrapped with wire to hold them closed. Also the final shaping tends to make the holes in the paddles get a little misaligned. If the holes aren't quite aligned, or big enough, I stick a round nose file in there and give it a few twists. 

Last lap here. Place that hoop on your bench block and start shaping and flattening the bottom of the loop with your chasing hammer. Doing this with the paddle ends wrapped up tends to keep the ends from creeping apart. Add what ever texture you like and you are done with hoop number one. One thing to consider while you are making these is that the hoops going to get gradually larger as you shape the wire. See how small it was before shaping the bottom?

Two hoops ready to punch the holes at the bottom to add whatever bead you'd like.

I really love these and am starting to think of so many ways to use these hoops. Pendant holders? Smaller, larger? It's a lovely form and I'm happy I learned something of it.

Happy making!

My Never Ending Quest

As many of you know, I do local art market every month.  I often customize pieces on the spot so that people can get a piece of jewelry that they've had a part in putting together. I like that and it makes me happy. I'm on this never ending quest to make my life simpler and my customers happy.

I also really like dropping little things off of wire wrapped beads.  These pieces are often difficult, and sometimes impossible, to put on a diffrent style chain or cord without taking the chain apart. And those jump rings on the end are tiny and hard to work with in a market environment.

Today as I was puttering away, I had one of those light bulb moments. Mostly my light bulb is on the dimmer switch but today it was blazing brightly. The problem with my wire wrapped beads was that the loop at the top is closed. So what if I made it like an eye pin, more like a pendant bail? The wire I use is 20-22 gauge so a regular eye pin just doesn't seem sturdy enough to drop a pendant off. Besides I really like the look of a double strand of wire up there on the top.

Probably you are all rolling your eyes and muttering, 'Silly, girl. The solution is obvious.' But I am so danged pleased with myself I'm going to show you what I did.

I took a 4 inch or so piece wire and used that flat plier thingy that I don't know the name of and bent it half.

I squeezed the two ends of the wire tightly together, starting at the bend in the wire.

Then I made this sturdy eye pin. You can't really see it here, but it's a double strand of wire that you see only the side of.

I use my round nose plier to grip the base of the eye pin. Then I take one end of wire and bend it back at a 90 degree angle.  It seems to look more centered if you start your wrapping from the back (the open end of the eye. The piece on the left of the photo is the stem. The piece on the top will get wrapped around the stem.

Wrapped top of bail is done. Please ignore the nasty yuck under my nails. It's oxidized copper from something I was working on earlier. I don't even want to think if this is nasty and toxic. It will be gone later when I clean up!

I slipped on my bead and made a little loop at the bottom. The loop is oriented at 90 angle to the eye at the top so that when I put a jump ring through it everything is facing the right way. This bead is a lovely opalized something or other stone that I can not remember the name of. Wish I could, because I want more.

The finished bead thingy all ready to take a ride in the tumbler. The back side of the top loop can be gently manipulated to slide on a chain.

Want that bead at the top of your pendant in brass instead of copper? Want it in blue? No problem :-)

Have a fantabulous weekend!

Gingko Leaves and Making Molds

I love gingko leaves. Other than having a very cool shape in my opinion, they are super cool because the trees are considered a living fossil and have no known living relatives in the plant world. Modern gingkos date back to the Permian, 270 million years. In Japan, it was often planted north of Buddhist temples as a symbol of immortality because of its longevity. There is even a gingko tree there that is estimated to be 800 years old and I’ve read that one gingko was the first tree to grow back after the bombing of Hiroshima. The gingko is one amazing tree, a true survivor.

A gingko leaf was among the first of the stamps I carved years ago for use with my pottery many years ago. I’ve updated the design a bit for use at a smaller scale with bronze and copper clay. Beth, over at Hint, showed us how she uses her art work made into stamps for molding her silver clay charms. You can see the video she made here. Actually, if you haven’t, you should check out her “behind the scenes” series which gives a lot of great detail on her process.

I use a similar process to Beth for molds, except that I don’t use the stamp itself as a mold. I use it to make a model and then make a mold from that. There are a lot of reasons why I work this way. But in fact it boils down to, yes I will admit it, I am a control freak and bronze and copper clay seem to be very particular in how they get handled. And for me, this method works pretty well.

So here’s a little 8 step instructional (is that a word?)

1) Tools. My tools for making the mold are simple. I’ve got a cookie cutter, a stamp made from my little sketch, a lump of conditioned polymer clay, and a rolling thingy with a thickness gauge on the ends.

2) I roll out a thin thickness of polymer clay and press that into the rubber stamp.

3) This picks up a raised pattern of the gingko leaves. I like bas relief. I almost never use impressed designs. That’s just me.

4) For this particular design, I used the burnishing tool to add detail to the gingko leaves. I like the burnishing tool because it’s got a very fine round tip and I can get quite a smooth line out of it without undercuts. Once, I’m satisfied with the piece I bake the model in the oven according to the directions. This, by the way, is the only thing I know how to do with polymer clay. I do love this stuff for how it picks up detail.

5) Once the model is cool, I use 2 part RTV compound to make a flexible silicon mold. This time I used the compound from Hobby Lobby. It is not my favourite, but what I had available. Cool Tools has a very good RTV compound but I didn’t have any and I wanted to do this right now.

6) This stuff uses equal parts of the yellow and white, and equal for me is what looks sort of equal. That seems to work. It gets kneaded together until there are no swirls of white in it. That is important. I know from experience that you can not skimp on this step.

7) My little clay model is stuck down on my work surface with a dab of polymer clay. Then the RTV compound is pressed over the model. The directions say to let it set up for 20 minutes. I usually let it set up for an hour, even overnight.

8) Once the RTV compound is cured, I pop out the model and voila! There is the mold that I can now use with the bronze and copper clays. This mold is just a wee bit over an inch in size.

A little note on rubber stamps. I’ve used a number of different companies to have them made. But this time, I used rubberstamps.net, as suggested by Beth. Now I’ve usually been statisfied with the stamps I’ve had made. But hands down, these are the best stamps ever. The detail is incredible and the cuts are sharp. My koi was made by a different company and if you look closely it just does not have the same level of crispness as the gingko stamp. The secret? They laser cut their stamps. They cost a little more but I think it’s worth it and it saves me a lot of time in the modeling process. Thanks Beth! This is a huge improvement in my studio practice.

But the very best part of this whole process is I get to wear these very attactive, very stylish glasses from the Dollar Store. Tres chic, no?