The making of a netted necklace

I think I must be feeling like talking lately.. so here's another post!

I make so many pieces.. I am rather obsessed. I am loving how many firsts I have been going through this last year, though and I think I am okay with it. I do wonder sometimes if anyone else gets 'wire hands' as I call it.. where my hands get very dry from working with metal. I have a couple of things I do to combat.. I use burt's bees hand salve, and sally hansen nail nutrition (green tea + soy cuticle oil). The only problem with them is that they are greasy, and I have to wait a while for them to soak in.. but I have eczema and this really helps. What better time to blog about my passion, then when I am waiting for the oil to soak in!

So here is the making of a netted, aka. dreamcatcher, necklace. :)

The customer asked for a certain style, and since I have not done this style before, I was more than happy to do it! I initially made the frame larger, but after wrapping the crystal I realised the scale was going to be too big, so I scaled it down a little.

The frame is made of 18g raw copper wire.













You can see in this picture, I hammered texture into the frame, not only to make it look cool, but also to harden it.

 I used 24g raw copper wire to make the netting around the frame. Netting is a lot like sewing, and if I am not paying attention, the sewing action puts lots of kinks in my wire. Fortunately I usually notice this happening before I pull it tight. It's an easy fix for a kink if I haven't pulled it tight.. but if I have, the fix usually stiffens and/or weakens the wire.. which is hard to work around without breaking the wire at that point.











The thing I am most careful about with netting is tension. Whether I am working with sinew or with wire, tension on my loops is something I find very important to keep the net from looking lopsided. Wire, however, is a little easier to keep in one spot while you are working.. sinew not so much, not until you pull tight.. before that it requires a lot of finger dexterity.

I stopped here to double check the height of the crystal. Perfect time for a progress shot :)





(pardon this white space.. everywhere else on the page seems to want to cooperate for where I want the text to go, and where I want the pictures to sit.. except for here)

Here is the crystal, mounted on the netting. I did a somewhat messy wrap with it, because I think that seems more organic and flows with the netting and the feathers better. The crystal point is wrapped in 22g wire.















This is with bail, crystal and feathers attached. Next to make the necklace!

 I wanted to keep the cost down so I didn't make all of the chain myself.. I used portions of factory made chain, and made accenting links with more 20g wire and half silver coated swarovski crystal roundels.





(and here)

Here it is on me.. The shirt is a little busy but I usually wear either solid black, solid purple, or loud/busy patterns/colours. What can I say.. I am an artist LOL

I wish on this one that I had remembered to do a light box series of pictures before I sent it off, but I think what I did get shows fairly well how it turned out.












Thanks for reading!

B