I haven't been creating as much as I would like to.. stress seems to chase my muse away.. although she also helps me release my stress.. (I call making pretties "my therapy") so maybe it's that when there's too much stress, I can't follow my muse.
I made this dolomite pendant a while ago, when I first got my gold and gold filled wire. This was the first or second piece I made with this wire. It's kinda funny how getting new supplies inspires me.. or should I say inspires my muse LOL
The binding in this picture is done with 16g half round gold wire, and I used 21g sterling silver and gold filled square for the frame.
You will often see twisted wire in my work, because I really love how it makes the whole piece sparkle. I don't twist my wire until it is bound though.. I tried twisting and then binding, at first when I started with the frames, but I can't get as tight of a bind.. and that to me means that the wires are not as secure. It's akin to binding round wire with half round. I would rather weave the round wire, or bind it with really small gauge round, than try and bind it with half round.
In this next picture you can see where I have bound the top section with a much smaller gauge sterling wire. I wasn't going to bind at the top at all, but the stone was really slippery and kept wanting to pop out, so I figured that I needed to do something to make it a little more secure. If you look close you will see that I made a point of not including the top section of twisted wire in the bind.
I often wait until after I am almost done mounting and securing everything before I pull out the.. what I call grabber wires.. the grabbers being the sections on the sides that hold the stone in, while adding decorative touches.
I frequently use the half round wire to also do the securing on the bail. I form the "pinch area" before binding, no matter what I am using to bind. I think that forming before binding is important, or I will end up with an uneven bail stem, and that is really hard for me to deal with.
Once I made the pinch area, I grabbed the protruding wires and bend them down to give myself room to maneuver the bail wires. This is when I figured out what style of bail was happening.
As you will see in the next picture, it was a 4 wire round bail that worked the best, and I did it with exclusively gold wires.
At first I tried to make a swoop, and swirls, and it didn't work quite how I was figuring. This is actually pretty usual for me.. I try and make things one way, and they end up completely different than I was expecting. This is why I follow my muse. She knows how things are supposed to be :)
The swoop on the left ended up as a swirl on the back, and the two twisted wires that I was trying to pull across the front, ended up on the side, as you will see in the next picture.
Sometimes it's hard to figure out where you are going to anchor
things in the back, but I typically end up echoing the front grabbers
with the back, so when I find myself needing to secure decorative wires
on the back.. well then I just curl or tuck around or under the back
grabbers.
The grabbers ended up needing a bit more tweaking before I was satisfied, and I also needed to do the finishing touches like pushing the framing and binding wires as close to the stone as I could get them. There are times I leave a frame gap, but this was not one of them.
The dolomite had a nice dome to it, which I wanted to show off, so I made sure to take lots of angles when I was taking pictures.
As with all of my pictures I took these with my Galaxy S2. I do most of my post editing in the free program, Photoscape, but I like the collage abilities of the phone app PicsArt the best.. so once I am done with post I use the app to put everything together.
Thanks for reading!
B
The binding in this picture is done with 16g half round gold wire, and I used 21g sterling silver and gold filled square for the frame.
You will often see twisted wire in my work, because I really love how it makes the whole piece sparkle. I don't twist my wire until it is bound though.. I tried twisting and then binding, at first when I started with the frames, but I can't get as tight of a bind.. and that to me means that the wires are not as secure. It's akin to binding round wire with half round. I would rather weave the round wire, or bind it with really small gauge round, than try and bind it with half round.
In this next picture you can see where I have bound the top section with a much smaller gauge sterling wire. I wasn't going to bind at the top at all, but the stone was really slippery and kept wanting to pop out, so I figured that I needed to do something to make it a little more secure. If you look close you will see that I made a point of not including the top section of twisted wire in the bind.
I often wait until after I am almost done mounting and securing everything before I pull out the.. what I call grabber wires.. the grabbers being the sections on the sides that hold the stone in, while adding decorative touches.
I frequently use the half round wire to also do the securing on the bail. I form the "pinch area" before binding, no matter what I am using to bind. I think that forming before binding is important, or I will end up with an uneven bail stem, and that is really hard for me to deal with.
Once I made the pinch area, I grabbed the protruding wires and bend them down to give myself room to maneuver the bail wires. This is when I figured out what style of bail was happening.
As you will see in the next picture, it was a 4 wire round bail that worked the best, and I did it with exclusively gold wires.
The swoop on the left ended up as a swirl on the back, and the two twisted wires that I was trying to pull across the front, ended up on the side, as you will see in the next picture.
Sometimes it's hard to figure out where you are going to anchor
things in the back, but I typically end up echoing the front grabbers
with the back, so when I find myself needing to secure decorative wires
on the back.. well then I just curl or tuck around or under the back
grabbers.The grabbers ended up needing a bit more tweaking before I was satisfied, and I also needed to do the finishing touches like pushing the framing and binding wires as close to the stone as I could get them. There are times I leave a frame gap, but this was not one of them.
The dolomite had a nice dome to it, which I wanted to show off, so I made sure to take lots of angles when I was taking pictures.
Thanks for reading!
B
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