Planning Your Work with Drawings

As I was working on photos for the butterfly post, I got to thinking how much I am beginning to rely on drawings for pieces I am planning. I draw much like a 8 year old but the point is that I do get my ideas on paper which helps me plan how I will construct pieces.

I have begun to work on a doodle shorthand that is pretty much unique to me, as probably I am the only one who can make heads or tails of it but those doodles help remind me when I look back through my ideas notebook days or months later.

One of the biggest challenges I have found is how to get what is in my head down on paper as I am not an exact artist at best when it comes to paper and pencil.

First I thought about what I am trying to doodle. I know how to do geometric shapes and can even draw a fairly good circle when given a template and half an hour. But how do you notate a coiled spring, or a coiled, coiled spring (much less remember WHAT that referred to?).

I had a look at some of my existing wire worked pieces to see what kind of patterns are in them, then tried to represent them somehow in a quick way on paper with pencil. I've ended up, with a little practice and patience and a lot of balled up paper, with a fairly quick doodle shorthand that I can use to get down my ideas. You can even build up a "ME Shorthand" dictionary by printing photos of the wire worked sections and the unique doodle next to them that you use to represent those patterns. Just sit back and have fun playing, and allow yourself to be a little silly. My personal favourite doodle is the crazy lightening bolt notation I use to represent twisted wire coils as seen in the second photo row below.

I'm not sure if it is important for me to show you my own doodle, the samples below are fair examples, but the important thing is to take the time and play with what you can do at your own level of drawing expertise.

Below are a few pieces that I drew before actually constructing, and the final piece is pretty similar to the drawing.

ORBITAL




TWISTED 1



TWISTED 2




FILLIGREE BUTTERFLY





USE THE MUSE 11 BETTLE




UNFINISHED TURQUOISE NECKLACE


Leave comments if you would like me to put up my own notation dictionary.

Making a Filigree Butterfly

PLANNING STAGE

-->

I was asked to create a sturdy filigree butterfly with aquamarine and blue sapphire, and had no idea where to start but loved the idea of this challenge. The first step was to agree on a design with the client so we both understood what the dimensions and style would be when finished. I perused jewellery magazines from my collection (always save your old beading mags!) and found 3 variations to inspire doodles. Here is what I came up with and sent to the client.

HABRAS Disks for Polishing Metal jewellery after Pickling

The above photo is taken from the website: http://texadentalsupplies.com/resources/habras_discs1.jpg

The Muse is Revealed!

I know it's a little hard to see. I will see if I can get a bigger one soon. I've hand made a PMC stick that is a flower base. The cut up flower petals was the muse - used to be a circle pendant which I cut into 4 sections and - made into a flower. The flower part is a pin and the beetle is a pin so I have two separate pins here that work together.

I also used ndeble (mispelled I know) weave to make the purple calcyx for the flower.
The little story here is there is a beetle that lives on a special flower (hence the similarities in their patterns) with the seed pod.

My beetle pin with wings that echo the pattern on the shell pendant. The body is bead woven in peyote stitch like an amulet bag and the insides has clove oil so the beetle is a bit of clove smell. The shell part is bead embroidered with a little wire work for the antennae.
















I won an award on the Muse contest! Here is the website for the winner's page:
http://www.thebeadersmuse.com/winners2/

I was awarded the "handmade components" award for my pin. And I can finally post photos of my entry!

Good night!

Amanda

Abused Amused Muse

So I know it's been a while since my last post but I've been busy! One of the most exciting things I've done is join the contest "Use the Muse” hosted by the talented Scarlett Lanson, the Bead Maven, of the Beaders Muse website. The challenge to “Use the Muse” is to use beads from a preselected kit of which one element, the muse, is hidden from sight until it is Deadline Day to post entries. The rules enable the entrant to use as many or little beads from the kit but they must Use the Muse in order to be eligible to enter the contest. Use this link to see a photo of the Use the Muse kit and contest entry rules: http://www.thebeadersmuse.com/use-the-muse-contest2/.

So there are a bunch of us out there that know what the Muse is this year but we aren’t telling or showing! ‘Cause doing that gets you disqualified.

The kits are sponsored this year by Artbeads.com and Rainbows of Light with a gorgeous spectrum of peacock purples, blues and many sparkly Swarovski crystals and pearls. I just couldn’t resist these colours as they are all my favourites so why fight the battle.

When I received my kit in the mail I immediately had to have a fab play – so many possibilities! The Muse truly is stunning but me being me I had to abuse my Muse. The poor thing is lying in pieces trying to recover on my work bench (aka a Tupperware container next to the TV) as I can never leave things alone. So far I have used my coping saw and the DH’s bench drill on the Muse. I like doing things like this though – evil laughter.

So here are a few sneak peak sketches at what I have in mind. I’m thinking flowers and bugs. I don’t know why but those bugs keep haunting me (time to fumigate our house?) so bugs it is. So far I’m using seed bead embroidery as Right Angle Weave and Brick Stitch have both failed in what I want to achieve. By the end a bug will have a few different weaving techniques including embroidery and odd stitch peyote. Probably a few more too that I just don’t know what they are called.

I will also use some wire working skills on a flower, maybe some metal working skills depending on how frustrated I get. Certainly more embroidery and French wire floral techniques too.

And in the end I’ll probably end up with 2 long stranded necklaces on simple tiger tail. Who knows? I certainly can say that the Muse as struck my imagination, amused me, and been abused by me so far!

Hand Carved Lion Cross Pendant

I was approached via internet by a client to create this fantastic lion pendant in 3d relief sterling silver. The drawing is the client's own art work and created a big challenge for me given that I've usually done my wax carving from my own images. Well away we go!

I quickly decided to work on the head and the cross portions separately, so if I stuff up it's only half of the whole! I had to start on the head because that face fascinated me.

I started by producing a whole sheet of the left image in exact dimensions (2.5 inches x 1.5 inches) multiple times to use as line drawings on the wax tablet. Then I started by literally cutting the lines of the face through the paper onto the wax - with many images to start anew with once one image got too shredded.





Once I was satisfied with the line drawing emerging on the wax I started the difficult part - removing the wax that doesn't belong. I spent a lot of time (4 months!) doing this slowly, methodically and carefully to ensure I got it right the first time. Here is a first draft of the head. The sides were still about 3 mm thick (mouth being closer to 4 mm) and the client wanted the mane thinner. So more careful carving.




The best part of this carving wax is that it's opaque and, when held to light, you can compare the shades of green to see where it is thin or thick. Here is the final head carving held so the client could see how it was made thinner. The head is really cool at this point.




So the next task was to do the cross. Now given how complicated the head is, I was actually dreading the cross more because although it appears simple (all straight lines) I was more apprehensive about this shape because it demanded perfect hand control to achieve symmetry. To create the curves I used the bench drill and various bit sizes and then carved the points after this. I used a lot of line grids to help control the symmetry at this point. It then sat like this for over a month while I tried to figure out how I was going to make the points of the cross at a 45 degree angle meeting on the edge like a V, or a wedge. My technical minded husband gave me a good idea that worked a charm. Use the angled side of a plastic ruler as the slope there is about 45 degrees AND gives me a hard straight edge to use as a template! Eureka! After this point the pendant wax carving process went along very smoothly.


After getting everything done, I melted the join between the cross and the head to create this final wax carving mold for the casting company. One thing I've learned over the last few projects is that the more I make the wax nice and smooth, the more smooth my casting will be. So I used an old bedsheet to smooth away all scratches.




Here's the casting (after a bit of clean up) before I put the star sapphire in a bezel setting and finalised the bail.










And here is the final pendant compared to the original drawing again!

I'm really pleased with the end results and look forward now to other original works like this one!

Turk's Head Knot Ring

It's been a while since I posted on my blog but I've tried a new technique inspired by the metal working turk's head knot guru Loren Damewood on http://www.golden-knots.com/

It has been a very long journey since I first saw Loren's website and then started searching the internet frantically to find out how to do this elusive knot (see below for where I found tutorials). I made about 4 leather knots to get the feel of the technique before trying it in silver wire. the above photographed ring is 0.8 mm gauge sterling silver wire and is a single strand of wire passed through the knot twice.

Here's some things I've learned on the way:
1. Gauge of wire discussion. This 0.8 gauge was too thick. Even for fine silver I reckon. Use 0.6 gauge maximum and you can go down quite thin to do more pass throughs. I found the 24 gauge (what's that, 0.4?) was too thin for a loose ring, that would need to be a really tight ring.

2. Ring size: These rings act like Chinese finger traps - if you open the lattice up the ring gets taller and thinner, if you squish it down it gets shorter and wider. If I were to anneal my ring I could potentially squish it down to 1 cm tall and a size 7, or M. I could open it up and make it smaller too. This is the good thing about these rings if you don't solder it all together - they are adjustable by plus or minus 1 ring size!

3. Mandrel versus ring size versus how much wire to cut? The 16 mm dowel mandrel gave me a size 6, or L ring that is 1.5 cm tall on my finger. The 19 mm dowel mandrel would give you a size 9, or like P, that would be 1.5 cm tall on the finger. On golden_knot (see below for web address) there is a good page there that he uses geometry to figure out wire length to cut for what ring size. I cut 2 meters here and ended up with half a meter left after the double pass on my ring.

4. Drilling holes spacing on mandrel: the further apart the two peg rows are, the more lacey and open your ring is going to be. this also means that a lacier, taller ring will adjust better to say plus 2 or even 3 ring sizes more. In a wire that stiffins up nicely, that's okay. But with fine silver or thin gauge wire you will find your ring bending out of shape, ring size a lot.

5. Number of passes: This is up to you. If you're going to do one pass only, use sterling silver or a wire that will be stiffened so that your final ring doesn't distort at the end. If doing multiple passes, like on golden_knot (see below) then you will want to use fine silver and a thinner gauge.

5A. If you will be doing multiple passes around your mandrel, do not use tight tension on your first pass around the knot or this will warp how your second and third passes will sit nicely. Let it be a little loose so that on the second pass there is space above and below your pegs to lay the second row of wire nicely. My ring looks wonky a bit because I pulled way too tight the first pass around the knot (so my second row wants to sit parallel to my first pass, not snugly next to.)

How to do the Knot:

Get to know this knot first. The Turk's Head knot is fun and incredibly varied. I'm still trying to figure out the underlying over and under pattern but - aside that there are two three resources I found um... (forgetting word again) can't do without them... INDISPENSIBLE!!!

First http://www.golden-knots.com/ He is the god of doing metal work and turk's knots. He gives a LOT of information on what makes up the knot, the terminology and is very free with showing different knots in string - but very stingy with the metal tips. Read through all of his information so you can become knowledgeable about the knot structure and what's going on.

Now how a turk's head would transfer to wire. On www.Youtube.com, donbscout has done a fantastic series of 9 videos to teach you how to do a 7 bight, 6 lead turk's head knot using his "recipe" book he is advertising here. It's great because it transfers directly to wire and tells you where you're supposed to go under and over and what pins to go to.

Write down donbscout's instructions.

However, while donbscout uses a square template jig, you need a round jig for a ring - do a trip to your local hardware store (gotta love them!) for 19 mm diameter wooden dowling and 16 mm wooden dowling and a 1.2 or 1.3 drill bit.

Here is how you make your wooden dowel mandrel: http://www.mailleartisans.org/board/...c=9438&forum=1 (please note this is a 5 bight, 9 lead ring. Just adjust the number of lines on your paper to equal 7 instead if using donbscout's instructions.)

The idea is the holes you drill into the doweling needs to be the same size as the wire you have to stick in. I drilled with a 1.2 bit and poked 1.25 (14 guage?) copper wire as pegs, snug but can take them out again.


Now refer to http://www.mailleartisans.org/articl....cgi?key=20054 for someone's tutorial on actually doing a turk's head ring in wire. This person has used the same number of pegs from donbscout's tutorial on youtube. So you see the necessity to view all these resources.

You really will find a combination of referring to all three above resources helps set out understanding of how to do multiple passes through a knot rather than doing 3 separate wires at once.

If you try, email me a photo I'd love to see!