New rings

A couple of days ago I finally got around to making myself a ring using one of the cabs I bought in Parsborro the summer before last. That would be the silver ring on the right, a fairly basic claw style (although it's my own particular assembly method) using 20ga and 24ga sterling wire.

Then last night while I was waiting for my camera battery to charge to photograph it, I decided to try out a vague idea I had for another ring. Since it was vague, I stuck with my cheap gold coloured copper wire, also in 20 and 24 guage. I've studied photos of more complex wire rings many times, but never tried making one until now. Rather than try fiddling around to copy some other ring, I came up with my own idea. And I'm quite pleased with the results, seen in the left of the photo. Considering I had no idea how much wire I was going to need, I think it's pretty good I only had about 2 inches of excess of each guage of wire.

What makes this design different from many of the ones I've seen online is that I did not have to add extra wires to make the base for the stone to sit on, they are just an extension of the core wires (20ga) in the shank, of which there were 4, each one 8 inches long to start. Below you can see the underside of this ring, and another shot of my silver ring in which you can see a bit of the iridescence of the stone.

Prescription Halloween Mask :D

Right, so in what appears to be a routine I'm developing, I am posting in the fall after months of nothing. I haven't been making much jewellery lately, and this post isn't really about jewellery. But it does involve the same craftiness :D.

This one is all about Halloween and it comes with a quick story. I am nearsighted and don't have contacts. I also, as evidenced by the previously posted-upon Queen Akasha costume, am a bit of a nut for Halloween costuming. The biggest problem with my costumes has always been my eyeglasses. They tend to ruin the effect of any costume, but I can't go without them. This year a little shop opened up in the mall before Halloween, and they had the most beautiful half-masks I've seen, and I was thinking it was too bad I couldn't wear them because of my glasses. Then it finally dawned on me. I had a spare set of glasses, so why couldn't I use my wire-wrapping skills to incorporate these eyeglasses into a mask? Of course there was no reason why I couldn't, so that's exactly what I did. It went over quite well too!

I started by wrapping some wires onto the top and bottom of the eyeglass bridge and bending them into a frame. Then I wove wire into the spaces and accented the edges with beads, and added some bead danglies at the outside of each side, like on the masks in the store. Pics below: