Hoop-La! My Love Of Hoop Earrings

Last week I have been mostly making.... hoop earrings with post fitting. Strangely I've never made this type of hoop before but it is a style I like to wear myself so I thought it was about time I made some!

I've made the hoops in sterling silver, copper and bronze using wire from 2.6mm {10g} up to 3.5mm {7g} and sterling silver earring posts with the pad. I use the posts with the pad attached as I find it easier to solder them to other things that way. The posts sit nicely in a hole in my honeycomb soldering board then I can position the end of the hoop using a third hand on top of the pad part for soldering. I then trim, file and sand the ends to remove any of the pad part that overhangs the end of the hoop. I do have some of the sterling posts without the pad which I have used before but being a bit shaky of hand at times I'm going to need to practice a bit more before using them on the hoops.

Bronze wire hoops with swirly texture pattern.

Apart from the thing I have about circles {I really like them in other words} the main reason I like making these hoops is the simplicity of them and their sturdiness plus how easy it is to make variations.

I've done various things to the wire such as flattening it and adding a pattern with the rolling mill, using leaf vein textures, adding silver balls and wrapping with sterling wire...

Copper hoops with leaf vein texture and fine silver balls. The round wire was flattened, the texture added then they were formed and the silver balls and posts added.

I used a stripe texture hammer on these copper and silver wire hoops. I think it's the first time I've ever used the texture hammer since I bought it several years ago! I hammered at a 90° angle to the wire which gave it a rectangle-ish almost faceted pattern that I really liked. I always thought the texture hammer was a bit of a waste of space but now I'll no doubt be using it again very soon :D

I also got a bit OCD with some masking tape to make these copper and silver disc hoops.

I flattened the wire then spent a fair amount of time cutting very thin strips of masking tape with a scalpel and ruler which I then very carefully stuck to the flattened wire. I then put it through the rolling mill again and ended up with this block pattern. The very thin strips of masking tape end up wider as they are compressed in the rolling mill and gave the copper a contrasting textured and smooth design.

I like the end result but next time to speed up the process I think I'll try flattening some 20g or 18g copper wire and wrapping that round the hoop wire before putting it through the rolling mill to create a similar pattern.

And I mustn't forget good old sterling silver..... leaf vein texture and ball pein hammer texture versions.

You've probably noticed I like making these hoops...

One problem I encountered as I made them was what to use to shape them if they are too small for my bracelet mandrel and too big for my ring mandrel. I managed with a wooden block and cylinder with a curve the right size for the pair that didn't fit but there is an answer in the form of a hoop mandrel.

Which of course I've just bought....♥

   

Some New Copper Earrings And A Sale

One of my New Year things was to start using up my rather large collection of cabs, including some cab shaped pearl beads I've had for years. So I made a start with these copper earrings.

I rolled the copper through my rolling mill with a textured card to give it a lovely swirly pattern and combined the copper with pale pink pearl beads and a fine silver ball. The balls were a total pig to solder on as they kept wriggling around and refusing to solder on the flat side. I have no idea why they were doing this but after a bit of a battle I did get them soldered down in the end!

The second pair I made used part of some really lovely sterling silver bracelet toggle fasteners. I remember buying these on ebay several years ago after ebay sent me a voucher. I can't remember why they sent me a voucher other than I was a seller on there at the time. Anyway I bought the flower toggle fasteners as I used to make strung bracelets at the time but never used them all so when I had a tidy up last week I thought they were too pretty to ignore.

I cut the connecting ring off them and soldered them to textured copper then pierced out the copper sheet in the centre and trimmed the copper around the outside to echo the flower shape, added a hanging loop and earwires and oxidized. I think they're a bit unusual looking and I'm liking the negative space thing going on!

If you visit my Etsy shop today you'll see I'm having a 10% off sale! That's on everything including findings. Use the coupon code "ooh lovely" to get 10% off anything you buy from 6 January to the 6 February.

I enjoyed a bit of a break over Christmas but am now back to it with jewellery and findings orders again! I'm hoping to get some time to make more new pieces in the next couple of weeks including heart - themed pieces for Valentines.
Till next time....... ♥

Etched Silver and Copper Wirework Earrings

I managed to catch up with myself last week after a couple of biggish findings orders recently that kept me busy for two whole days and made a few pairs of earrings. I used some copper and silver I'd etched and ventured into wire work territory that I don't do a lot of these days. Just simple bead loops but it was fun getting my beads out again and choosing colours and the quickness of making them was a nice change!

I bought these czech glass beads a while ago from Lima Beads and I love the colours. They have a large selection of czech beads but I couldn't see the kiwi green colour anymore sadly.

I also used some of the sterling silver sheet I'd etched using nail art stamps. The etched designs are small so I was a bit restricted and kept it pretty simple.....

The shape of this pair with the garnet cabochons reminds me of little handbags (kind of). It's the first pair I've made with garnets and I love the colour combination with the oxidized silver. I put a piece of foil behind the cabs as the silver will continue to oxidize and will eventually go black. The foil keeps the area behind the cabs bright and also reflects the light making the garnets appear even redder.

I am back at night school again for my 2nd year of silver jewellery classes. It's nice as seven of us from last year have come back plus four new people have started. We've been learning to cast using delft clay and cuttlefish bone. I didn't fancy the delft clay method so I had a go at casting some of my scrap silver using the cuttlefish bone method last Tuesday....... more of which I shall blog about soon!

More Bezel Setting Practice And Hollow Form Earrings

I wanted to do a bit more bezel setting to improve how long it takes me to do. I am getting quicker at it, really! I sometimes "waste" time cleaning/ filing/sanding bezels up then change my mind about what I'm going to do with them and realize I will have to sand them again after another lot of soldering. Oh well :D

I thought I'd try decorating one of the bezels by stamping. I wasn't sure if it would work as the bezel wire is pretty thin at 0.3mm so I stamped fairly lightly. I didn't want to risk stamping too heavily and the bezel splitting and I also left a gap where the join was going to be. I think it worked ok with these simple turquoise cabochon earrings.

I stamped in the gap I'd left after soldering but not directly over the solder join. I think the stamped effect looks "right" with the turquoise.

I'm currently practicing making hollow form pendants in copper and will move onto silver in the next couple of days. I love the 3D look of hollow form pieces - they look so solid but are lovely and light.
I made a pair of simple hollow form earrings in copper recently before I started on the pendants. Simple as in a domed disc soldered to a flat base which is then trimmed and finished.

The pendants I'm making consist of a frame plus a smaller frame in the centre which are soldered to a flat sheet on both sides. The middle of the smaller frame is pierced out after the first side is soldered and the edges are trimmed at the end. They are a bit tricky to solder to make sure the solder join is complete all the way round on both sides and around the smaller frame in the middle but I'm getting better and will post about them as soon as I've made a couple in silver.

I soon discovered when I made these earrings that it's important to make sure you rinse all of the pickle out of them. You need the hole to prevent the piece from exploding when you solder the earwire (or anything further) onto them but that also means they get full of any liquid you put them into! I find leaving them to soak in clean water and bicarb for 15 minutes after I take them out of the pickle does the trick.
I've also started using hard sterling wire for the earwires instead of dead soft and find it is a bit sturdier for this type of earwire despite being annealed when it's soldered and it worked out slightly cheaper than the dead soft which is always a good thing!!

Colour Splash! Torch Enamel Earrings

I've been concentrating on bezel setting and soldering a lot recently so have been working mainly with metals of the silver and copper hue. So a bit like when your body tells you you need chocolate (all the time in my case) I got out the enamels recently to feed my craving for colour.

Enamels used to scare me when I first started using them and I was ultra careful about not contaminating them so as not to discover those little black specks and tiny pieces of wire wool that you never see until after you've fired something. I'm still careful but maybe a bit more relaxed these days. I recently had a problem with some transparent enamel I'd washed several months ago. I used it over opaque and it cracked. Not straight away because enamel likes to lull you into a false sense of security sometimes. No, one piece cracked a few hours after it was fired and the other a couple of days after. I reckoned it was because the washed enamel had been hanging around for a while and was probably contaminated.

I washed some more and it's worked fine this time as the earrings below show.

 I can't be the only one who finds the idea of washing a dry powder slightly odd. When I started torch enamelling and read that you needed to wash transparents if you want to use them over opaques I thought it seemed a bit of a chore and how can you "wash" a powder, how does it dry? 

It's really easy to do and involves putting a small amount of enamel into a shot glass or similar and filling it with water. You stir it, let it settle then pour off the water. This helps to remove a lot of the dust and other bits in the enamel powder you don't want. Do this until the water is clear(ish) using filtered water for the last rinse then blot as much of the excess water off the wet enamel powder with a kitchen roll as you can. Take care not to touch the enamel with the kitchen roll to avoid getting bits in the enamel. Then spread the wet enamel onto a clean piece of paper on top of a baking tray and put in the oven set to the lowest heat setting for about 10 -15 minutes to dry. When it's dry tip the enamel into a clean pot labelled so you know what it is. You do need to make sure everything you use is clean and doesn't have any bits or dust on it to avoid getting those bits in the washed enamel as they will show up when you fire it!

A bit of a fiddle but worth it. The alternative is muddy looking dirty colours.

I used three opaques for these - aqua, pea green and lichen green. My Mum used to say to me that blue and green should never be seen, usually as I was just off out on a Saturday night wearing blue and green! I never took any notice and reckon if these colours are good enough for nature they're good enough for me!

The colours in these orange and brown earrings remind me of an exotic colourful beetle. I used orange transparent over nut brown with a sprinkling of brown on top.

Next I'm planning on making some more small enamelled studs. I made some of these a while ago when I had just started soldering and found it terrible fraught and stressful! Enamel and solder aren't always easy to combine. I had to use enamel solder for the posts and was so worried things would melt or that the enamel would react with the solder. It didn't and everything was fine but I didn't enjoy the experience very much so haven't made any more, apart from a recent custom order. As I'm a bit more confident with the soldering part now I've decided to make some more even though they are fiddly to do. They are very cute when they're finished though :D

Bead Magazine Project - Copper Wirework and Ceramic Flower Earrings!

Look out for issue 45 of Bead magazine which was out on 13 March. Bead has a new look this issue and is full of Spring inspiration! There's quite a lot of floral action going on including a step-by-step project for my copper wirework earrings with ceramic flower beads.

 I love those beads!

 Seeing the photos has reminded me to dig out the rest of those ceramic flower beads and do something else with them. I bought a mix of colours including lilac, pink and yellow. I'd like to thread them onto copper or silver hoops then solder the hoops closed. I "think" the ceramic beads will stand up to the heat of the torch ok. Some strategically placed pliers would act as a heat sink and easy solder would make it a quick in and out job so I may well have a go soon.

Here's the colourful front cover of Bead magazine - it's so bright you can't help but be cheered up by it :D

Learning To Bezel Set - New Earrings

I thought I'd put my newly-learned bezel setting skills to the test and start making earrings with stones. It's a technique I've been itching to learn for a long time but I'll be honest the prospect of making a "proper" start on bezel set jewellery did daunt me a bit. There's so much that can go wrong - melting your bezel, the cab not fitting, getting to the point where everything is finished and you "just" have to set the stone and then you go and scratch it beyond repair with your bezel pusher......I've done that once (so far!)

I have a bezel roller and a bezel pusher and a burnisher and all three of them have the potential to ruin all your hard work in a second by scratching the stone! I've now started using a peg I took apart and filed and sanded to round the top edge to set my stones.

They're not the most ergonomic design being a bit short to hold but they work fine and don't scratch metal or stones if I slip. I saw this tip for using wooden dowel instead of a metal bezel pusher on the Etsy Metal blog. I still use a burnisher to finish off and smooth the top but I have found I'm very good at slipping and putting tiny nicks on the top edge of the bezel! Practice makes perfect I know!!

 

This is one of the first pair I made in silver with 6mm carnelian cabs

 

I found soldering the bezels could sometimes be a bit troublesome! Placing a tiny piece of solder on top of the join then watching it ping off as the flux bubbles meant soldering 6 bezels took me an hour! Admittedly, one of them wouldn't solder properly because the join wasn't very good so I had to make it again (er.......twice!). I also have problems with my max flame butane torch. I don't seem to be able to fill it properly and it only works for about a minute before the flame becomes so small it resembles a cigarette lighter! Having to fill it literally in the middle of soldering something does not help matters. I've since sorted this and now use my propane/butane mix torch with a finer nozzle.

One of the silly things I noticed since starting to make bezel set earrings is that I would totally forget the correct order of work! I think I'm so excited about getting the bezel the correct size and soldering it that I would then have to think about what to do next. Instead of getting everything ready that needed to be soldered I would do a bit then have to make the hanging loops or the earwires or decide what to do with the base I was going to solder the bezel to. In the meantime it would be lunchtime and I'd have to clear away my soldering equipment from the kitchen!

I now make sure I have everything ready to go before starting to solder. Hammering tiny pieces of solder so they are wafer thin and putting the bezel join on top of the flattened solder (no pinging off!) also makes soldering the bezels a lot easier and quicker.

I love the colour of this dyed calcite. I added three flattened balls of fine silver then trimmed the base sheet around the bezel and balls. Still experimenting!

So far I've had to scrap three pairs of earrings. I tend to make three or four pairs at a time - maybe that's not a good idea as it makes the whole process feel like it's taking days! The first pair was when I messed up the hanging loop. It slid about as the solder flowed and my fear of holding small things in place with tweezers (now conquered) stopped me from sorting it out properly and I ended up with solder that had crawled over to the front of the copper earring. It was a mess beyond repair so it ended up in the bin. 

The second pair I ruined by stamping the base too close to the bezel and knocking it out of shape (wrong order of work!). Some over-vigorous prodding of the bezel to move it back into shape meant it was stretched too much and too big for the cab. Another one for the bin!

The third pair went fine up to almost finishing setting the amethyst cab and then I slipped with the metal bezel rocker and scratched the stone. Sweary shouting occurred! I tried polishing the scratch out gently but it ended up looking worse. This one hangs on the side of my scrap pot to remind me to use my wooden pegs and take things slowly!

Turquoise and silver with silver rosette and ball decoration.

 Still experimenting and realizing silver and copper that is textured, stamped or etched looks a whole lot better when it's oxidized than plain untextured metal! You don't get the obvious clean up marks and scratches you can see on plain metal.

I'll be honest there have been several times when I've wondered if bezel setting was worth it. The amount of time it takes me to make something from start to finish feels like days.  BUT I know it will get easier as I start to feel less scared of the whole process and just relax and enjoy it. Any words of encouragement and advice gratefully accepted :D

Copper and Enamel Earrings

I really love the mix of copper and enamel in jewellery - the colour of the oxidized copper really makes the enamels jump. So continuing my "thing" about circles (it's been going on since I was a child!) I made enamelled discs in various colours and combined them with paddle-shaped copper "sticks."

 I haven't mastered the art of riveting enamelled pieces yet - it IS possible, I've seen other people do it but when I tried the enamel discs cracked. Another option would be to pin the enamelled discs by balling up silver wire on either side. I tried that too and only managed to ruin the enamelled piece. It did stick to the metal I wanted to attach it to but only because the enamel had refired and it would have cracked and fallen off eventually. 

So I stuck to wire wrapping the enamel disc to the metal - less risk of breaking anything!

I made these copper hoops a while ago and left them sitting on my work table until I decided what they would become. They became (......eventually) these wire wrapped hoops with three enamelled discs in turquoise, purple and mint wrapped onto the bottom so they can dangle in a shiny, happy, enamel way :D

Silver Jewellery Course and New Earrings

Next Tuesday night (25th Sept) I will be starting a 25 week silver jewellery class! I found out about it last year a couple of months too late but this year miraculously remembered about it in time and enrolled a few weeks ago. It was quite expensive but covers all those lovely techniques I either can't teach myself/am too scared to try myself or just really need an expert to show how to do it properly.

I know it definitely covers etching (yay!), soldering, stone setting, enamelling and ring making. Some of it I will know how to do but a lot I won't so I'm really looking forward to getting started. Slightly nervous too but once I've got over the "which building is it/who are all these strange people/where's the toilet" stage I know I'll be fine :D 

Finally got round to photographing a few pairs of earrings today - I was in one of those let's get organised and do the things that actually need doing and not spend all day experimenting with new design ideas moods, and the weather was perfect too.

The pair above are handcut flowers enamelled and wire wrapped to copper washers. I'm going to try the same idea with some soldered copper hoops (when I make them) for a more delicate version ......soon.......... :D

These are two copper discs rolled through my Bigshot with a Vintaj design (deco etch) folder then domed and pinned with sterling wire.

Sheet copper stamped with my favourite circle design then the earrings cut out and finished. I painted turquoise patina ink over the top and sanded back to reveal the design then oxidized and tumbled for just 15 minutes to it didn't take too much of the black off. Dark and a bit different.