Square Knot Bracelet In Bronze

Sterling silver is quite expensive, so I've decided to experiment in other materials that are not only cheaper, but also quite cool actually. This piece was made in bronze and it's called Square knot based on the B2 weave. It's quite fun to do and awesome to wear. I love how is rather loose on the wrist and kind of fluffy. Now try to do this heavy one in sterling silver!

The clasp is an antiqued bronze square clasp. Not sure yet if I'll keep it. The color is a bit off compared to the bracelet, but it does make a nice contrast. Bracelet measures 19.5cm (almost 8") and it's made of 4.4 AR various size bronze rings (bought from TheRingLord).

Byzantine Wrapped Earrings

A quick pair of sterling silver earrings done in the chain maille Byzantine weave. The beads are amethyst with a very lovely color. Earrings length including the ear wire is 6.5 cm (2.5"). All metal, including the ear wire is sterling silver.

For wrapping the bead in the semi-herringbone weave I used a free tutorial by Heidi K. (link to her tutorial is in my Best free 4 herringbone weave tutorials post, reachable from the sidebar of this blog.)

Gothic Silver Chain Maille Pendant - YOJ Week 5

This silver pendant is made for the YOJ Week 5 challenge with the theme 'deja-vu', aka before and after. About 4 years ago when I dabbed a bit in chain maille, I made a Rondo a la Byzantine pendant with a goldstone bead wrapped at the bottom. I never really did anything with it afterwards, and I left it forgotten for 4 years.

Now looking at some of my older pieces to work up for the challenge, I found it tucked in a ziplock bag.

So here is the before and after. Bad picture quality for the before as I only snapped quickly a shot of it in the evening so I have something to show for the challenge.

The new piece has a smaller black onyx wrapped bead. All metal is sterling silver that I cut in jumprings.

Byzantine Knot Silver Bracelet

Here is a bracelet I finished last night. Tumble polished it and took pictures of it today. It's a weave that I learned, I saw a bracelet just like it and was curious as to how they did it. Found the weave at Mailleartisans, and here is the result.

I quite like it, however personally I like daintier chains than this. However when worn is quite beautiful indeed.

The rings I cut have these stats: 0.9mm 4.27 ID, with an AR of 4.74 (this is just for me really, if I want to do another one, to use this as reference). The bracelet measures 19.5cm (7.5") including the lovely silver heart clasp which I bought from Etsy from a wonderful seller a while ago.

Note: the Byzantine Knots weave was invented by Christian Dietrich) and if anyone wants to learn this weave, there is a also nice tutorial by Zili on Mailleartisans.

My First Full Persian Cross

I was always jealous of folks who could do the Full Persian cross, and I couldn't because the full persian weave always eluded me. Well, not anymore. I've learned the weave from Spider's DVD and then went off and learn the cross from a tutorial from Mailleartisans, I think. Now that I know the weave, making the cross is extremely easy, I might add.

Used some practice jump rings from The Ring Lord, so the closures are not the best. The next one is in silver.

Butterfly Earrings - YOJ Week 4 Project

Here is my 4th week Year of Jewelry 2013 project, with the them "Not from the Mall". When I started this pair of earrings I only knew I wanted to do the butterfly weave, but I had no idea how they will turn out. I used at least 3 different ring sizes, and finally decided on the turquoise briolette.

Speaking of the briolette, this is also a good example how to cheat when you can't wrap a briolette worth beawns (that is me). After all these years, wrapping a briolette the right way eludes me. I've watched countless Youtube videos, looked at various tutorials, nothing helped. So I've settled on a bit of cheating. And to be honest, I kind of like the result.

Still have to tumble the earrings as the silver jumping are not quite shiny yet. I hope I won't destroy the turquoise in the process.

Rosetta Chainmaille Bracelet In Sterling Silver

I liked how the Rosetta weave looks from the first time I saw it. It's an easy and fun weave to do, one that I haven't tried until now. And I quite like the result. It looks slightly like a variant of the Byzantine weave, but it's woven up completely differently.

It's very sleek and soft when worn, it's becoming one of my favorite weaves.

This bracelet is made of sterling silver, measures almost 19 cm (7.5") and the jumpring dimensions I used when I cut them from the silver wire were: 3.84 ID for the 2 in 2 chain and 3.5 ID for the 4 side rings, wire of 1mm WD.

Week 3 YOJ 2013 - White Pearl Sterling Silver Earrings

When the new theme for the week 3 in the Year of Jewelry Project came up: "music", I knew just what I wanted to do. I've recently seen a simple  but very cute pair of earrings that were last year auctioned off at the Julien Auction House. The earrings auctioned off used to belong to the late diva Whitney Houston, which she wore while filming the Bodyguard.

I have a few freshwater pearls that I got not long ago, so my fingers were it itching to do something with them. And this is the result. A simple design that goes well pretty much everywhere: a wedding, a party or worn with a little white dress or jeans.

Materials are freshwater pearls, all metal is sterling silver including the ear wire. Length of earrings with earwires is close to 5 cm (almost 2 inches).

Week 2 - Grace - The Year Of Jewelry Project 2013 Entry

Here is my second week's entry in YOJ project 2013, with the name Grace. For me grace is something simple, without too much fluff and extras, something elegant and classic.

So for this entry I made a pair of silver earrings with chain maille mixed with wire wrapping. Chainmaille weave is JPL (Jens Pind Linkage) and the wire wrapping part is herringbone weave surrounding the cute onyx beads. Not the best pics, I'll try to take better later and post them as well here.

Stepping Stones Bracelet In Nickel Silver

Here is my Stepping Stones bracelet - I have entered it in the first week of The Year Of Jewelry Project Facebook group.

I'm still working on the sterling silver one based on the tutorial I wrote for it, but as my silver rings finished and I was not in the mood just now to cut more, I started and finished this piece. It's quite heavy, even the big rings are doubled-up. This piece is made of 2 size rings only, all the connector rings being of the same size. I had some nickel silver rings that I bought earlier on from The Ring Lord, and that's what I used here.

Love this weave, I can't wait to finish the sterling silver bracelet as well.

Stepping Stones Weave Tutorial - My Way Of Doing It

First of all Happy New Year to everyone reading this blog!

This is my first post this year and a tutorial for the Stepping Stones chain maille weave for an alternate way of doing it for those (few) like me who are math challenged (despite my mom being a math teacher, lol).

I made a Stepping Stones bracelet a few days ago (design by Corvus Chainmaille) based on the free tutorial from Mailleartisans, which is very easy to do. I created the bracelet without a problem - until I wanted to do a pair of earrings with different size large rings which assumed a different number of small connector rings to attach the large ones to - especially when working with 3 ring sizes, as opposed to 2 sizes that the tutorial from Maillerartisans is based upon.

While looking at my bracelet for a little while, I realized that the whole thing is nothing but a 2 in 2 chain with some additions. I deconstructed it in my mind, and hopefully this tutorial will help a few - it is a bit slower going because I did it in 4 different phases, but some steps can be done together once you read through the basics.

So first here is the silver piece I started with, in an overview as to my progress so far. I will also post the bracelet once it's fully woven together. I used here 3 sizes of rings:
- large rings  (I used 1.5mm rings with ID of 6, for an AR of 4)
- medium rings (I used 0.9mm rings with ID of 3, making it a 3.28 AR)
- small connector rings (I used 0.7mm rings with 2.5mm id with AR 3.5)

Above you can see the bracelet in different stages of 'being', and some silver rings that I'm using to work through the piece as well.

Step 1 - Create a simple 2 in 1 chain in two ring sizes. Attached to this medium size ring are two small rings (the connector rings). Make the chain longer than a regular bracelet size, since the addition of the big rings will curve your chain and make it shorter.

Step 2 - Double up the medium rings so you end up with a long 2 in 2 chain as shown below. So you have 2 med. rings connected to the two small rings.

Step 3 - Start adding 2 small rings on one side of the medium rings, like shown below. How many of these 2 ring sets you will add will depend on how big your large ring is and how curved you want your piece to be.  The original tutorial calls for 4 double-up small rings, I used 6 in this example. So basically the medium rings will have 3 sets of small rings on them - two sets as connectors, and one set lose in the middle (as shown in the image below). Once you have the 6 double rings (or how many you want your large ring to be connected to), when you add the next set of 6 rings, add them to the opposite side of the medium size rings.

Step 4 - Now add the large rings. So far I've added two large rings for each 6 sets of small lose connector rings. As I go along, I will keep adding more.

One other reason why I prefer doing it this way is that in case I want to add a different size of large rings or attach it to a different number of small connector rings (e.g. a focal point on a necklace), I can decide right there how many connector rings to add as I progress with the piece and see visually where I am at the moment.

While this is quite basic, maybe it's the way my mind works, but this is how I could make sense of it all. I hope it does help someone mathematically challenged like I am :)