The Lipstick Page Forums Fashion Blog: Jewelry making #16

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Jewelry making #16

Posted by Colleen Shirazi, Wednesday, October 26, 2005 10:38 PM (Eastern)

Now it's getting good...finally....

I have only a few kinks to knock out of the system now. One is that, with my new crimping pliers, it seems that the #2 size crimps I have are too large to work with my beading wire. I mean it says on the face of the beading wire which size crimps to use. But if you're squashing your crimps with regular pliers, it hardly matters what size the crimps are, right? It all squashes down the same.

Still, I tried it out with the #2 crimps. It didn't work in the classical, crimping-pliers way in that I had to first crimp, then press into a round shape, then squash the round shape with the very ends of the crimping pliers. The first time I did it, it didn't work. The crimp shot right out when I tried pulling it with the pliers (which I always do).

The second time though...it seems fine. I put a set of 2 crimps on either side of the wire to make it stronger.

A couple of tips I got while surfing around...one is to coil your necklace one and one-half times, before closing the end. The idea is to get just enough slack to make a nice drape. (This is for non-stretch pieces of course.)

I tried this; it works great.

Two is for stretch elastic pieces. You are to get a bead that has a hole that's big enough to stash the knot inside the bead. You are to glue the knot inside that bead, using Hypo Cement.

I tried this also; it works great as well, but it's messier than what I'd thought. The glue in my Hypo Cement, once I got the wire-cap off, kept coming out even though I wasn't squeezing it. Bleh. I managed to get a good glob of HC on the knot and got the knot inside the bead. I let it set some, but while the cement was still "uncured" I went ahead and cleaned the cement that had gotten on the beads either side of the "cover bead," and some of it that had gotten on the elastic cord. If you clean up the piece before the glue gets hard, it's not too difficult to do.

Three...someone had an idea for Stretch Magic bracelets. It involved stringing the beads, then taking the two loose ends and drawing them through a bead. She then closed the loose ends with a crimp.

This looked beautiful but I wasn't 100% happy with it, because my kids would take apart such a piece the first day. i.e. one good pull on the finishing bead knocked the crimp right off.

However, I was happy modifying this idea. I knotted the ends first, using my usual square knot followed by an overhand knot.

I then took the loose ends and passed them through my bead (this is a bit tricky since it's 1.0 size Stretch Magic that works with crimps...you have to find a nice bead with a big enough hole to pass two lengths of 1.0 through), and knotted again. Here it sort of depends on the bead you're using.

For a cylindrical glass bead, I passed the two ends through it, then took a 10/0 seed bead and passed one of the ends through that. Without the seed bead, the knots at the bottom of the cylindrical bead would go right through the bead with one good pull.

I then knotted again, square knot plus overhand knot, then finished off with a gold crimp and trimmed the ends flush.

Here all of the stress of the bracelet goes to the first set of knots. If anyone pulls on the cylindrical bead, the stress then goes to the seed bead + set of knots of the bottom part of the bead. The crimp doesn't do anything, it just looks nicer than cut ends of elastic cord.

So...that's what I've discovered so far. Right now I'm wearing my first semi-precious piece...it's oval shaped turquoise beads, paired with small smoky glass beads. Why the glass beads, well, I figured anyone could make a straightforward string of turquoise beads. Why not make it more special? It's quite beautiful. I was going to make it longer, and ran out of turquoise beads (you can jack the length around a bit by placing a few more glass beads in the back), but now I think it's quite perfect, because it's light in weight.

This piece joins my finished glass bracelets...heh heh...secretly I'm thinking of never selling the jewelry, because there is something divine about wearing your own jewelry, that you designed, you figured out the materials and the sources, you came up with something out of nothing. Well I keep telling myself that these are samples. i.e. I can wear them, and just make the pieces to order. In any case I do intend to thoroughly wear-test everything before it goes on the market. If it's not perfect then I'll make it perfect before it goes on sale.

Labels: fashion, handmade, jewelry, personal, style

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