Happy Friday: Hand stamped dog charms

I promised you dog-themed, hand stamped bag charms last week, and here they are.

Just listed on Etsy here...

I hope they are going to be popular.  I've tested them out on dog walks and can confirm they are quite sturdy!

So which is your favourite?  Let me know.

Lucca says he likes them all, but it's been so hot, he has mostly been concentrating on paddling and sleeping in the sun. 

Alison x

Handmade Monday: Chain maille flowers tutorial

What a lovely week it's been since the weather got over itself on Monday.  We had a great walk yesterday at Wixford, followed by a delicious lunch at The Fish pub there.  It's been a good week for sales in the shop too, especially for bag charms, and I've made some progress updating my web site so people can design their own charm bracelets and necklaces.  The wild flower strips in the Coventry parks make you think you're in Italy!

They are actually not sunflowers but loads of these lovely flowers. Do you know what they are called?

They've inspired a tutorial this week.  Partly because I've not done one for a while and partly because I find it so easy for me to forget how to do things these days, it's handy to write them down on my blog. Also, unlike the other chain maille designs I've done, I'm not sure if anyone has done this particular flower design this way before. You usually find there is nothing new in the world of craft, so apologies if I am unwittingly copying!  Here's a daisy version of the watch style bracelet.

You'll need 11 beads and 51 jump rings for this design.  The tutorial is just for the flower - if you want to turn it into a watch style bracelet you'll need a few more jump rings in different sizes and to learn the butterfly chain maille weave.  I can cover that in another tutorial if you want. I'm using 6mm beads and 50 5mm jump rings, and one large 12mm jump ring for the centre. You need a bit of fine gauge wire too (0.4mm is good) and some beading thread. I like to use very strong jump rings, the ones I'm using here are 1.2mm gauge - Fabfifi50 on EBay is my favourite supplier for these.

Start with the 12mm jump ring. Close it and use the fine wire to wrap one of the 6mm beads in the centre, then add 10 of the 5mm jump rings to either side of the bead. 

It looks a bit messy at the moment and the centre bead will be quite loose. Don't worry about that - it will all tighten up soon.  

Next add 10 jump rings to link up in pairs the jump rings you've just put on. 

This is a very easy design but the next bit is where you could do with counting out 10 of the remaining jump rings and making sure you keep stopping to check that you're adding the jump rings on the same side of the flower.  This time you link two of the original jump rings again, but alternate ones from last time so that the next layer of jump rings lays on top of the last one. It's hard to explain, but hopefully clearer in the photo. 

The design will be really loose at the this point, so watch out for naughty jump rings trying to flip over and confuse the pattern!  The next step is to tighten the whole thing up with jump rings linking the last two layers:

Use 10 again and make sure you always link two jump rings but never go through the same jump ring twice. 

Now it's time to add the beads. Put one as a stopper bead on a long length of beading thread and then begin to sew them on, picking up one jump ring from the last layer between each bead as you go:

I find I need to go around with the thread several times to get the flower really rigid. The advantage is that you then don't need to tie or crimp the ends of the beading thread, they can just be cut.  You can see the beading thread a little but I don't think it detracts too much from the flower.

Once finished, you can add further connector jump rings as you need them.

There you go. 

Here's a link to what other crafty folk have been doing this week. 

Alison x

Handmade Monday Flowers and more flowers

Perhaps it's something to do with the lovely sunny weather? Some of you might know I often demonstrate a bit of obsessiveness in my crafting life. At the moment, and for about eight months now, it's been chain maille that I've turned to in every spare moment, and for the last few weeks, since discovering the inspirational work of Scott David Plumlee, I've been making chain maille  flowers like there is no tomorrow. Some of them are quite dainty like these Celtic flowers:

Some are more robust like these Byzantine flowers:

And then there are real whoppers like these 11 bead flowers. When you put them together in a bracelet, they are a real statement! 

Some might prefer just one in a watch-style bracelet:

I'd love to know iwhich you like best?

Here's a link to find out what others have been crafting this week http://handmadeharbour.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/handmade-monday-179.html

Hope you're enjoying this lovely summer,

Alison

Handmade Monday: Really productive week

It's been a bit of a craft crazy week here - don't know why but some weeks there seems to be a lot of creativity in the air.  The weather got better with more sunshine and frost and less cloud and rain and that always has a positive effect on me.

Bag or purse charms have been really popular in my Etsy shop recently - I think it's because it is much easier to get noticed outside of the jewellery category which is always so crowded.  Folksy sales are still not happening so my main venues now are Etsy and Storebeez - a fantastic little startup with amazing SEO, getting some of my items on the front page of google searches.  Now all I need is for folk to have the confidence to buy from a new and relatively unknown site....

As well as the charms, I was tempted by the lovely Rachel Norris, an amazingly talented jewellery maker, to have a go at twisting wire.  The only DIY tool we posses is a power drill, so having located it gathering dust in the bottom of a cupboard, it got its first proper use twisting some bronze wire to make these hoop earrings.  They were shown on Jewellery Maker TV this week so now I'm officially 'famous' for using a power drill.  Who would have thought that?  Lucky you can't do much damage with a power drill.

And, I've been messing with my flower loom and created some lovely little flowers which I'm making into bag charms, key rings and brooches.  Flower looming is relatively easy once you get the hang of the loom, and unlike some other sewing and embroidery projects that I've tried in the past, you can hold the loom up so it doesn't aggrivate my neck problems.  At the moment I'm using embroidery cottons for the flowers which give great vibrant colours, but I'm a bit worried about their durability.  Chris from Chrissys for Cards has kindly offered to 'road test' one for me, so hers is on it's way to the test site at this moment!  Wool and ribbon are the next mediums to try.

Not content with just that, I decided to try out needle felting, something I've been interested in for a while.  As some of you know, I am a complete disaster area in the field of hand/eye coordination, clumsiness and being generally 'kift' as my husband describes it, so starting a hobby that involves repeatedly stabbing small objects with a barbed needle probably doesn't sound like the best option!  Nothing to show so far, but thankfully a really thick glove of hubbie's has protected me from serious wounding.  Hopefully my needle felting might progress quickly, and as soon as it looks less the finger painting of a toddler, I be showing it off to you!

Here's the link to find out what others have been making this week.

Handmade Monday: How to make a Danish love knot

So, Valentines Day is creeping up on us, but whether you like to celebrate that festival or not, you might find these Danish love knots attractive!  I saw a tutorial for making them a while ago, then lost it, and struggled to find it again so I thought I might do one of my own.  They are easy to make and I think pretty effective.

You will need:

Some wire - I used 20 gauge, 0.8mm antique bronze wire but you could experiment with different thicknesses
A mandrel or object to wind the wire round

Step 1

Cutting pliers
Cup burr (optional)
About 15 minutes

Step 1: Start to wind your wire around the mandrel or cylindrical object.  You can work off the spool for this project which means there is virtually no wastage.  Can you see what I've used here?  Actually, it's a chopstick!  At about 6mm diameter, I've found it the perfect size to use with this thickness of wire and the fact that it's wood makes it a bit easier to grip than something metal or plastic, especially early on when you need to be firm with the wire.

Step 2

Make enough winds so that the whole thing can be divided equally into three parts. I've used four full rounds for each of my three coils, so I needed to wind 12 times round the chop stick for each love knot.  If you use a different thickness of wire and/or diameter of mandrel, you may need more or fewer rounds in each coil - you'll need to experiment a bit to find out what is the best choice. 


Step 2: Slip the whole coil of wire off your mandrel.  Then snip the wire three times at the appropriate points to make three equally sized coils.Try to snip so that the two cut ends are at the same place on the coil - this makes it much easier to hide the cut ends neatly at the end of the work.  You can tidy the ends with a cup burr at this stage if you want to.

Step 3

Step 3: Take two of your coils and hook one onto the other at right angles as in the diagram.  You are going to start winding them together.  It's the same action as putting your keys onto a slider keyring, except it is easier and you won't necessarily break any finger nails!

Step 4

Step 4: When you've wound them both together, they'll look like this.

Step 5

Step 5: Now take your third coil and begin to wind it on to one of the joined coils in exactly the same way as Step 3.

Step 6

Step 6: When the three coils are all joined to together they look like this.

Step 7

Step 7: The only thing left to do is to join two of the coils in the middle of the third.  This is a tiny bit fiddly, but easier if you hold the coils as in the picture and start to wind them together just as you did to get the first two together.  Be careful not to allow the end of the coil to be unwinding itself at the same time as you are winding it forward.  It is really just like when you are putting that second key on the slider keyring and you have to keep checking that the first one is not slipping off as you do so.

If there isn't room to manoeuvre the coils like this then you may have used a thickness of wire or size of mandrel that is inappropriate for this project.  It's a bit like chain maille in that you don't know if it will work until you get a bit further on in the weave.

Step 8

Step 8: Here's this final wind about half way through.

Step 9

Step 9: Actually, you've finished and the knot should look a bit like this.  At this point you can gently ease out the coils a bit, which will make the knot a little firmer.  Try to tuck the ends inside the knot so they can't be seen too. 

Step 10

Step 10: The finished knot can be mounted on a wire or threaded directly on beading thread.  Heck, it's your bead so you can do whatever you want with it now. There's a right way to put the wire or thread in the bead so that it sits properly - it's too complicated to explain in words, but you'll see what I mean as you try it out. 

I like them on wire with a bead cap or spacer on each end to cover the hole and give stability.

These ones in antique bronze wire are probably destined to become a bracelet.








I love these bronze earrings with red creek jasper beads too.

Look on the web and you'll see some stunning examples of folk making these in semi precious wires and then threading one on a chain as a stunning, understated necklace.

Why are they 'Danish' love knots?  I've no idea.  Some folk just call them love knots.  But I like the idea of them being Danish - it's so trendy at the moment with The Killing and Borgen providing our Saturday night entertainment!  You can't make them at the same time as watching, though, unless your Danish is so good that you don't really need the subtitles. 

Hope you've enjoyed the tutorial.  Here's a link to what my other handmade friends have been up to this week.

Handmade Monday: Viking weave

Just because it's nearly Christmas doesn't mean I don't keep having mad ideas.  So this week, while everyone else was getting sorted wrapping presents and decorating trees, I decided to learn Viking weave!  Luckily it's very easy to do, but it is quite time consuming, leading me to reflect that the Viking folk must have had plenty of long, dark evenings to fill with no TV distractions!


Fragments of the chain have apparently been found in Viking graves and were sometimes used as currency.  This little bracelet in copper wire is the only finished piece so far. The findings were all hand made too, so don't look too closely!

It's great fun because as you weave the wire looks quite messy and you think you've made a mess of it, but once you start pulling it through the drawplate, a bit of magic happens and it all comes together quite nicely.  Hoping to post a tutorial in the New Year when I've had more practice.  Currently having a go at double knit which is going well considering how awful I was at real knitting ;-)

A couple more makes from this week picture here too.  Hope you like them.  The watermelon tourmaline is a new gemstone for me and I love the range of colours.

So now I'm off to catch up on some of those non-crafty Christmas tasks.  Merry Christmas everyone!

And here's the link to find out what other crafty people have been up to this week.

Wordless Wednesday: New makes and new shops

And new online stores at:

http://www.storebeez.com/stores/blue-forest-jewellery/

http://www.wowthankyou.co.uk/blue-forest-jewellery/products/

Handmade Monday: clasps and flowers

 I've been messing around with wire again and begun a quest for my favourite handmade clasp!  These are some of the contenders.

Some days, I like the more complex ones and other times, I'm really attracted to the simpler models.  What do you think? 





As well as these, I found a wonderful tutorial on how to make wire work flowers and now I'm getting a bit obsessed with making them!






 Dinky, aren't they?  So far, I've made them in every type of wire I have, so it's about time I started using them.  Here's a pair of earrings which I think might be the most delicate that I've ever made, combined with my favourite beads at the moment, red and green Brazilian jade.


Want to see what everyone else is up to?  
Here's the link to find out what other Handmade Monday folk have been making this week.