{"id":1293,"date":"2011-10-22T14:28:03","date_gmt":"2011-10-22T18:28:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/?p=1293"},"modified":"2011-10-22T14:28:03","modified_gmt":"2011-10-22T18:28:03","slug":"i-think-i-had-fun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/i-think-i-had-fun\/","title":{"rendered":"I think I had fun…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most of my creative energy lately has been spent on home improvement projects and not on jewelry making, so I promised myself that today I was Going To Have Fun and Make Some Jewelry.<\/p>\n

In my\u00a0mind I\u00a0envisioned a beautiful simple silver necklace and some funky silver earrings with multiple circles.\u00a0 So I got out a piece of paper and my jewelry supplies and “designed” the earrings, with the intention of designing the necklace after the earrings were finished.\u00a0 Simple design, quick project completion – or so I thought.<\/p>\n

My first attempt at the earrings used some 18 gauge scrap silver wire from\u00a0a previous\u00a0project, which I wrapped around the\u00a0empty pill bottle from Ophy’s recent prescription to make a one inch diameter circle.\u00a0 Next I cut an inch and\u00a0a half piece of oval silver chain (a splurge purchase from a few months ago), which I attached\u00a0by one end to the earwire.\u00a0 Then I hammered the silver circle to give it texture, and slid the circle on to the first and last links of the chain.<\/p>\n

Thinking to myself that I was pretty smart, I then starting wrapping 22 gauge wire around the two ends of the circle to join those ends together.\u00a0 The first attempt at wrapping failed miserably, as the ends kept popping apart and the 22 gauge wire ended up completely misshapen and unusable.\u00a0 So I discarded that wire (against my frugal Yankee nature) and tried again.\u00a0 And failed again.<\/p>\n

By this time I was completely <\/em>frustrated, and decided to try using a 3 mm silver plated bead to join the ends of the circle.\u00a0 I don’t own crimping pliers,\u00a0and this wasn’t a crimp bead, so it was taking a chance to try to squish it together with my chain nose pliers.\u00a0 It didn’t work.\u00a0 In anger I took out my hammer and smashed the bead (something it’s not made to withstand, so it split a bit) – and surprisingly, the circle stayed together.\u00a0 Ugly, but secure, and now unusable for the earrings, since it wasn’t attached to the chain.<\/p>\n

I failed similarly with my second attempt, and this time took to stretching and hammering the second circle until it was sort of a curlicue, albeit a distressing looking curlicue.\u00a0 What the heck, I thought to myself, and I joined these two failed attempts together to make a rather odd, misshapen pendant, which I’ll probably never wear (see below).<\/p>\n

But now I’d figured out what I needed to do, and since I was out of scrap wire I switched to silver-filled wire, once again wrapping the wire around the old pill bottle, but this time overlapping the ends by approximately a centimeter.\u00a0 This allowed me to successfully wrap the smaller wire around the two ends of the circle.<\/p>\n

Next I wrapped wire around a Sharpie to make a smaller circle, once again with overlapping ends, which I installed on the second and fifth links of the chain.\u00a0 I wrapped those ends to secure them, and one of the earrings was finished; I repeated the steps – not always easy to pull off for an amateur like me – and then had a complete pair of matching earrings.<\/p>\n

They’re not beautiful, and I’m not sure how much I’ll actually wear them, but I did learn a lot through the process of making them.\u00a0 Obviously I need to do a lot more of this type of practice in order to get good enough to make jewelry that a) stays together and b) other people might want to wear.\u00a0 Click on the images below to enlarge, if you want to see the details of my less-than-perfect jewelry from today:<\/p>\n