Tutorial Tuesday - Nothing goes to waste....

Part of the design for the earrings that Brenda (one of my regular students and the woman behind the beautiful stones at Iced Hot Rocks) was making during her session last week needed some rectangular wire, and none of the wire I had in stock was quite right. Ten minutes or so with a length of 2mm round wire and the rolling mill soon sorted that out, but after Brenda had cut off what she needed we were left over with a very short piece that I rescued from the scrap pot saying that nothing goes to waste and I was sure that I could use it in something. "Go on then!" came the reply - so I did!

Brenda set me the challenge of making a pair of earrings using only that short piece of flattened wire and any other bits and pieces that were sitting out on my desk, and as I was making them during her lesson while she was filing or doing other bits and pieces that didn't need my help they had to be relatively quick too. And here's what I did!

A very pretty pair of earrings, even if I do say so myself! I'm very pleased with how they turned out. I've made a couple of projects recently that were just made from pieces that were already sitting on my desk or from pieces rescued from my scrap pot, and I've really enjoy the challenge that brings. So, your turn....what can you rescue from the waste basket or scrap pot?

I've been especially organised and these earrings are already available on the website here, looking for a new home for Christmas!

Tutorial Tuesday - owls!

I'm cheating slightly for today's Tutorial Tuesday as there's no jewellery in sight! This is a bit of a manic week - as well as my normal teaching commitments at college I'm also teaching at home tomorrow and this weekend is the Handmade Winchester show. It's the first year that the show has been a two-day event, and the first time I've done a two-day event too, so I'm trying to make sure that I've got enough stock covering all the different price points. I'm probably going over board slightly, but as I've got another show on 15th December that's better than not having enough stock! This week I've also got my post-cancer checkup. In fact, I'm writing this sitting in the room waiting for my consultant to come in - well, I've got to keep myself busy while I'm waiting to stop me from getting nervous, haven't I? I'm 99% certain that they're going to be pleased with my progress, but there's always the 1% of doubt niggling away....... I've just had a chat with a woman carrying out research on post-cancer treatment fatigue i.e. how tired I feel after having the treatment, how having and cancer has affected how easily I get tired. I had to tell her that I probably wasn't the best subject for the research as I was diagnosed 6 days after giving birth and had the operation when Jamie was 6 weeks old and it's hard to know where the tiredness from having two lively children, a business and everything else that goes with it ends and the tiredness from recovering from major surgery begins! Not that I'm complaining mind you -after all, I'm still here!

So, today's tutorials.... I'm rather addicted to owls at the moment, which is probably just as well as I spent an afternoon at the weekend making a collection of my owl clasps for a special order. I seem to be pinning a lot of owls of all shapes, sizes and materials on my Pinterest boards at the moment, so I thought I'd use this post to share a couple of the Christmassy ones with you.....

Source: juicy-bits.typepad.com via Joanne on Pinterest

Source: moonstitches.typepad.com via Joanne on Pinterest

P.S. I've just got round to posting this late this evening after teaching my evening classes - I told you it was a busy day! The consultant was pleased with me - no more hospital appointments for two whole months!!

Tutorial Tuesday - Wrap-around Bail

As promised, here is a tutorial for the bail I made for the focal pendant that Teresa Hulley sent me for the Brit Pack Beaders challenge. I knew that I wanted bail that would allow me to attach another wrapped loop to it easily, and one that would encourage it to lie flat, and also one that would go with the hammered wire links that were part of my contribution to the challenge ingredients. And this is what I came up with....

You will need:

•  a focal pendant with one hole at the top
• a long length of fairly thick wire - I used approximately 12cm of 1mm wire, but the amount you will need will vary according to your pendant. Cut off more than you think you will need and trim off the excess later.
• Round nosed pliers
• Wire cutters
• Hammer and bench block
• Needle file

1. Cut a length of 1mm wire and turn a wrapped loop at one end.
2. Hammer approximately three-quarters of the remaining wire to flatten it and flare it out at the end.

3. Thread the wire through the hole in your pendant and push the wrapped loop so that it is sitting above the pendant with the wire below it folded around the top of the pendant as shown. Make sure that the loop is sitting in the direction you want it to.
4. Start to wrap the rest of the wire around the stem below the wrapped loop.

5. Continue to wrap the hammered wire around the stem so that it covers the wire of the first wrapped loop and wraps back down over itself. Finish the wrapping at the front of the pendant, trimming the wire if necessary. File the end round with a needle file.
6. Push the end of the wire down so that it lies neatly against the wrapping.

7. Carefully hold the pendant so that it is safely out of the way while the top of the first wrapped loop lies on your bench block. Hammer the top of the loop.
8. And there you have your finished bail!

And if you haven't seen how I used this gorgeous pendant by Bohulley Beads in my challenge jewellery yet, come and look here!

Tutorial Tuesday - Forging a wired vine

It's been far too long since I had a Tutorial Tuesday post! I had hoped to have one of my own tutorials ready for you, but it still needs the last few photos editing so I thought I'd share one of my recent favourite finds with you instead. The Artisan Whimsy forum is building up quite a nice collection of tutorials on all aspects of jewellery making, and this is my current favourite. The bail on this necklace is so effective, but with the step by step photos on the Objects and Elements blog it is easy to make. The tutorial includes a lovely way of finishing multiple leather cords too.

Tutorial Tuesday - links from the tutorial library

I thought that it was about time that I updated the list of free jewellery tutorials that I've written, the list that I keep on the page shown at the top of the screen, as I rarely seem to remember to do it when I actually post the tutorials! I knew that I'd written quite a few, but I was surprised that there are 29 free jewellery tutorials so far. So I thought that this week's Tutorial Tuesday could re-introduce some of them to you - or indeed show them to you for the first time if you haven't been here long!

Some of the tutorials are on techniques or tools. For example there are a couple of tutorials on soldering tips (here and here), a tutorial on how to cut jump rings, and one on polishing your jewellery with a tumbler. And then there are the project tutorials. All but one of these are actually on making earrings! My three favourites are the ones above - Leaf Green earrings, Bubble earrings and Hammered Drop earrings. So, if you fancy learning some new skills or brushing up on some old ones, or making yourself a quick pair of earrings click on "Jewellery Tutorials" and have a browse. The list will be getting longer soon!

P.S. It's also worth clicking on the Tutorial Tuesday button on the left, as the list on the Jewellery Tutorials page doesn't include links to tutorials written by other people or tutorials that I've written on other subjects.

Tutorial Tuesday - Adding a photo to your blogger sidebar

Following my post about my Flower Bangle Challenge I was asked by a few people how you add a button to your blog - so here's a quick tutorial!

A blog button is simply a picture that has a hyperlink to a website - in this example I'm using the picture I edited for the Flower Bangle Challenge and I'm linking it to the post I wrote about the challenge. The tutorial assumes that you have saved the picture to your own computer - simply right-click on the picture and choose "Save picture as". It is always best to save a picture to your own computer as otherwise you are using someone else's bandwidth, which isn't very polite!

1. Open up your Blogger dashboard and choose "Layout" from the drop down list for your blog.

 2. This will take you to the Layout page. Click on Add a Gadget.

 3. Scroll down the list and choose the picture option by clicking on the plus sign.

 4. A small window will open up with options for you to fill in. Click on "Browse" to go and search for the picture you want to use.

5. Once you have chosen and opened up the photo you will see a preview of it. At this point copy and paste in the link you want the picture to go to when people to click on it. The link to the blog challenge post is http://daisychaindesignsjewellery.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/new-designs-celebration-and-new-design.html. You can also add a title and a caption if you wish. I added text to the picture, but if I hadn't I would have put the blog hop details in a caption.  Save the information you've entered.

6.  The small window will clsoe down. Click and drag the picture to where you want it to be, and then save the arrangement. You can drag the button to the top of the page as well.

7. And there you have it - one lovely button! Blogger has tonnes of different gadgets that you can add to your blog, and for most of them it's simply a case of clicking on the one you want and filling in the boxes!

Thank you so much for all the entries to the Flower Bangle Challenge! Entries to the draw close at midnight BST tonight so you've still got time to get your name in the hat! Click here for details.

Tutorial Tuesday - Looking Glass Pendant

I have had Marcie Abney's beautiful Looking Glass pendant pinned on one of my boards in Pinterest for ages, and I thought that it was about time that I shared it on here! I love the fact that it looks absolutely gorgeous but only uses a few resources and is perfect for presents. She's written a great tutorial to show you how to make your own, and you can find it here .

Tutorial Tuesday - Custom Hang Tags

Jenny's gorgeous tags!

Jenny at Glass Addictions has posted a couple of really lovely tutorials over the last week on how to easily create your own custom hang tags from inexpensive shipping tags that you can buy at most stationery stores. She even makes her tags smell  gorgeous too! You can find her first tutorial on making the tags here and her second on how she uses them in her displays here.

Tutorial Tuesday - Heart and Flowers bracelet

 

Here is the tutorial I promised you for the Heart and Flowers bracelet I posted on Sunday. It uses one of my new embossed heart connectors with colouful micro-macrame - if you still think of macrame as being something that should be left firmly in the 1970s with potted plant hangers and spooky owl hangings then you obviously haven't seen the beautiful knotted work that designers such as Malin de Koning and Rebecca Anderson have been producing! You can tie macrame knots with ribbons, silks, cords, wool, leather as well as good old string, but my favourite is C-Lon, a nylon cord that is just under 0.5mm in diameter. I love it because it comes in an amazing range of colours that don't fade and it's easy to work with. The first few knots that you tie with it may slip a little, but this slipping disappears as you continue working and each knot is held firmly in place by the next.

So, you will need the following:

You will also need round nosed pliers, nylon jaw pliers, wire cutters, scissors and either clear glue or nail varnish to secure the last few knots on each side of the bracelet.

Click on any of the pictures to see a large view of them in a slideshow.

1. Use your fingers or nylon jaw pliers to curve the heart slightly. Turn a wrapped loop in 0.6mm wire and thread this through one of the holes in the heart. Thread a bead onto the wire and turn another wrapped loop. Repeat for the other two holes. Use wrapped loops to attach another bead so that it links the two beads at the top of the heart together as shown.

2. Wrap the cord around your wrist and cut this length off the reel. Cut another length that is 8 times longer than the first. Hold an end of both pieces together and fold them to find the middle of the shorter piece. You will now have three short lengths and one longer one, much longer than you really need but it's better than having too little left at the end! Tuck the fold at the middle through a wrapped loop and pull the ends of the cords through the fold to tie a Lark's Head knot.

3. The three shorter cords are your filler cords, and the longer one (the working cord) will be knotted around them with a Half-Hitch knot. To start pass the working cord over the filler cords....

4. .....and then tuck it underneath and through the loop formed.

 5. Showing you the Half-Hitch again from a different angle! Tuck the working cord over and around the other three and back up through the loop formed and pull the knot tight. Try to keep an even tension - like knitting, this will come with practice!

6. You can see that the knots have started to spiral around the filler cords. They will spiral in the direction that the cord is pointing as it comes through the loop. If you make a mistake and tie the knot in the wrong direction C-Lon is easy to undo. Keep going until your knots reach to the mid-point underneath your wrist as you hold the bracelet in place. Don't cut the cords yet!

7. Cut the same lengths of cord as you did for the first side of the bracelet. This time start the Half-Hitch knot with the working cord tucked underneath the filler cords and then back down through the loop.

8. This will make the spiral turn in the opposite direction, a nice (but optional) touch for the two opposite sides of the bracelet.

 9. Finish knotting when both sides of the bracelet are about the same length.

10. Thread the clasp onto all four cords at one end of the bracelet. You may wish to trim the longer cord so it's the same length as the other three to make the rest of the knots easier to tie.You will be tying a Square knot around the end of the spiral to hold the clasp in place. A Square knot is just a double knot that you use to tie your shoe laces but with something else (in this case the spiral) in the middle of the knot, and is knotted in two halves.

11.  Divide the cords into pairs. Pass the left pair over the spiral and under the right pair of working cords. Pass the right pair under the spiral and up through the loop formed on the left (over the left cords) and pull tight. Hopefully the lines and labels make that easier to follow!

12. To tie the second half of the knot, pass the left pair under the spiral and over the right pair of working cords. Pass the right pair over the spiral and down through the loop formed on the left (under the left cords) and pull tight. Repeat the last two steps with the ring at the other end of the bracelet. Glue the knots and trim them when dry.

And there you have it!

I do hope that you enjoy making this bracelet, or your own version of it. Please do let me know if you post pictures of this or anything else that you make with one of my tutorials as I'd love to link to them! I've also got a Pinterest board where we can show of anything made with any of my Daisychain Extra supplies.

Tutorial Tuesday - covering crimp beads

I don't use many crimp beads in my jewellery but when I do I have to admit that I don't cover them up, I don't think about how they can be hidden. This is mainly because until now the only way I knew of covering them up was by using crimp bead covers, and I really don't like how they look! Lorelei Eurto has solved that problem for me though, with a great post on some imaginative ways of hiding those sometimes ugly squashed bits of metal. You can find her tutorial here.

Tutorial Tuesday - adjustable silk necklaces

Janna got me started using silk ribbons in my work after gifting me some beautiful silk ribbons in the Bead Soup ingredients she sent me for the last party, so I was really pleased to see Jennifer Cameron's tutorial for her beautiful coils that turn the silk into an adjustable necklace - such a simple but brilliant idea! You can find the step-by-step photos here (and have a look at her beautiful lampwork while you're there!)

Tutorial Tuesday - Leaf Green earrings

Thank you so much for the lovely comments about the earrings I made with Sue's gorgeous glass headpins! As promised, here is a tutorial for them. Once I'd planned out what I wanted to do they were actually very quick and easy to make, but to make them even quicker you might want to substitute the silver rings and the ear wires that I made for bought ones. I turned my silver rings into ovals using an oval triblet but if you don't have one the design would work equally well with smaller round rings instead.

You will need:

• two glass bead headpins from Suebeads
• two silver rings - mine were made from 1.2mm wire and had an inside diameter of 13mm
• two 7cm lengths of 0.8mm wire
• mandrels - I used the body of my 24mm wooden doming punch and an 8mm mandrel
• round nosed pliers
• nylon jaw pliers
• wire cutters
• hammers and bench block
• nylon hammer
• oval triblet
• needle file
• sanding pad

1.  Wrap the headpin around a large mandrel as show.
2.  Twist the end of the headpin around the wire just above the glass to form a wrapped loop.
3.   Use your fingers to pull the circle of wire into an oval.
4.  Make sure that the glass is facing the right way - see, easy so far isn't it?

5.  Holding the glass safely off the edge of the bench block hammer the steel oval to texture and strenghten it. Hammering the steel would have damaged the hammers that I use, so I used the one I keep for hammering the disc cutter and doming punches.
6.  Use a nylon hammer to shape the silver ring into an oval around a oval triblet - I made these ages ago and they've been sitting on my desk for months!
7.  Check the fit of your silver oval. Push it thinner with your fingers if need be and hammer it.

8. Start the earwire with a small eyeloop.
9. Bend the wire next to the loop around a small mandrel.
10. Hammer the front of the earwire to strengthen it and to give it a more finished look.
11. Use flat nosed or nylon jaw pilers to flick out the last 5mm or so of the earwire and file the end smooth. Make a second earwire, loop on the ovals and there you are!

Leaf Green earrings available on the website here

Tutorial Tuesday - necklace display stand

It's the Handm@de Winchester show this Saturday (you can see more details below and visit the new Handm@de Blog here), so my thoughts are turning to stock (need to make lots more stud earrings and some more pendants, but my fingers are itching to make a couple of new designs!) and also my stall display. I'm always on the look out for things I can make to display my jewellery, especially things that won't take up too much room when I store them, and this necklace display stand fits the bill perfectly! You can find the tutorial for it here at Black Daisy Designs.

And for those of you who live locally, here are the details of the Handm@de Winchester show - with over 70 stalls you can probably do all your Christmas shopping here, and feel very virtuous at the same time about supporting local independant businesses!

Tutorial Tuesday - Sweat Soldering

I'm going to be teaching my beginners college class how to sweat solder, amongst other things, this halfterm, so I thought that this tutorial from the Etsy Metal team blog would be a perfect one to link to this week! If you haven't come across the EM blog yet, do go and have a look. There are over 100 members of this Etsy team, and the jewellery they create is gorgeous, and in so many different styles that you are sure to find great inspiration. They have recently started an "ask Auntie EM" feature, answering readers questions on everything from what type of stone setting to use to what tools are best for a particular job, and this tutorial came about because a reader was having trouble with sweat soldering and asked for advice.

If the term sweat soldering is new to you then here's a quick definition before you have a look at the tutorial! Sweat Soldering refers to the technique used to solder a (usually) flat piece of metal on top of another larger one. Solder is gently melted on to the back of the smaller piece - melted just enough so that it flows as evenly as possible across the back but not so much that it actually starts to sink into the metal itself. This smaller piece is then put in position on top of the larger piece, the work is then refluxed and the solder melted again. The trick is to make sure that this time you keep the heat mainly on the larger piece of metal so that you don't melt the smaller piece. The jewellery that you can see here are examples of pieces I make using this technique.

Onyx Pebble, Dusky Rose and Russian Circles pendants

Common problems with this technique include the solder not flowing evenly or at all on the second melting and the small piece moving about on the second melting of the solder, and the Etsy Metal tutorial helps with this and more with clear photos - you can find it here!

Tutorial Tuesday - earring display cards

Yippee! I'm back on the internet! We've had a very erratic connection over the last four or five days. We've tried everything we can to sort it out at our end but we've come to the conclusion that it must be to do with the work that Virgin (our provider) is doing in Southampton at the moment, as the problem only seems to be during the working day! I was very annoyed yesterday as I finally had sometime during the day to get some admin jobs done and couldn't do half of them.

Anyway, at least it's working again now so I can share this very quick tutorial with you. I'm constantly thinking of ways to improve my displays for craft shows, partly to make everything look more attractive, and also so that I can set some jewellery up at home and so reduce the time needed to set things up on the stall on the day. I'm selling alot of stud earrings at shows at the moment and I did have them on brown card folded in half to form a tent. They didn't stand up very well after a little while though, and didn't look that attractive. This is my next idea, and Mum is going to be trying it out for me at her coffee morning on Thursday. I've used a punch to cut out little tags from brown card and I've used watermark ink to stamp a flower on the front. I use the same tags and stamp to make the tags on my gift bags, but a pink flower on ivory card. Dusky pink ribbon has been threaded through the top and holes pushed through for the earwires. I've started making a display board for the tags to hang from, but they actually stand up really nicely as they are so I'm going to leave them like that for Thursday! I'm going to write the prices in pencil on the bottom corner so that they can be rubbed out and the whole tag put in a gift bag.

The tags were very quick and easy to make, and I was especially pleased that I only used materials I already had. even the display board is being made from things I already have around the house. So, a quick question for you - what quick, easy and cheap ideas for craft displays do you have to share?

Tutorial Tuesday - how to make a jewellery leather cushion

I love this simple tutorial for a leather cushion! No, it's not for a cushion to go on your sofa - it's for your jewellery workbench! Jenni wrote it as she wanted to use upgrade from a folded towel for cushioning her bench block when she was hammering. I've bought a leather cushion years ago when I first started out, and not only are they horribly expensive but as they are heavy the postage is usually expensive too. So, save yourself some money, grab some offcuts of leather from a friendly upholsterer and head over to Jenni's blog!

Tutorial Tuesday - Flowers bracelet

copyright Sabine Lippert

One of my favourite jobs for Beads and Beyond is searching out beautiful blogs to review for the monthly spotlight pages. I try to find blogs with inspirational photos, and if there are tutorials or the blogger also teaches then so much the better, but my aim is to find blogs that will inspire the readers. I also make sure that I write about blogs with a mix of jewellery, not just silver and wirework! The blog I reviewed in the September issue was Sabine Lippert's Try to be better - her beadwork is absolutely beautiful. Her blog is full of pictures of her work in progress, and her website is full of amazing tutorials, some of them free like the flowers bracelet pictured above. So, as I'm spending my work time today preparing for tonight's evening classes, Tutorial Tuesday this week is on Sabine's beautiful work. You can find the flowers bracelet here - scroll down the page a bit and you'll see it there. Have fun!

Tutorial Tuesday - using a joint leveller

The October issue of Beads and Beyond has just come out and, together with the owl pendant above (which was inspired by the beautiful ceramic owl that my friend Hellie gave me for Christmas last year), I've also written a masterclass on using rivets in your work. I went through a stage of not using rivets much, but I love them again now, and they are much easier to do than you might think at first. The trickiest parts I find are cutting just the right length of wire or tube for the rivet, and cutting the fiddly short length of tube straight. However, the second part of that is made much easier with a joint leveller, a great tool that holds your tube (or thick wire) still for you while you cut it. It's called a joint leveller as the main use in jewellery making for tube is for making small hinges on items such as bangles and lockets, and when making these you need to make sure that the ends of the tube are level. This tool not only holds the tube in place but guides the blade so that you cut straight across the tube.

I showed a picture of my joint leveller in the masterclass and wrote about it, but as I'm always limited by both word count and the number of photos I can include I thought I'd write a bit more about it here. It was pretty difficult for T to get decent photos of me using the joint leveller, but he did his best! I've tried to show how I hold and use it. You can get a couple of different designs of joint levellers. The simplest (and therefore the cheapest) just holds the tube for you in a clamp that has a handle. The next one up (mine, pictured above) has a sliding stopper, and the next one above that (and the most expensive) has a sliding stopper that has a gauge on it it.

The sliding stopper is used to hold the tube at the correct length for cutting - undo the screw, slide the stopper to the correct position, do the screw up again and pop in the tube - or in this case, the thick square wire. With a gauge its easier to set the leveller to allow you to cut at a particular length, but given the price difference between the two models I just use a rular! The distance to measure is that between the slot where the blade goes and the end of the slide.

The metal bar then comes over to hold the tube in place while you are cutting. I hold the bar down with my thumb, hold the handle in my fist, and rest the leveller on top of my bench peg. The saw blade then goes inside the slot, and away you go!

Btw, the two pieces of square wire that I cut off while taking the photos for this tutorial were sanded and turned into these simple textured stud earrings.

Tutorial Tuesday - Bead Soup Party gift box

I thought that as the school holidays are almost over (already!) it was about time that I started up my Tutorial Tuesday posts again, and as nearly 400 of us beady bloggers are in the midst of creating our Bead Soup Party pieces, what better than a Bead Sop Party tutorial?!

It has been lovely to see not only the wonderful bead soups that everyone has had through the post but also the beautiful and imaginative ways many people have packaged up their beads for their partners. I showed you the lovely way that Janna packaged up the soup she sent me, perfectly matching the theme of the beads inside. Well, the tine above is how Jenny Cameron packaged up the soup she sent to her partner, and she's written up a tutorial for it. She put so much thought and effort into decorating the tin, and it goes beautifully with the soup she sent. You can find her tutorial here!

Tutorial Tuesday - stud earrings

Another tutorial that I'd bookmarked to show you a few months ago. I thought I'd show you this one today as Jamie and I are off out for the day with Katie and I haven't quite finished editing the photos of the tutorial I've been working on!

These tutorials are such a lovely but simple idea, and need only a couple of short lengths of wire, a couple of headpins and stud butterfly fittings. You can find it on the Beading Daily website here. You will need to sign up for their newsletter to access it, but it's free and the newsletter is always a great read. Enjoy!