Friday 9 October 2015

Cobra, my first wire-weaving...

Finally, after a week of typing, I got a chance this afternoon to finish my first "real" wire-weaving. Just to remind you, the heart pendant is my first effort made about a month ago before I hunkered down with Debbie Benninger's book and Sarah Thompson's Craftsy video and book Fine Art Weaving Techniques and got serious.


This is so gross. The base wire was 18 gauge, way too small, and I think I used 26 gauge instead of 28 to weave with. And look at the gaps. Gaaaaahhhhh...

However, this is what you get when you follow the pros. Yes, I can see every mistake, but it's so coooooool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


As I wrote in the bead show post, with nothing in particular in mind except knowing this was the bead I wanted to use, I started out randomly weaving wires and dropping a wire, and adding other wire bits here and there, and then inserted one wire into the bead hole and started pressing and shaping the woven sections around the bead. If I didn't think something was working, I undid it and went in another direction. The woven wire is surprisingly very forgiving. The bulgy shape started out to be a leaf, but since it looked more like a cobra, I went with that.

I think the best and cleanest view is the side view.



Kind of a dog's breakfast in the back, but I was trying out different things I'd seen and kinda got lost in twirling and hammering and wrapping without considering what it was really starting to look like while I was doing it.



Pendant is finished. Bonus is I got the twisted angle at the top correct and the pendant hangs perfectly. Unfortunately, I think I wrapped too much in the middle there to secure the centre curl to the left hand bit. I should've just done a couple of wraps and left it. My great failing is I never know when to stop. Next time.



It sure looks different in a photo than in real life. All the mistakes show up so very clearly, but, hey, that's good for learning, right?

Other than the market tomorrow morning, I have a whole long weekend free to play. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone (send me some leftovers), and thanks for looking.






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