New Workshop: Woven Wire Cuff Bracelet

If you like knotless netting with wire and using mixed-media in your jewelry creations, you'll love this workshop offered at Brea Bead Works next Saturday!

The "Victorian style" woven cuff bracelet can be made with copper wire (as pictured above) or with sterling silver, as pictured on the cover of the Feb/March 2013 issue of Step by Step Wire Jewelry magazine. Easy and fun to make, the weaving on this cuff bracelet is reinforced with heavier gauge wire that also holds pretty bead dangles.

Finish by tying on vintage buttons, beads or other treasures, and you'll have a unique cuff bracelet unlike any other.

My workshop runs from 10 am to 5 pm on Saturday, May 25 at Brea Bead Works in Brea, California. Students will finish their jewelry in class!

To register and obtain a supply list, call the store at 714-671-9976.

I hope to see YOU there!

Happy wrapping,

Sharilyn

Workshop Series in Denver this June!

Well, I'm really excited to make the formal announcement that my workshop series slated for June 21-23, 2013 in Denver, Colorado, is definitely on! I'm teaching three fantastic full-day workshops for the members of the Rocky Mountain Bead Society, beginning with my super-popular Metallo del Fiore bangle bracelet (student bracelets pictured above) on Friday, June 21.

We'll spend half the day working on metal arts (sawing, filing, texturing with hammers, engraving metal), and half the day making a wire-based bangle bracelet with handmade clasp.

Tons of techniques will be shared, and this workshop results in a fabulous jewelry piece!

On Saturday we switch gears just a bit and focus on foldforming metal to make a pin like the one pictured above (made by my student, Sharon Nodelman, during a Wild Wire Women retreat), or a pendant, plus a pair of foldformed earrings.

In this workshop, you'll learn a lot about metal including sawing, filing, forming and shaping, texturing, punching, and lots of annealing and pickling with the torch.

Exciting and fun, especially for women who love to hammer and torch!

We wrap up on Sunday, June 23, with another full-day workshop focused on wire techniques. We'll learn ways to turn copper tubing beads (that we make ourselves) into ancient-looking artifacts, wrap them with wire, twist wire to make gorgeous jump rings, make wire clasps, and create a variety of different wire charms including spirals, hearts, and more.

Foreign coins, old buttons, and other found objects will be tortured with our hammers until they resemble antiques, and added to our bracelets. Ambitious students who work fast may even make a necklace instead of a bracelet...

If you'd like to participate in these workshops, you can join by contacting the Rocky Mountain Bead Society or by registering on their web site; click here.

Classes are $55 each for members or $110 each for nonmembers, so I recommend joining for a $25 fee. Membership to the RMBS has many benefits besides my workshop series, so check it out!

Students will need to bring their own tools (supply list provided to participants upon registration), but some materials will be provided. I hope to see you in Denver next month! This is the one and only time that I will be teaching outside Southern California this year.

Happy wrapping,

Sharilyn

FREE Tutorial: Fisherman's Cuff Bracelet

If you love wire jewelry, the Fisherman's Cuff is for you! It's all about wire.

I used 6ga copper round wire for the base (8ga could be substituted), and then wrapped it with dead-soft sterling silver wire in finer gauges. Coiling and double-coiling, knotless netting, and artificially aging your finished cuff will result in a spectacular piece of substantial jewelry that you'll love to wear.

Tools & Materials:

measuring tape, about six to eight inches of 6ga (or 8ga) round wire (the length depends on your wrist size), five feet of 22ga round wire, three feet of 20ga round wire, 10 feet of 18ga round wire (all wire is dead-soft), bracelet mandrel, heavy hammer, jeweler's saw with blades, jewelry files or sanding papers, chain-nose pliers, liver of sulfur, 0000 (super-fine) steel wool

Instructions:

Begin by measuring your wrist with a measuring tape to determine the approximate size of your cuff. Add to this measurement about one inch for a slight overlap. To cut 6ga or 8ga copper wire for the base of your bangle, be sure to use a jeweler's saw.

Tip: If the 6ga or 8ga round wire you use is from the hardware store (a great source of heavy-gauge copper wire), it's probably work-hardened and needs to be annealed with a torch before use. Quench, pickle, rinse and clean the wire as usual. Then wrap it around a bracelet mandrel at your chosen placement, and hammer down the ends firmly. Use a heavy hammer for this; it needn't be a jewelry hammer. I used an old beat-up hammer from the garage, and it worked just great for the rough look I was aiming for:

The wire ends will be jagged, so use a good-quality file or sanding papers to smooth them. Set aside the cuff for now:

Pick up the 22ga wire and coil the entire five feet of it around the three feet of 20ga wire. You can use copper wire instead of sterling silver, but I really like the look of the silver wire contrasting with the copper base wire. This is up to you. Be sure to coil tightly, with no gaps or overwraps!

Once the entire length of 22ga wire has been coiled, bring the coil to the center of the 20ga wire so that you have an equal amount of 20ga wire protruding from each end of the coil. Bend the coiled wire in half:

Place the coiled wire onto the 18ga wire, and begin coiling it from the center out. At first, you'll be double-coiling the already coiled wire onto the 18ga wire, but after a few wraps you'll run out of the coiled wire and simply continue wrapping the bare 20ga wire onto the 18ga wire:

When finished coiling, use chain-nose (or bent chain-nose) Classic Wubbers pliers to gently press down the wire ends. This is important, because it keeps the wire end from scratching you or snagging your clothing.

Slide the coiled/double-coiled wire to the very center of the 18ga wire:

Now you're ready to wrap the coiled wire onto the heavy-gauge (6ga or 8ga) copper wire cuff. Wrap firmly, working from the center of the double-coiled wire out to each end of the coiled wire:

When you run out of coiled wire, wrap the bare 18ga wire around the copper cuff just one time. You should have several feet of 18ga wire on each end to work with, which will be used to create knotless netting on the copper cuff.

Begin by bringing one wire end up, and then point it downward and underneath the 18ga wire right next to the coil as indicated in the following photo:

Pull the loop close and tight, using chain-nose pliers to assist in the pulling if necessary. You should have a fairly small loop on the wire as shown:

Continue looping the wire as described above, all the way around the circumference of the copper wire. When you reach the area of previously looped wire, run your wire end down into each loop and pull it closed.

Tip: If you have trouble pulling your loops tight, use chain-nose pliers to assist in this. Personally, I prefer to use the Classic Wubbers chain-nose pliers. The bent chain-nose works really well for pulling wire without breaking it:

Continue looping (or knotting) your wire in a random pattern down the copper wire base, until there's just about half an inch of copper wire remaining. Snip off any excess silver wire and spiral it in with the tips of the chain-nose pliers:

Repeat all of these steps with the other half of the 18ga wire, until the entire cuff bracelet is coiled and covered with knotless netting as shown:

As an option, you can artificially age your Fisherman's Cuff using liver of sulfur (LOS) and hot water. Use either the chip form dissolved in hot water, or paint on the liquid gel using an old paintbrush. I place my jewelry in an old plastic container and then brush on the gel to avoid staining my work surface:

Sometimes the gel won't darken all the surfaces quickly enough. In this case, pour a small amount of hot water over the bangle and you should see a darkening reaction right away:

Remove the jewelry, rinse it thoroughly, and dry it with a clean towel:

Polish the "high points" of the silver wire using 0000 (super-fine) steel wool or a polishing pad. If you use steel wool, once finished be sure to scrub the jewelry clean with a brass brush and a few drops of Dawn dishwashing liquid to remove grease and dirt. As an alternative, you can use a jewelry tumbler with water, and tumble the bangle for an hour or so.

Again, you'll need to rinse and dry it before wearing your jewelry:

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! Many more wire jewelry techniques and projects are found in my instructional DVDs and eBooks, including Arty Jewelry, Arty Jewelry II, Arty Jewelry III, and Arty Jewelry IV. If you would like live instruction on jewelry making techniques, I offer day classes at some jewelry stores in the Southern California area. I also teach my techniques during Wild Wire Women retreats held in my mountain home in Idyllwild, California.

Happy wrapping,Sharilyn

A Memorable Wild Wire Women Retreat...

Another Wild Wire Women retreat in Idyllwild has come to an end, and it's amazing (as always) how quickly our time together has flown by! I miss my friends already. A memorable weekend for sure—in part because everyone was so incredibly prolific and made so many gorgeous jewelry pieces, but mostly due to the laughter we shared over three and a half days working in the studio together.
The champagne helped, too!
Patti Bullard (inventor of Wubbers jewelry pliers) devoted her time to making two very complex and truly stunning jewelry pieces, including the sawn & pierced and textured cuff bracelet pictured above and below:

Patti also made a beautiful enameled penny charm bracelet, which was our first project for the weekend. Here is her masterpiece:

Our weekend was made so much more fun because Patti kept us in stitches with her infectious laughter and can-do spirit. She tackles every challenge with joy and enthusiasm, and her concentrated efforts produced two stunning works of art jewelry.
Another friend, Mary Gregori, was also very successful this weekend with her projects. Pictured below you can see her enameled penny charm bracelet:

And here is Mary's colorful Biker Chick Bangle bracelet (from my DVD, Bohemian Bangles):

Mary also made a beautiful etched cuff bracelet using a fish stamp image from Fred Mullett:

And a sweet pair of earrings:

Finally, an abstract pin that Mary made in class this weekend, loosely based on a triangle/spiral pin design featured in my bestselling book, Bead on a Wire:

I was amazed and blown away by Mary's art jewelry!
Finally, my friend Susie Lane from Virginia made several stunning jewelry pieces over the weekend, using copper wire provided as part of the class fee but also adding some of her own sterling silver she brought with her. The following photo shows her spiral-based and coil-wrapped bangle bracelet, which is also stepped out in detail on my Bohemian Bangles DVD:

Susie also made a beautiful enameled penny charm bracelet accented with Celtic knot links (featured in my book, Wire Art Jewelry Workshop). The bracelet is a gift for her dearly loved sister, Dagmar:

And here's a cute pair of enameled penny earrings:

One of Susie's most stunning pieces is the etched panel bracelet she made, which took most of a day to complete. I think it was well worth the effort! I have hundreds of rubber stamp images in my collection, and Susie chose a doll image by Impress Me rubber stamps to create an etched cuff which she then cut into square panels. Because they are squares, each panel can be turned different ways and shifted about into an abstract pattern before assembly. I love Susie's bracelet, don't you?

Finally, Susie's take on the Metallo del Fiore bangle bracelet design, featuring a Czech glass button and her own design for a metal motif that frames the button:

We had such a great time together! I think the combination of uninterrupted time spent in a relaxing environment with a fully equipped studio plus lots of great food, wine and champagne makes for a successful workshop retreat. But add to that the genuinely loving and generous spirit of my students, their almost nonstop laughter amidst a serious application to learning new techniques, and you have a win-win-win weekend of Wild Wire (and metal) Women!

Here are my friends, seated (from left) Patti, Mary, and Susie!
I hope to see them again soon, perhaps during my workshop retreat to Spain next year (more on that soon!). If you would like to come out to Idyllwild for a retreat, please visit my blog here for more information. There are still lots of open dates for 2013.
I hope you'll make this year your opportunity to take part in a Wild Wire Women retreat!
Happy wrapping,
Sharilyn

FREE Tutorial: Sawn & Pierced Cuff Bracelet

Since I'll be teaching a fun sawing and piercing workshop this weekend to my Wild Wire Women retreaters, I thought I'd post a basic tutorial on my process. If you're new to using the jeweler's saw, I highly recommend taking a good workshop with an experienced teacher who can show you just how to hold the saw and how to use it most effectively. There are lots of little tips and tricks to this, which are all but impossible to convey in a tutorial...
My Athena's Cuff (pictured above) is one of my favorite designs; made with 20ga copper sheet that I cut, pierced, filed, polished, textured, and heat-patinaed in my home studio in Idyllwild, California. Athena’s Cuff will enhance your sawing skills… and then some! By diligently practicing piercing out shapes with a jeweler’s saw, you can’t help but improve your skills.
Designing a heavy-gauge cuff bracelet with an intricate spiral design (or any other design of your choosing) will force you to saw out each shape with increasing precision. And then comes filing and polishing… lots of that. But you needed the practice, right?
I teach workshops on these techniques all the time and it is great fun for everyone, especially beginners who might be just a bit intimidated by their jeweler's saw. You can do this! Yes, YOU!
What you need: 20ga sheet metal (I used copper to make my cuff, but brass or silver will also work), jeweler’s saw with #3/0 size saw blades, saw lubricant (such as bee's wax), bench pin, paper, scissors, rubber cement, Sharpie marker, kitchen torch or jeweler’s torch, fire brick and/or 12-inch annealing pan with pumice, pickle solution (I use citric acid in hot water), metal hole punch or drill, jeweler’s files both large and needle-size (half-round files recommended for this project), bracelet mandrel, resin or rawhide mallet, 0000-steel wool or fine sandpapers
Creating a design for your pierced cuff is your first priority. First determine the size of your cuff; my sample is six inches long and two inches wide. Some may find this cuff size too wide; in this case try one and a half inches instead. You can always make a mock-up cuff by cutting a piece of cardstock to the size you believe will work. If it fits around your wrist comfortably, you’re good to go; otherwise, make adjustments.
Either free-hand draw a series of spirals with thick and thin lines, or use a commercial rubber stamp. Background stamps such as the one I used (from Rubber Stampede) for my sample are great because they’re usually about six inches long and definitely wide enough.Stamp the image onto blank paper, and then use a photocopier to enlarge the design as needed.
Once you have a pattern with fairly thick lines, set it aside. Cut out a window from graph paper measuring six inches by two inches (or one and a half if you prefer). Place the window over the photocopied image until you find a pleasing design within its borders. Tape it down, and then draw a quarter-inch border all around the inside of the pattern. This is the frame that will hold your cuff together once it’s sawn and pierced out of the metal.

Use a black marker to reinforce the black-and-white design; thick lines are best. You may need to add “bridges” within the design to keep it from losing structural integrity. I added several thick black bridges to my spiral design, and after I pierced it out and shaped the cuff I was really grateful for the bridges that keep the spirals from poking up.

Once you have a pleasing design, be sure to make several photocopies. After going to so much work creating a design with structural integrity, you wouldn’t want to use your original without copying it. You may want to duplicate your cuff later, or reduce the image to make earring dangles, or use portions of the design to make a pendant… there are many possibilities. Once you’ve made copies, put the original along with most of the copies in a file folder for future reference, reserving one copy for your cuff bracelet.

Now it’s time to use your design. First, adhere the paper to a sheet of metal (I used 20ga copper sheet but you could make your cuff using 18ga, 20ga, or 22ga) with rubber cement.Insert a #3/0 saw blade into the frame with the jagged edge of the blade facing out; you can either feel this with your finger or use a magnifier of some type to examine your blade. The blade’s jagged points should point downward, resembling a Christmas tree.
Ensure that your blade is inserted very tightly within the saw frame, because a loose blade will break. Use a lubricant such as bee's wax to lube the blade before you begin.
Place the metal on your bench pin, supporting the metal at all times while sawing it. Holding the saw frame vertically (i.e. not an angle, not tilted to one side or the other) begin stroking the edge of the sheet metal right next to the paper design. Begin sawing with an up-and-down motion; after a few strokes it will feel quite natural.

Tip: When sawing metal, never push the blade into it because the pressure is likely to break your blade. Think of the saw blade as being very similar to a needle in a sewing machine, which moves rapidly up and down as it moves forward into the cloth. Moving your hand up and down and holding the saw frame firmly (but not with a death-grip!), allow the blade to eat into the metal naturally, like a hot knife through butter. Remember, you are only cutting the metal on the down-stroke.
Keep your eyes on the saw blade at all times. Avoid distractions, and keep your fingers away from the blade!
Once the long rectangle of metal has been cut out, use either a hole-punch or a drill to punch or drill a hole within each white area of the design. These white areas are the negative shapes that will all be pierced out with a saw.

To pierce out a negative shape, loosen the saw blade in the frame until the bottom end is free of the frame. Thread it through a hole in a negative shape, with the design facing up as shown in the following photo. Tighten the blade in the frame as usual; make sure the blade is very tight! Lube up the blade with bee's wax (or your favorite lube used for sawing or using the flex shaft), and you’re ready to begin.
I saw from the hole toward the edge of the black design, and then follow the inner edge of the design all the way around the perimeter. When you have to make a sharp turn in a corner, changing the direction in which you’re sawing, the best way is to move the saw blade rapidly up and down while very slowly turning the metal until the blade faces the new direction. Don’t turn the saw blade itself, as it will simply break. Always turn the metal. And if you do break a few blades when you’re first starting out, take heart. We all break blades sometimes (which is why it’s a good idea to buy them by the gross instead of by the dozen!).

Once the first negative shape has been pierced out, take a look. Pretty cool!

Continue sawing to pierce out all the negative shapes. In a complex design such as the one shown below, this is likely to take a couple of hours. Remove the paper design and scrub off all the glue. Now you’re ready to start filing and polishing (oh, joy!).

Use a large jeweler’s file to smooth the outer edges of the cuff. You can also use sandpaper in various grits, steel wool, or your favorite attachment on a flex shaft if you have one. Switch to a smaller “needle” size file to smooth the edges of the pierced-out design.
Tip: Why not take off all the rough edges by simply dropping the metal into a tumbler with jewelry shot and burnishing compound? Well, sure, the tumbler is good at smoothing out the rough edges, and I’m not saying you can’t use it. But using files first will allow you to not only smooth the edges but to actually file away large bumps and flaws that will become apparent as soon as you remove the paper pattern from the metal. You can press the file firmly against the edge of the pattern as you file and carve out areas that need it, shaping the design to your desire rather than simply allowing a tumbler to smooth the edges at random. Once you finish filing and sanding the piece, you may then drop it into a tumbler for an hour or so for a final polish. This is entirely up to you.

Use 0000-steel wool to give a final polish to all the edges within and around the entire metal piece. Fine-grit sanding paper will also work.

Before shaping your pierced metal piece into a cuff, you should anneal (soften) it with a torch. First, use an indelible marker such as a Sharpie to run lines all over the metal.

Place the metal piece on a firebrick (such as the type used to line kilns with; do NOT use an ordinary household brick!), and if you have an annealing pan with pumice place the brick on that. I highly recommend purchasing a rotating annealing pan and if you can afford it, go for the 12-inch diameter size. The ability to rotate the pan while you heat the metal is a great feature, allowing you to easily hit all the areas of a large metal piece.
Heat the metal with the torch, using a bushy flame. Go over all areas of the metal evenly and watch for the Sharpie marker to suddenly disappear. That’s how you know the metal has been annealed.
Shut off the torch and place it in a fireproof area. Quench the metal by picking it up with some junk pliers and placing it in a bowl of cold water. Once it’s completely submerged in the water, it’s safe to remove with your fingers. Amazing how quickly the metal cools off!

To remove the firescale (a black residue caused by the torch), the best solution is an acid bath referred to by jewelers as a “pickle.” You have a few choices: Use a commercial pickle and mix it with hot water per the manufacturer’s instructions, or use pool acid or citric acid. I have used pool acid many times with great success; simply heat some water to almost-boiling, pour it into a small bowl or a crock-pot, and then add a quarter-cup of dry pool acid (ALWAYS add acid to water, never the other way around).
Recently I started using powdered citric acid (which is organic and non-toxic) instead of pool acid, with great results. Citric acid can be ordered online or found in some grocery stores. In a small crock-pot with heated water, add about a quarter cup of powdered citric acid and stir until it dissolves. Use either copper tongs or a plastic fork to place the copper piece in the acid bath. Remove it when the black firescale is gone, and the copper is bright orange.
Tip: If your crock-pot is too small to accommodate a large cuff bracelet, pour the hot solution into a larger container. Pickle the piece, remove it with copper tongs, and then pour the acid bath back into the crock-pot to keep it warm.

Once the copper is clean, remove it from the bath and immediately wash it with water and an old scrubbie pad. You may use water with a tablespoon of baking soda in it to neutralize the acid solution, but if you use the scrubbie to thoroughly clean the metal, you don’t really have to use baking soda. Just be sure to clean the metal thoroughly.
Next, dry the metal piece thoroughly with a clean rag or paper towels. Place the metal on a bracelet mandrel and hammer it firmly with a resin or rawhide mallet as shown in the following photo.

When the bracelet is nicely shaped, try it on for size. You may need to hammer it again on a smaller placement on the mandrel, or use your hands to gently shape it into an ellipse to fit your wrist more comfortably. The metal should be soft enough for quite a bit of manipulation. Hammering it some more with a mallet will eventually work-harden the cuff.

Once the cuff is hammered into shape and fits well, you have many options for altering it. You can use liver of sulfur to artificially age the metal, or use a commercial patina to color it. Another option is to texture it with your favorite texturing hammers. It’s easy to do this while the copper bracelet is on a metal bracelet mandrel. I advise annealing and pickling it first, to soften the metal.
If you look at the cuff pictured in the following photo, you can see that it’s been textured with a "raw silk" hammer (a Fretz brand textured hammer), and then altered by going over the entire cuff with a torch, with a gentle flame. The heat from the flame will color it with what is called a “heat patina.” If you overdo this step, the entire cuff will blacken. In this case, submerge it into a pickle solution to remove the firescale, rinse and dry it, and try applying heat to it again. This may take some practice, as the results are somewhat unpredictable.

I hope you've enjoyed this free tutorial!
If you'd like to come out to Idyllwild for a weekend of intensive instruction on wire art and various metal arts to make jewelry, please visit http://wildwirewomenretreats.blogspot.com for more information.
Happy sawing,
Sharilyn