Headpin Cuff Tutorial

A couple of months ago I designed a necklace for our component of the month challenge featuring Diana’s stoneware disc, and came up with a way of using leather and headpins as fasteners in the design. I really liked how this looked, so I decided to explore it a little further and design a cuff bracelet. 

Component of the month by Diana Ptaszynski

The leather used is 5mm x 1.5mm flat strips and is available in loads of colours. I had quite a few lengths of it in my stash as it was one of those things that I bought because I loved it, not because I had an idea to use it for anything. 

Supplies

So now I have an idea, I’m going to run with it… If you want to follow along and make one of your own, as well as the leather, you need some headpins (mine are from Jen Cameron) an awl or as I’m using a bead reamer, large and small jump rings and a clasp.

Measuring

Start by measuring your leather, you need enough to fit your wrist leaving a gap for a clasp + 40mm. Fold one end over with a 15mm overlap and pierce through both pieces of leather. Once each side is marked open it out and enlarge the holes.

Piercing

Thread the headpin through both pieces of leather holding the head firmly against the leather.

Threading

Wrap the wire around one side...

Wrapping

Then pass the wire across underneath and wrap the other side, trim off any excess. How many times it wraps on each side will depend on the length of your headpin. Mine wrapped 3 times on each. 

Wrapping the other side.

Repeat this on the other end of the leather.

Ends completed

Fold the piece in half and mark the centre, pierce the leather and wrap the central headpin.

Adding the centre.

Fold one end to the middle pin and mark the centre, add another headpin. Then fold the other end to the centre and repeat.

Finished wrapping

You should now have 5 equally spaced headpins. If you’re not comfortable folding to find the centres, you can always measure with a ruler. 

Add a large jump ring at each end.

Jump rings for the clasp.

And finish with your clasp. 

The finished design

These look great finished with just the headpins, or add a charm or some other dangly bits for some more movement. This charm is also from Jen and was swapped in the Art Charm exchange.

Adding embellishments.

The finished bracelets.

I think they would also look great with flower head pins, maybe some wrapped wooly wire and plenty of copper charms. They're a great foundation to let your imagination take over!

Big Magic - thoughts on the creative life

Big Magic quote by E. Gilbert

Are you familiar with Elizabeth Gilbert? You probably are... she is the author of the autobiographical "Eat, Pray, Love" and her recent novel "The Signature of all Things".  She is the proprietress of a fab import store called Two Buttons. And she has given a stellar TED talk on the nature of creativity. (TED talk video included at the end of this post. Watch it. You won't be sorry.) 

Big Magic

Eat Pray Love, TED talk, Two Buttons store 

Her newest book "Big Magic" was on my Kindle as soon as it was released. An author whom I respect and admire, writing about the magic of creativity and living a creative life? YES PLEASE.  I fully intended to read the book, and try a new technique or conquer a "fear" and share it here. 

I couldn't get deep into the book on my Kindle. I needed to underline and make margin notes on every other page. This book is so freaking fantastic. Her tone is conversational; making it a fun and easy read. Like sitting down to have a coffee with Liz. Then she will say something so profound, drop a truth bomb... and I need to take notes. I am 1/3 of the way through the book - 78 pages in and I have 6 flags and 5 dog eared pages. 

Her premise is that creative living is the hunt to discover and uncover the gems in each of us... to find moments of beauty and transcendence in our lives. Whether this is in actually creating art/music/poetry isn't the question. Its more along the lines of "Following your Bliss". The truth that  creativity takes courage. She talks about fleeting ideas, ideas acted upon, "multiple discovery" of ideas. She describes the slog of working hard at one's work, and the rare fleeting moments of pure inspiration like fairy dust. 

 Let me share a few quotes with you... 

"Trust me, your fear will always show up - especially when you are trying to be inventive or innovative. Your fear will always be triggered by your creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome, and fear hates uncertain outcome..." (Big Magic, p. 23) 

"You can dare to be pleased sometimes with what you have created... You can resist he the seductions of grandiosity, blame, and shame. You can support other people in their creative efforts, acknowledging the truth that there's plenty of room for everyone. You can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes and failures... ( BM, p. 41)

And there are many more! The book is divided into sections: Courage, Enchantment, Permission, Persistence, Trust, Divinity. I think that gives hints at what else it may have to offer.  I'm sorry I hadn't finished it at this writing... but I want to savor it. I now own it in hardback and this will become a classic in my art/creativity library. Check it out. If you are a maker, designer, artist,  or not - it is proving to be an enlightening read. ( And here's her TED talk for free - see if you like her style and her message.) 

Until next time... be creative! 

Jenny 

Work of Our Hands

Today we have a special guest blogger Val Garber writing about her extremely interesting bead and jewelry project in Namibia. Enjoy! ---Jen Cameron

If someone had told me 20 years ago I would be running a project in Africa for marginalized women, I would have said they were crazy! Africa had never been foremost in my mind nor on my bucket list.

But life is crazy, and like we say in our house, “we make plans so God can laugh!”

How it all came about that I went from Orlando Florida suburbia to living in Namibia is quite a long story. We’ve been here for 13 years and have had enough adventures to fill a book. Hubby wrote it - The Leap: Living the Life you Dream About. It was only his dream in the beginning, but I came around slowly. Check it out: www.longarberauthor.blogspot.com.

Today, however, I want to give you a peek into our project and the ceramic beads we make.

Most middle-class Americans don’t ever see poverty up close and personal. But poverty is in your face every day when you live in a developing country. There’s a squatter’s camp with about 8,000 residents on the outskirts of our town of Okahandja, Namibia.

Many are unemployed and some have jobs paying so little they have no choice but to live in tin shacks. “Housing” ranges from bad to terrible with average housing being somewhat nicer tin than the photo below.

Seeing the poverty and unemployment motivated me to make a difference if I could. I began teaching bead work to a small group of unemployed ladies in my home. Here a picture of the first pay they received for bead work in 2004.

I was inspired by a development project named Zenzele in South Africa. Zenzele teaches employment skills to the unemployed in the Khayelitsha community, a Cape Town squatters camp of at least 1 million people. While touring their facility I commented that I wished something like it existed in Namibia. I'll never forget what my guide said, "well it started here 15 years ago with one lady and a sewing machine." The message was clear, no excuses, just start! And as they say the rest is history.

Today we are not nearly as large as Zenzele, but we employ about 20 people either full or part time, and through donations, have built a community center and studio in the middle of the informal settlement called Five Rand Camp.

Enongelo Center (the learning place)

Vicky

Lucia    

In the early years we taught only jewelry making techniques and a variety of seed bead patterns. But because supplies all had to be imported, it soon seemed like a good idea to also make our own beads. Oh the learning curve that entailed ! If I had only known........

Finished beads

There are no bead racks available here, so I started experimenting.

First we tried wires sticking out of kiln bricks. That was a disaster! Wires sagged, and beads stuck together. Eventually I came up with this system of cutting rectangles from kiln bricks and stacking them up. I might have tried using kiln shelf supports had I been in the USA, but here the shelf supports are round .

Our next big problem was inferior glaze. I wanted our beads to have a lot of detail, so we began by painting with underglaze and then a clear glaze over the underglaze. Because of the low quality of the clear glaze here, half the time our clear glaze went milky instead of clear. For a LONG LONG time, I just thought I has doing something wrong, that it was me and not the glaze. We fiddled endlessly with firing temperatures and thickness of application resulting in disaster after disaster. Until Finally, during a long stay in the USA for hubby’s cancer surgery, I had the opportunity to experiment with American made products, and that hurdle was overcome

Now we have so little trouble with glaze that the ladies call it “Magic Glaze”! The only trouble now is getting it here. When we travel from the USA to Namibia we have only glaze in our suitcases, and we beg travellers we hear are coming our way to please please bring us glaze !

If you would like to find out more about the 'Work of Out Hands' project and the beads we make you can visit our Blog and Facebook page. Beads for sale can be found in our Etsy Shop Okawa African Beads.