Tutorial - Primrose Hill earrings

The most recent earrings I made for the Earrings Challenge were a break from the norm for me - they used yellow! Yellow is a colour that I usually shy away from in my home, in my wardrobe and in my jewellery making, but a friend's lovely outfit the other week made me think again and inspired this combination of soft grey Picasso jasper and primrose yellow faceted glass with a new design for my Etsy shop - heart head pins. These earrings are lovely and quick and easy to make, so my post today shows you how to use a pair of fancy head pins to make your own summery pair!

You will need:

• One pair of decorative head pins with at least 5.5cm stems. Stems of 0.8mm wire are best as this thickness holds its shape well but still makes comfortable ear wires.
• Beads to decorate the stem.
• A crimp bead or squashable metal seed bead 
• Round pen barrel 
• Wire cutters 
• Crimping pliers or flat nosed pliers 
• Needle file or nail file 
• Hammer and bench block

 How to make them:

1. Thread the beads onto the head pins, finishing with the crimp bead or squashable seed bead.
2. Squash the crimp/seed bead it hold the larger beads in place.
3. Hold the head pins up against each other to check that they are the same length and trim if necessary.
4. File the ends of the wire smooth.
5. Bend the wires around the pen barrel to form an ear wire shape.
6. Hammer the front of the ear wires (being careful of the beads!) to strengthen them.
7. Enjoy wearing your new earrings!

To give you some more inspiration I've put together an Etsy treasury of lovely fancy head pins, including a few from the AJE team.

'Fabulous Fancy Head Pins' by daisychainjewellery

A collection of beautiful handcrafted head pins, perfect for earrings and charms!

Green Quan Yin Handmade Head... JeraLunaDesign... $10	Peacock Feather Headpins - ... humblebeads $16	Handmade Blue Glass Bead Lam... NValentineStud... $12	5 Teardrop Head Pins set. Bl... NadinArtGlass $8
Lampwork glass bead headpins... LoriLochner $38	Handmade bronze headpins, Ar... THEAElements $6	Sterling Silver Heart Head P... daisychainextr... $5.5	Red lampwork glass headpins,... ChristineHanse... $18
Handmade Copper Snakeskin Le... KristiBowmanDe... $15	Sterling Silver headpins, Ha... NadinArtGlass $9.2	TWO Bronze Blossom Headpins ... ktotten $12	Green Leaf Glass Headpins, H... LoriBergmann $18

Sponsored by send bulk email from excel.

This is actually my last post as a member of the AJE blog team. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time on the team, and working with such a lovely, encouraging and talented group of women who are just as addicted to jewellery making as I am. However, my life, both personal and business, are moving at a crazy pace at the moment and a couple of things have had to give to allow me to keep up with everything. I will still be around lurking and commenting, and of course on my own blog, but thank you to everyone who has read and commented on one of my AJE posts!

Jo Tinley
Daisychain Designs

 

 

Using a Bow Drill

A couple of weeks ago I showed you some of my favourite things, some of my favourite and most used tools, all of which are older than I am and that I inherited when I first started my addiction to silversmithing. One of them, the one that people commented on, is my bowline (or bow) drill. One of the things that I love most about my craft is that I am using skills and techniques that have been used for, in many cases, thousand of years, and this type of drill has been around for thousands of years too. If you visit this page you will, along with a lot more detail about the history of drills that I am going to write about here, pictures of bow drills dating from the Romans. In that article the bow drill is referred to as a pump drill as to work it you pump the horizontal wooden handle up and down to spin the drill bit. Apart from the fact that my drill uses a drill bit rather than a sharpened stone the design has hardly changed at all!

So, I thought that this week I'd explain how one of these beautiful tools actually works! It can take a little bit of getting used to, but once you get the rhythm it really is like riding a bike - once you've got it you never forget! One of the reasons that I like this drill so much is that you only need one hand to work it, the other is free to hold your work still.

1. Firstly, no matter what type of drill you use it is always good to mark where you want the hole with a centre punch so that the drill bit doesn't slip.
2. Place the drill bit in the mark, hold onto the metal shaft and spin the wooden handle to wind the string around the shaft - it doesn't matter which direction.
3. Place two fingers on the wooden handle either side of the shaft so that they are also holding the shaft still. Move the other hand to hold you work.
4. Push the wooden handle down gently and the drill shaft will spin. When the handle reaches the bottom it will begin to rise back up the shaft, so allow your hand to rise with it before pushing back down when the handle has returned to the top. You want to let your hand "bounce" back up - if you put too much pressure on the handle it will stop once it reaches the bottom. This is the bit that takes the practice, but you will soon find a smooth flowing action and the drill will build up speed as you work.

I tried to take some photo to go with the steps above, but although the drill only needs one hand to operate it I still couldn't take the photos at the right angle, so I've found you a video instead - I hope it helps! It's very short, and the jeweller spins the drill slightly differently at the start than I do, but you can see how smooth the rhythm is.




I'd love to know - what is the oldest tool that you have? 

Jo Tinley
Daisychain Designs

Finishing projects

I have a growing pile of projects in every stage of creation from sketches in little boxes with the components I need to make them, to rings and pendants with the settings complete and polished and just waiting for the stone to be set. It has got to the stage that I am almost out of room on my desk, and it's not a small desk!

Two of the many cabochons that I've started to make settings for! I'll often make lots of bezel settings to fit some of my growing collection of stones and then they are ready for when inspiration strikes - and time allows!

I've always used the excuse that, because I teach jewellery making, I need part made projects to use as examples with my students, but as I have a pendant that has been waiting for its stone (the beautiful Botswana agate in the picture above) to be set for nearly three years now I think it safe to say that things have got a bit out of hand!

Beautiful picture jasper to be set in pring setting - may not completely finish this one as I am still using it for teaching!

So, I was quite relieved to read Melissa's post two weeks ago this coming Saturday talking about this very problem, and challenging us all to join her this coming Saturday to show off the projects that we had (at last!) completed. I've challenged myself to finish all the projects that you can see here - fingers crossed! I hope I do it, as believe me, this is a small part of my collection!

Mystery lengths of square wire - any guesses as to what these will turn out to be?

My questions to you are, will you be joining me in Melissa's challenge, and do you have any part made projects older than my poor three year old pendant?!

Jo Tinley
Daisychain Designs 

Spring organisation - and some butterflies!

Spring has finally sprung over here in the UK! We're actually having beautiful weather for the time of year, probably nature's way of making up for all the rain we've had over the last year, and even better the forecast says that the weather is due to continue over the Bank Holiday weekend this weekend (we get Monday off for May Day) - although my apologies in advance to our UK readers if I have now jinxed the weather and your planned BBQ gets rained off!

handmade copper beeheart round headpins by KristiBowmanDesign

Spring has also brought out the bulbs in the gardens and the park we walk through on the way to my eldest son's school, and the trees are now suddenly coated in beautiful greens. I even saw a couple of early butterflies in our garden this morning, much to our kittens excitement, and some bees busy pollinating the flowers too - don't worry, they didn't catch them!

bronze patinaed butterfly focal by TheaToo

Spring always makes me look afresh at everything in my life. Everything always looks so much better in the sunshine with the birds singing, and I get renewed energy to organise and generally make my life (and my family's life!) brighter and run smoother. One of the changes that I have made this week to make my Daisychain Extra etsy shop run more efficiently is to change it from a "made-to-order" shop to one where everything listed is ready to ship out. It means that when you put an order in you can be certain that everything will be posted out to you within 2 working days, often that same day, and it also means that I can make batches of designs rather than one or two of a design at a time to fill and order - far more efficient! It has already allowed me the time to create some new clasps that I have had sketched out for a couple of months, and I will have regular shop updates every 10 days or so with new stock and new designs.

oxidised copper butterfly hook clasp by DaisychainExtra

So, I'd like to know what changes Spring makes in your life - do the changes you see around you in nature give you new energy and new inspiration for your jewellery making? Have you made changes in the way you work as I have? And while you're thinking about that I hope that you will enjoy the butterflies and bees I've found in the AJE team members shops!

rainbow stained glass faceted polymer clay beads by TreeWingStudio - these remind me of butterfly wings!

A Rose for love

This coming Tuesday, 23rd April, is St George's Day. In the UK the Welsh celebrate St David's Day, the Scots celebrate St Andrew's Day and, well, everyone celebrates St Patrick's Day along with the Irish, but strangely enough the English (I'm mainly English with a bit of Scottish, Welsh, Irish and German blood in the mix!) don't really celebrate St George's Day.It apparently fell out of fashion when England and Scotland united, but there are attempts to get the day celebrated more.

pomegranate red flower toggle clasp by Starry Road Studio

pink porcelain rose charm by Suburban Girl Beads

George needn't worry though - there other places that claim him as patron saint that celebrate in far better style, most noticable the beautiful city of Barcelona! Barcelona is the capital city of Catalona, a region of Spain that once was a separate kingdom, and I was lucky enough to go there last weekend with my other half for a wonderful birthday treat. I love Barcelona! So full of colour and so vibrant, and never more so on
La Diada de Sant Jordi (Saint George's Day). Also known as El dia de la Rosa (The Day of the Rose) or El dia del Llibre (The Day of the Book) the Catalonians holiday on 23 April in a similar way to St Valentine's Day. Men give women roses and women gave men a book to celebrate the occasion—"a rose for love and a book forever." Red roses have been a symbol of St George since medieval times, but the giving of books is a more recent tradition originating in 1923, when a bookseller started to promote the holiday as a way to commemorate deaths of Miguel Cervantes and William Shakespeare on 23 April 1616.
 

dusky rose by Daisychain Jewellery

In Barcelona's most visited street, La Rambla, thousands of stands of roses and makeshift bookstalls are set up for the occasion. By the end of the day, some four million roses and 800,000 books will have been purchased. Most women will carry a rose in hand, and half of the total yearly book sales in Catalonia take place on this occasion. The city is always full of music and street performers but even more so on this day.

dog rose colourful flower pendant by TheaToo

I thought I'd join in the celebrations by showing off some of our roses, both finished pieces and beads and components for your own creations. Enjoy St George's Day!

blue rose necklace by Linda Landig

Barcelona is also home to lots of bead shops! I have a post on my blog that I wrote after my second visit in 2008 (I told you that I love Barcelona!) that you can see here, and I'm in the process of writing another updated one - it'll will be ready soon!

Jo Tinley
Daisychain Designs 

Hearts and Flowers - a tutorial for you!

 

The weather is finally starting to get warmer here, the tulips are starting to bloom in the garden, and I'm finding myself making more bracelets. I do find that my jewellery designs have seasons - earrings and pendants more in the winter, bracelets in the warmer weather as shorter sleeved tops show them off better! This is a tutorial I wrote for my blog, and I thought you might like to see it too. It uses one of my 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! The bracelet would work equally well with any of the beautiful bracelet connectors and focals that you can see below.

Left to right: Ceramic Curved Textured Bracelet Bar by Bohulley Beads

Ocean Tea Bracelet Focal by Starry Road Studio

Bronze Butterfly Bracelet Bar by TheaToo

And if you'd like to learn more macrame techniques I'm currently having a short birthday sale in my Daisychain Extra shop until midnight tonight (I finally hit the big 4-0 on Tuesday!), and that includes 15% off my "Macramé, Art Beads and Wire" ebook with 6 lovely tutorials for bracelets, necklaces and earrings. Just use "BIRTHDAY" at checkout! One of the projects shows you another way of using the beautiful focal made by Karen Totten (Starry Road Studio) shown above.

Jo Tinley
Daisychain Designs 

March Component of the Month REVEAL!

I hope that you had a restful Easter Sunday with your families yesterday, and that you're not too full of chocolate! We delayed the reveal for a day because of Easter, but it's now time to show you what everyone made with the components I made them for the March challenge.

To remind you, I had fun making lots of lovely copper hollow beads and sent one to each of my fellow AJE contributors and to readers who were chosen at random. If you'd like to see how I made the beads follow this link to the last post I wrote. I'm really looking forward to seeing what everyone has come up with as although I've been making hollow beads for a while it's the first time that I've sent them to anyone!

The guest designers this month are:

Carolyn (Carolyn's Creations)

Jess Green
Niky Sayers

(Kathy  (Northern Light) hasn't been able to take part due to her mother's illness -
I hope she gets better soon Kathy!)

And the AJE contributors taking part are:

Jo Tinley
Jennifer Cameron
 Jenny Davies-Reazor
Susan Kennedy
Linda Landig
Melissa Meman
Kristen Stevens
Francesca Watson
Lesley Watt

Jo Tinley
Daisychain Designs 

Making hollow beads

As the reveal for the Component of the Month challenge is getting close I thought I'd use today's post to show you how I made the copper hollow beads that are this month's challenge. I love reading posts showing work in progress, so I hope that you do too!

Each bead starts out as two equal sized discs, which I cut out using my trusty Pepe disc cutter. I love this tool! The discs are then textured, some with a hammer, some with decorative metal punches before being domed in my doming block. Each disc is domed the same to make sure that they still match.

Next comes lots of filing! This has to be done to give each disc a flat rim so that each pair of discs sits neatly together with a crisp join.

Then it's over to the soldering table. When I'm doing a batch of beads like this I use solder paste as I just find it quicker to use. I put a generous helping of solder paste inside the rim of one discs and then place the matching disc on top. I'm generous with the solder as its not easy to go back and add more if its needed, and any untidy excess solder is hidden inside the bead anyway.

After soldering and pickling to clean the beads up I then drill the holes. This is the fiddliest bit! The first step is to use a triangular needle file to file a small groove in the edge of a bead so that the drill bit has somewhere to sit and doesn't slip along the join. I use a stone setting burr to neaten up the edges of the hole.

The last step is to use Liver of Sulpur to give the beads a lovely antiqued finish and to highlight the texture - and there you are! I love how tactile these beads are.

The reveal for the March CoM challenge will actually be Monday 1st April as 31st March is Easter Sunday. I hope that you will come back and join us then and see what everyone has made! And if you fancy creating something lovely with your own hollow bead then I'm currently making a limited supply of them to go in my Daisychain Extra shop!

Jo Tinley
Daisychain Designs 

Earring Challenge Reveal 5 (weeks 9-10/52)

Welcome to the fifth reveal for the AJE Earring Challenge! First of all, thank you to all of you who have taken part either through the Linky tool at the bottom of the reveal posts or through pinning your creations to the Pinterest board. And congratulations to those of you who have pinned your creations each week especially!

It wasn't easy choosing earrings to show you today,  so I decided to choose designs with one of my favourite colours - turquoise/aqua. Afterall, turquoise has got some green in it, hasn't it, and it is St Patrick's Day! Each person pinning their creations on the Pinterest board must use at least one quality handmade component in their earring design and state who made that component.

Brass findings, homemade polymer headpins and carnelian chips by Janel Goolsby

copper mermaid earrings made by Salmik (Silja Støvring)

flower beads and ear wires by Sue Beads

Bloom Where Your Planted by peachtreeks (Alice Peterson)

Elaine Ray ceramic beads, decorated flat jumprings, peanut seed beads and Thai Silver beads by Julie Panusis

That's all for this reveal! All pins added after the below button will be considered for reveal 6 on 31st March.

Jo Tinley
Daisychain Designs 

 

Announcing the March CoM winners!

Thank you to all of you who left comments on the March Component of the Month giveaway post - the giveaway competition is now closed and the winners' names have been drawn out of the hat (well, out of a pottery dish that usually sits on my bookshelf). Drum roll please!

Congratulations to 

 Stephanie Weiss
Niky Sayers

Kathy  (Northern Light)
Carolyn (Carolyn's Creations)

Jess Green

I will email you all tomorrow!

Jo Tinley
Daisychain Designs 

 

Soldering Tips 3 - toggle clasp tutorial

Here it is, the third of my three posts about soldering. Are you ready to put the tips from my first two posts into action? If you haven't read them already I suggest that you read Soldering Tips 1 and Soldering Tips 2 before having a go at this tutorial, but I will take you through everything gently!

This tutorial will show you how to make an unusual toggle clasp - unusual in that the "bar" of the toggle is a daisy with a petal or leaf shaped ring for it to go through, rather than the more usual long bar through a decorated ring or donut of metal. I like my clasps to not look like clasps, as you will probably have noticed if you've visited my Etsy shop!

Anyway, to get started....

You will need:
the basic soldering kit listed in Soldering Tips 1 (although I didn't use third hand tweezers, binding wire or snips, so you can leave those out!)
small blow torch
easy and medium solder paste
chasing hammer
texturing hammer
saw and saw blades
needle file
wire cutters
round nosed pliers mandrel approx 16mm diameter
doming block and wooden punch

You will also need: approx 2cm square piece of 0.8mm sheet metal, 5cm 1.2mm wire and a scrap piece of 0.8mm wire. I have used sterling silver, but as you will see at the end of the tutorial this toggle works wonderfully with copper too.

And here's how to do it!

 

1. Saw a simple daisy shape from 0.8mm (20 gauge) sheet. My daisy has five petals and measures approximately 1.5cm in diameter. File to neaten the edges and hammer the flower to give it a texture.

2.  Dome the daisy gently. I used the largest cup in my doming block and used a wooden punch to help protect the hammered texture.

 3. Melt some scrap into a small ball and, when it has cooled down squeeze a small amount of medium solder paste onto the bottom of the ball - it is on there honest! You wouldn't believe the number of photos I took to try and get a decent view of the solder! If you need a reminder of how to melt scrap into a ball, have a look at my stud earrings tutorial here.

4. Place the ball in the middle of the daisy and solder it in place. Remember that it is the heat of the metal that causes the solder to melt and flow, not the heat of the flame, and the daisy is a much larger piece of metal than the ball is. Heat the petals first, moving the flame in circles around the flower. As the metal takes on a dark reddish tinge (not bright red, that's getting too hot!) move the flame over the centre but keep it moving until the solder melts and flows. Quench, pickle and rinse the flower.

5. Form a small U from 0.8mm wire and place a tiny amount of easy solder onto each tip - again, it is there, honest!

6. Solder the U in place in the middle of the bottom of the daisy as shown, again remembering to heat the flower first as that's the bigger piece of metal. Use insulated reverse-action tweezers to hold the U in place and (this is the bit that takes the most practice) keep the U still while you remove the heat and the solder becomes solid again otherwise it could slip out of place.

7. Cut two 2.5cm lengths of 1.2mm (16 gauge) wire and bend them around a 16mm mandrel - I've used one of my wooden doming punches. You can see that I'm making lots of leaves at once here!

8. Place the pair of bent wires on a soldering brick to form a leaf or petal as shown.

9. Place a generous amount of easy solder paste at each tip. You have to be generous with the solder here as the joins aren't perfect - this is a rare time to ignore the rule that I gave in Soldering Tips 2!

10. Heat the leaf to melt the solder. Keep the flame moving across the middle of the shape and move to each tip in turn as the metal starts to turn red.

11. Use the torch to direct the solder to where you want it to go. Remember that the solder will flow to the hottest part of the metal. In the case of the join I have circled I obviously had the left hotter than the right and so the solder flowed onto that side of the bottom join. I should have compensated by heating up the bottom right more until the solder flowed over there. I added a little more easy solder, heated again and got a good join second time around. Quench, pickle and rinse your work.

12. Hammer the leaf flat and give it a texture if you wish.

13. File the tips round and smooth, and give it a patina if you wish.

And there you have it! I have added a jump ring to both the daisy toggle and the leaf, and (because I can rarely make just one of any new clasp design!) I have made daisies with different textures, from silver and copper, and given some a lovely shine.

I hope that this tutorial, and my previous two posts, have inspired you to give soldering ago or to pick up your blow torch again. But if you are fan of toggle clasps without the time to make your own you can find the daisy toggles I have made here in my Daisychain Extra etsy shop, and some of the other AJE team members have some beautiful toggle clasps in their shops too -

L to R: Floral Toggle by Karen Totten, Flower Burst Toggle by Kristi Bowman, Moss Green Leaf Toggle by Lesley Watt

Jo Tinley
Daisychain Designs