Friday, August 5, 2011

MoeSmile Beads Necklace

This necklace started down at the river one evening. I practiced twisting wrapped loops while the Other-Half fished. He ended up with a nice stringer of catfish and I ended up with a bunch of little copper sticks with wrapped loops on one end.
A week or three later I spent the day with a friend, getting hands-on help with learning some basic wire techniques. I have books and a computer and a long-distance tutor but I just wasn't "getting it". Somewhere between looking at a picture of a step and my hands actually doing it, things get garbled. Like most people I suppose, I learn much better with a live example to follow.
So feeling inspired and much more confident after my "class" I went to work on making something out of those wire sticks.

First, I picked out some beads and made a number of segments, like this:

segments

Then I needed a way to connect them so I made a pile of jump rings and used two at each link up. (OK, OK, jump rings were the easy way out here, but it worked and I like the way it looked.)

connected

Here's the end result, a long necklace with largish beads on copper wire. I like the copper with the orange beads. I did not make the MoeSmile beads, by the way. They came to me as a gift and were gifted back to the giver in the shape of a necklace. ;)

necklace

Did you notice the unique clasp on it? Here's a larger view of it:

clasp

I was looking through my collection of store-bought clasps, not liking any of them. Too flimsy, too hard to fasten, wrong color ... and in a flash of insight and inspiration said to self .. why don't I just devise my own clasp? This is what I came up with. Cool huh? I'm pretty proud of me for thinking that up.
Actually, I'm pretty happy with the whole thing. :)

And in case anyone is wondering what happened to the catfish, we gave them to neighbors. I'm from the Midwest where catfish seemed to be on everyone's menu, but here in the Northeast, not so much. I don't think I've ever actually seen catfish on a menu here. Which is fine by me, much better fish out there to eat. ;)

3 comments:

Softailrider1 said...

Your clasp design is pure genius. Nice going.

MoeArt said...

The clasp is the coolest thing in the world. I love it! One day soon I will steal your idea and make some. :D Then display them on my uber cool wood display I have. heh, heh......

ColsCreations said...

Thanks, Guys! (And ladies if we need to be PC here, LOL).
And "steal" away and run with it, MoeArt. I am just going to sit here and wait to see if lightning will strike the same place twice. ;)