Saturday, July 19, 2008
Making Your Own Headpins
Yesterday, I posted photos of making headpins. It's really quite an easy process, and sort of fun (DH thinks that I'm goofy to think it's fun, but I'm easily amused....)
You'll need:
Fine silver wire (I use 22g for most headpins)
Cutting pliers
Heat-resistant pliers
Butane torch (get them at any hardware store, just the little one!)
Clean and straighten wire using a polishing cloth.
Cut several lengths of wire in approximately the same length - I like to cut about 2". It seems to be about the right length to give me enough wire to work with after I've "balled up" the end, without too much waste. I generally do at least 2 dozen headpins in one sitting...since it takes very little time, I will even go up to 100.
Prepare your working area. Keep safety in mind - tie back hair, wear clothing that won't accidently fall into the flame, protect your eyes, and have some water nearby!
You'll also want to have a small cup of clean, cool water to quench the headpins in after they've been torched.
I have a firebrick under my work area, just in case I drop a headpin or heaven forbid, the torch falls over.
Time to get started.Once you are ready, go ahead and turn on the torch, using the setting to keep it running hands-free.
Using the heat-resistent pliers or tweezers, hold one headpin by the end. Place the opposite end directly in the flame, just at the tip of the blue part of the flame.
Very quickly, the wire will start to glow - don't blink! You'll see a tiny ball start to form at the end, and it will begin "chasing" down the length of the wire. When it's the size of a small BB, remove the pin from the flame, and immediately drop in the cup of water.
Continue until you've done all the headpins...I hold about 6 in my left hand, sort of fanned out so that I can grab one as soon as I'm ready for it. Less butane wasted when you can move quickly from one headpin to the next!
Make them Superman Strong!!After quenching, you'll need to strengthen your headpins - they will be very soft (too soft!) after being annealed in the flame. I toss mine in the tumbler with stainless steel shot, water, and blue Dawn dishwashing liquid overnight. After removing from the tumbler, I straighten using a nylon-jawed pliers (hold just above the ball with a chain-nosed pliers, pull the rest of the headpin through the nylon ones). If you don't have a tumbler, just pull through the pliers several times.
You now have some *fine* headpins!!!
Labels: fine silver, free instructions, headpins, pliers, torch
Friday, July 18, 2008
Playing with Fire
Oh yeah.
I know it's silly, but I love making headpins. More tomorrow on the entire process.
Labels: fine silver, headpins, torch
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Things are heating up around here!
Ornament Thursday's heating up with the
July project teaser for our monthly theme of RED HOT....check out Lisa's little snippet!
Today's jewelry making activities included making about 60 fine silver head pins. I set up my camera on a tripod and attempted to capture the process...will check out the photos over the weekend. I'd like to put together a tutorial for making headpins using a small butane torch - it's not hard, but a little intimidating until you've tried it. Will try to get that done this weekend as well!
Finally, my own Ornament Thursday project for July will be a little outside the box...can you guess what I'm going to focus on? :-D Be sure to check back on Thursday, July 31 for the entire OT roll call.
Labels: fine silver, headpins, Ornament Thursday, torch
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Home Jewelry Business Success Tips!
I love Rena Klingenberg's site -
Home Jewelry Business Success. I had the pleasure of interviewing Rena, and I must say her story is incredibly inspiring! (
Read the interview)
One of the fabulous things about Rena's site is that many of the articles have been written by jewelry business owners, so I've found many times, the struggles that they've faced and the solutions they found are something I can use.
I submitted my article on
creating a business rewards program to Rena earlier this month, and was thrilled to get an acceptance notice from her. The article was published in Rena's newsletter and will have a permanent place on her web site. I'm thrilled to have been allowed to share my experiences to fellow jewelry makers!
Labels: jewelry business, published articles, rena klingenberg, rewards program
Monday, July 14, 2008
Busy Weekend Stamping and more
I'm working on some items that I think will be good for the county fair next week, simple things that are relatively inexpensive. I thought I'd share some ideas - I'll update with some photos soon.
Silver-plated chokers from
FireMountainGems are a hard wire that you can add a pendant to for a quick necklace. I purchased two different styles, one has a ball that you can unscrew to slide on a pendant, the other has a thin chain to clip a clasp to, and it slides through a pendant bail. The only problem I've got with these is that the bail opening needs to be fairly large to accomodate the size of the wire, and I want to rethink that component before making too many more. Might do some dabbling in making some soldered bails instead of simple
wrapped loop dangle.
I also made a bunch of discs from some of the re-purposed copper tiling I got from Mom & Dad and stamped them with metal stamps from Beaducation...I'll use some of them for simple charms that can be personalized (using letter stamps from
Contenti) and some for a couple of charm bracelets.
The discs are more labour intensive than you'd think - clean the copper (it's got adhesive on the back, and some kind of coating on the front), cut out the discs, drill a hole to hang from, stamp, tumble, file, hammer, stamp...whew, I'm tired just thinking about it!
I'd gotten a new "Paw" stamp from Lisa Niven-Kelly (Beaducation) and made Rex a cute little name tag that he's test driving. I think he likes the way it jingles against his other tags, LOL.
Finally, I made 6 copper bracelets using Beaducation's bracelet blanks. Again, more work than you'd think just looking at them! I came up with 6 different phrases to stamp on the bracelets, figured out how to best lay out the text and stamped it. Filled in some design stamps, oxidized, drilled holes to attach clasps, made the clasps, formed the bracelets using a bracelet mandrel, and attached the clasp using jump rings.
Of course, this is only the start of the busy season. Thank goodness I have all of August to recover before the big shows start up!!!
Labels: beaducation, bracelet, charms, chokers, copper, fair, Fire Mountain Gems, inexpensive ideas, lisa niven-kelly, Rex, stamping
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Hurt Books Sale at Interweave Press
For those who just don't have enough beading and jewelry making books....(and thanks so much Ami for alerting me to this sale!!)
From Interweave Press:There's an epidemic in the book world and only you can help. Every year, millions of lightly damaged and overstocked books are sent to their tragic end - pulped in a recycling center. These less-than-perfect-looking books may have a small ding or a tiny scratch - but they still have a lot of great instruction and inspiration to give to a worthy owner. Our small warehouse in Colorado is home to books like those above - and we'd hate to see them...*gulp*...shredded. For a limited time, we're reducing the price of these books 50% -75% off the retail price with the hope that you'll adopt them into your family. This sale runs from July 8-18, 2008 or while supplies last. We have a very limited inventory, so act now. Save a book today.Here is the
direct link to the jewelry books....but before you click on the "BUY ME" button, check out my reviews on
Beading for the Soul,
Beadwork Creates Jewelry,
Getting Started with Seed Beads,
Step-By-Step Jewelry Workshop, and
Woven Wire Jewelry.
Now, excuse me, while I run off and order my copy of my fellow Ornament Thursday buddy,
Katie Hacker's Hip to Bead. ;-)
Labels: Interweave Press, jewelry making books, jewelry sales, katie hacker, Ornament Thursday
Working on websites
I hate my business web site
(not BeadingHelpWeb.com - I love the way that one looks!).After much consideration, I decided I had to carve out some time last weekend to work on a new one. I purchased a new domain and set it up to be hosted...no going back.
Staring at a blank page doesn't do much good, but that's about what I did for a good couple of hours. Finally, an idea started forming, and then taking shape.
I'm not an HTML-queen, but I know enough to be dangerous. So between my minimal coding abilities, PhotoShop, and Adobe PageMill, I put together what I thought was a pretty good prototype.
I wanted minimalistic and clean. I wanted a shopping cart and the ability to update things myself. Most of all, I wanted something that reflected my personality and work.
While it's not perfect (I'd like to have a cart of my "own" but for now, I'm sufficing with linking to sections in my Etsy shop), I'm pretty happy with what I've got.
I'd love to hear your thoughts - take a peek at
C-My Designs, revisited.
Labels: adobe pagemill, etsy, jewelry business, jewelry sales, photoshop, web site development
Friday, June 27, 2008
How time flies! It's Ornament Thursday!
Wow, the month of June totally got away from me. Between Grand Cities, vacation, and an exciting family announcement (congrats to my wonderful daughter Bree and her fabulous finace, Nick!!!), I've just lost track of time.
Not to be defeated however, here are a couple of fun and easy projects that fit right into the Ornament Thursday theme: Independence...just in time for the US July 4 holiday!
And of course, the other OT Gals are right on top of things, with a great variety of Independent projects that are fun and fabulous! Check them all out:
Strands of Beads Melissa sees stars this month while considering the meaning of independence
Look for RED HOT themed projects in July!!!!
Labels: beads, beginning jewelry making, bracelet, crafts, earrings, free instructions, Ornament Thursday, Swarovski, wire working
