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
