Drawing With Wire

One of the first ones, 2013

Actually, maybe these started more as "doodles with wire" as I was preparing to begin to learn Copper Enameling, had no idea what I'd be doing WITH the enameled pieces I was hoping to create.  I got this brainstorm about some kind of "pin-thing" that I could sort of dangle pieces from.....

Ha!  I never got close to doing this (yet.)  Instead, I got hypnotized with this act of bending  and moving the wire, and bending it more, and hammering on it, and on and on.....So as I mentioned in the post before this, I was caring for Dakota, prepping to leave for Maine, and running the campground even as I was fooling around with copper in preparation for my trip to Haystack.  And from the start, I was enamoured with this sort of zig-zag pattern.  As it evolved, I've come to call some of these pieces "rustic filigree" because of the lacy quality they can get, once there are a lot of loops.

But really, for some of these, I really think there was something about drawing (or doodling) with the wire.  I started to add pearls and other beads pretty early so eventually, I was making the "doodles" with an eye on fitting certain beads or other materials into some of the "loops."

I'm putting some images of the early efforts here....later, I'll show where this has gone since I've started this detour (or is it?  Hard to say when you're in the middle of something....) If a piece happens to be available, it will link to the listing.  If not available, please visit here to see what is new!

Not finished or resolved yet.  Kind of a break out piece but future unknown.

Thanks for stopping in and have a great day!

Playing with Copper

Sometimes, it all just starts with lots of bits, lots of units or pieces or whatever word fits best. And the past week or so, copper was in my focus.

There's just something enthralling here with my new found experiments in copper. I have no idea if anything is quite adding up yet, but pushing around the wire, the bits and pieces has been such a great design assignment.

The mix of these amazing peach tinted baroque pearls with the warm, firey, coppery metal is really inspiring to me.

What happens when I use discs? Flat discs, discs that I pounded into sort of curved cups.

And taking 20 gauge wire, forming into different ear wire shapes, laying out all these bits and trying to put them together.

And finally, my signature heart, done many times in silver but quite satisfying in copper, too!

And while I'm on the subject of experimenting...getting the hang of basic "layout" in this Google blog program is quite challenging. Somehow, it just doesn't quite do what I expect it to do yet. Well, January's theme is, apparently, "experimentation."