Ohrringe "Starburst"

Starburst Ohrringe – Anfängerklasse – Samstag, 18.08.2012; 13:00–16:00 Uhr

 

Farbenfreudige Ohrringe in lötfreier Wire­work-Technik. Spiral-Ohrhänger, Perlenanhänger auf Draht. Anpassen der Ohrringe für optimale Balance.

Klasse: Anfänger

Sprachen: englisch, mit Übersetzung

Kursgebühr:

97 Euro, Material: 15 Euro, Draht im Kurs oder hier erhältl.

Mitzubringen:

Rundzange, Flachzange, Seitenschneider, Lineal, Stricknadel 7 mm, Schmuckdraht: 65 cm 20 ga (,8 mm) Hard oder Half Hard Round Draht, gemischte Perlen 3, 4 und 6 mm, Großlochperlen 12 x 2 mm

Zur Buchung

Material bestellen

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The contents of this post are copyright (c) Dianne Karg Baron. All rights reserved, in all media. Visit www.wrapturewirejewellery.on.ca/blog to read more!

Armband "Art Nouveau Bangle"

Art Nouveau Bangle – Meisterklasse – Freitag, 17.08.2012; Tageskurs 9:30 Uhr

Elegante Kurven und keltische Elemente kennzeichnen dieses Armband im Art-Nouveau-Stil. Lötfreies Arbeiten mit Wirework, Biegen und Formen von rechteckigem Draht um einen Cabochon, Zusammenfügen der Drahtelemente zu einem Muster und Anfertigen eines Hakenverschlusses.

Klasse: Meisterklasse

Sprachen: englisch mit Übersetzung

Kursgebühr:

182 Euro, Material: 30 Euro. *Draht kann im Kurs oder hier gekauft werden. Armbandform und Schieblehre können ausgeliehen werden.

Mitzubringen:

Rundzange, Flachzange, Seitenschneider, Bracelet Mandrel (Armbandform), Schieblehre, Lineal, wasserfester Stift („Edding“), Krepp- oder Abdeckband 6 mm, Holzdübel (Dowel) 10 mm, Schraubzwinge (C clamp), Taschenmesser, Schmuckdraht: 240 cm 20 ga. (.8 mm) Soft Square Draht*, 175 cm 22 ga. (.75 mm) Half Hard Half Round Draht*, Cabochon 22 x 30 mm, evtl. Poliertuch (Rouge Cloth)

Zur Buchung

Material bestellen

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The contents of this post are copyright (c) Dianne Karg Baron. All rights reserved, in all media. Visit www.wrapturewirejewellery.on.ca/blog to read more!

Armband "Freeform Bangle"

Freeform Bangle – Anfängerklasse – Samstag, 18.08.2012; 9:30–12:30 Uhr

 

Der Armreif ist die perfekte Möglichkeit, sich mit der Wirework-Technik anzufreunden. Draht wird verwebt und gebogen, um entweder ein schmales oder breites Armband herzustellen, das nach Wunsch mit Perlen verziert werden kann.

Klasse: Anfänger

Sprachen: englisch, mit Übersetzung

Kursgebühr:

97 Euro, Material: 10 Euro  *Draht im Kurs oder hier erhältl.

Mitzubringen:

Rundzange, Flachzange, Seitenschneider, Lineal, Schmuckdraht: 60–100 cm 16 ga (1,291 mm) Soft Square Draht, 150–300 cm 20 ga (,8 mm) Soft Round Draht, 150–300 cm 24 ga (,65 mm) Soft Round Draht, Perlen gemischt nach Wunsch 3, 4 und 6 mm, Poliertuch (Rouge Cloth)

Zur Buchung

Material bestellen

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The contents of this post are copyright (c) Dianne Karg Baron. All rights reserved, in all media. Visit www.wrapturewirejewellery.on.ca/blog to read more!

Anhänger "Prong Set Pendant"

Anhänger – “Prong Set Pendant” – Fortgeschritteneklasse – Sonntag, 19.08.2012; 9:30–12:30 Uhr

 

Außergewöhnliche Steine in einer Wirework-Fassung. Erlernt werden: lötfreie Fassung eines Cabochons und dessen Adaption für verschiedene Steingrößen, das Herstellen und Anbringen der Aufhängung.

Klasse: Fortgeschrittene

Sprachen: englisch mit Übersetzung

Kursgebühr:

97 Euro, Material: 20 Euro Drähte können im Kurs oder hier gekauft werden.

Mitzubringen:

Rund-, Flachzange, Seitenschneider, Schieblehre, Lineal, wasserfester Stift (Edding), Krepp- oder Abdeckband 6 mm, Taschenmesser, Juwelierfeile, Schmuckdraht: 75–100 cm 20 ga (,8 mm) Soft Square Draht*, 45–60 cm 20 ga (,8 mm) Half-Hard-Half-Round Draht*, Cabochon 18 x 22 mm oder 20 x 30 mm, Poliertuch (Rouge Cloth)

Zur Buchung

Material bestellen

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The contents of this post are copyright (c) Dianne Karg Baron. All rights reserved, in all media. Visit www.wrapturewirejewellery.on.ca/blog to read more!

Verbundstücke

Verbundstücke – Anfängerklasse – Sonntag, 19.08.2012; 13:30–16:30 Uhr

Lötfreie Verbundstücke mit quadratischem Draht. Erlernt werden: S-Haken mit und ohne Perlen, „Paperclip“-Verbindungen, einfache Verschlüsse, einfache und gesicherte Haken mit Öse, Kreuzverbindung. Teile können zusammen oder einzeln in Schmuckteilen kombiniert werden. Kurs mit vielen Tipps und Tricks, um mit quadratischem Draht tolle Ergebnisse zu erzielen.

Klasse: Anfänger

Sprachen: englisch, mit Übersetzung

Kursgebühr:

97 Euro, Material: 25 Euro Drähte können im Kurs oder hier gekauft werden.

Mitzubringen:

Rund-, Flachzange, Seitenschneider, Lineal, wasserfester Eddingstift, Juwelierfeile, Schmuckdraht: 150–300 cm 20 ga (80 mm) Hard oder Half-Hard Square Wire*, gemischte Perlen nach Wunsch 3, 4, 6 mm, Poliertuch (Rouge Cloth)

Zur Buchung

Material bestellen

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The contents of this post are copyright (c) Dianne Karg Baron. All rights reserved, in all media. Visit www.wrapturewirejewellery.on.ca/blog to read more!

It’s going to be a busy summer!  In addition to returning to Haliburton this year, I’m scheduled to teach five workshops at the Beaders Best Perlenkunst Messe in Hamburg, Germany from August 17-19, 2012 .

Sponsored by Perlen Poesie magazine, this second annual show features beadwork, wirework and metal clay from all over Europe and North America.  As the only Canadian instructor, I’m excited about teaching in Germany – and in German – for the first time.  (The courses are listed as being taught in English with German translation, because I requested a translator in case I get stuck.)

In conjunction with the workshops, I’m making kits available for pre-order.  Until June 15, the kits for Beaders Best will be available at a 25% discount.  More details about the classes can be found here, and kits can be ordered here.

Es wird ein arbeitsreicher Sommer sein! Neben der Rückkehr in Haliburton, werde ich dieses Jahr  ab August 17-19, 2012 fünf Kurse am Beaders Best Perlenkunst Messe in Hamburg, Deutschland lehren.

Gefördert durch Perlen Poesie Magazin, bietet dieses zweite jährliche Messe Perlenkunst, Drahtkunst und Silber Clay aus ganz Europa und Nordamerika. Als die einzige kanadische Lehrerin, bin ich über den Unterricht zum ersten Mal in Deutschland – und in deutscher Sprache - begeistert . (Die Kurse werden als in Englisch mit deutscher Übersetzung gelehrt aufgeführt, weil ich nach einem Übersetzer fragte, falls ich stecken bleibe.)

In Verbindung mit den Kursen, werden Drahtbastelsätze im Voraus zur Bestellung verfügt. Bis zum 15. Juni werden die Kits zu einem 25% Rabatt erhältlich. Weitere Details zu den Kursen finden Sie hier, und Kits können hier bestellt werden.

Sweetheart Ring
Level of Difficulty:  Intermediate

This little ring is very economical in its use of wire, but what a pretty result! Its look is perfect for delicate fingers, but the pattern can be easily adjusted for larger ring sizes and stones. For those who have mastered the basics and are looking to move on a new skill level, this project introduces some precise measuring and calculation.

13 pages, 45 photos, 40 steps, plus design notes

USD $15.00

Tools & Materials You’ll Need:

Tools:
Flat Nose Pliers
Round Nose Pliers
Chain Nose Pliers
Flush Cutting Wire Nippers
Vernier Caliper
Permanent Marker
Measuring Tape/Ruler
Jeweller’s File
Rouge Cloth
Wooden Ring Mandrel
1/4″ (6 mm) Masking Tape

Materials:
16″ (41 cm) 22 ga. (.65 mm) Soft Square wire
1 1/2″ (4 cm) 22 ga. (.75 x .5 mm) Half-hard half round wire
1x 6 mm facetted Cubic Zirconium or other stone

Substitutions:
Substitutions are not recommended for this project.

Available now from my Tutorials Page and in my Artfire Shop.

Ancient Whispers Earrings (Free download)
8 pages, 43 photos, 43 steps
Level of Difficulty:  Easy

What do these earrings remind you of?  A lady of Ancient Rome strolling in her garden, admiring the mosaics and calla lilies?  The Ionic Columns of Ancient Greece soaring above the Acropolis? Whatever springs to mind, the classics are never out of style!

It’s been quite a while since I released a free tutorial! While I put the finishing touches on my upcoming (and first!) Intermediate tutorial, I decided I’d make available this pair of earrings, which were originally featured in Week 13 the Year of Jewelry 2010.

This project was developed for a workshop I’ll be teaching this week and next at Harbourfront Community Centre in Toronto.

Tools & Materials You’ll Need:

Click here to download!

Other tutorials (fee and free) are available on my Tutorials page.

A former boss made the comment to me once that we are all dependent on the products of mining:  “If it can’t be grown, it has to be mined,” he said.  While this statement could almost be considered a universal truth, it is particularly true for jewelers.

I wanted to show a piece through various stages of its development – the passage from ore to granule, from granule to ingot, from ingot to wire, from wire to jewelry.

Having attended a number of fine craft exhibitions during my time with The Metal Arts Guild of Canada, one thing that has always struck me is how jewellers have dealt with the issue of effectively displaying something so small.

The first MAG show I attended, Behind Glass (2000), directly challenged the problem by asking everyone to display their pieces in shadow boxes.  The pieces I remember were a silhouette of a person – a brooch in silver – attached to a picture of a beach, to give the illusion of it standing at the water’s edge.  Another entry was a ring topped by a tiny sewing machine displayed in front of a old photograph of the artist’s grandmother, who loved to sew.

At the most recent exhibition, MAGC 2067:  Crafting the Future, several of the artists included supplementary props with their pieces.  Anne Lumsden’s piece was displayed over a bed of zebra mussel shells.  Rosalyn Woo’s award winning brooch, “Dear Linda” was envisioned as a birthday gift for its fictitious namesake, and included the “letter” written by the “maker”, Jacob.  Some might argue that the props detracted from the work – turning them into sculpture rather than jewelry – but for me, it added visual interest and helped to put the pieces into the context of the scenarios they were made to represent.

So, for this year’s HSTA Faculty Exhibition, I decided to approach my submission as jewelry cum sculpture.  The pinnacle of the Passage – and the piece that took the longest to construct – is the torus bangle.  Despite my ravings last year after a previous attempt at a torus, the thought of trying again appealed to me.

My six year old is currently obsessed with all things LEGO and Star Wars, so when I got the tube to the final length (18″/45 cm) I decided to have a little fun, and took a picture of myself in my best Jedi Princess Warrior pose.
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My wonderful handyman husband whipped up a wooden drawplate with large holes for me.  (He loves it when I give him an excuse to buy tools!)  After drawing, the length of the tube was over 40″ (101 cm). The reason I made it that long was to give me extra material in case I had to try again.

The technique for making a seamless join is called kitchener stitching.  It’s a common knitting technique for adding pockets to sweaters, or fingers to mittens, etc.  It’s tricky to do in wire, because the wire work hardens very quickly and the join tends to have a bit of a bulge.

I made two attempts at tori before finally working out an effective way of keeping the seam from being visible.

The casting grain and ingots gave me an opportunity to feed my own tool fetish:  I now have a new ingot mold! *grin*

The silver ore came from a vendor at the Bancroft Gemboree last year.  Unfortunately, no locality info was included with the specimen, so I don’t know if the source is a Canadian mine.

The mahogany display blocks play an integral role in delineating the passage through the stages.

I am grateful to be able to work with metal and to make wearable art, and so my submission to the HSTA Faculty Exhibition is really about paying homage.

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Passage:  From Ore to Jewelry (2010)
Silver ore, slabbed
Grains, 18.43 g, sterling silver, cast
Ingot, sterling silver, cast, 6.844 g
Ingot, sterling silver, cast, forged, drawn, 7.992 g
Torus, sterling silver, viking knit, kitchener stitching, 1.3 cm tube, 8.5 cm OD
Displays, mahogany wood, danish oil finish, various sizes

Every piece of jewelry is the end of a journey.  The metal forms as ore deep underground.  It is mined, extracted and formed into granules, then melted and cast into ingots.  The ingots are compressed and made into a usable shape.  In this case, it was drawn into wire, then knitted into a torus.

We see and admire only the final form, and acknowledge only the artist whose name is attached to it; yet the piece has been touched by many hands.  I wanted to recognize and thank those who labour behind the scenes to bring my jewelry into being.

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PASSAGE: HSTA Faculty Exhibition
Rails End Gallery & Arts Centre
23 York Street
Haliburton, Ontario, K0M 1S0
June 30 – July 30, 2009
www. railsendgallery.com

Continuing on from last week, since I made several of the Monkey’s Fist knots, I made another pair of earrings!

I’ve been doing some experimenting with photography lately, putting my pieces on a white background instead of the medium gray.  I’m looking for ways to make the images “pop” more – in my recent work I’ve been using a lot of stones that have the same value as the background, and it makes the jewellery look dull.  “Value” in colour terms refers to how light or dark it is.  (To see check the value of your stone, stare at the photo with squinted eyes – if the stone disappears it has the same value as the background.)  In order for a photo to have visual interest, it has to be either lighter or darker than the background, otherwise the eyes see what’s there, but the brain registers “ho hum”.

It’s a bit more work to deal with a white background – inevitably, and even though I have a white balance setting on my camera – the raw photo comes out slightly grey.  Photoshop can adjust the balance it easily, but then I usually still have to do some extra clean up.  It’s a bit tricky to lighten the background enough to get rid of “noise” but not so much that the jewellery bleaches out.

From a print perspective, (putting on my editor hat for a moment), getting photos with white background is a godsend for layout.  I can plunk them down anywhere on a page and build text around them.  Or I can crop and put several images close together – something that isn’t possible when the jewellery is shot on a grey or staged background.   There are no distractions – you look at the jewellery and nothing else.

While they work for print and web, white backgrounds do *not* work well for jury photos.  I had the opportunity to sit in on a jury for a show recently (something I highly recommend BTW, it’s very educational), and I noticed that the photos with white backgrounds were always very jarring.  Backgrounds with a value of medium to dark (but not black) and *absolutely no props* worked best for jury photos.  Prop shots work well for Etsy, but are distracting in jury.

More photos:

My life is all about choices:  if I choose to focus on one area of my life, another area gets sacrificed.  For the past few weeks, I’ve had to focus on some group endeavours, and so my work on YOJ projects ground to a halt.  I’m working towards finding balance, but haven’t found it just yet.

For this week’s project, my focus was on making bridal jewellery.  My thoughts were on “something blue” and “tying knots”.

The Monkey’s Fist is a classic macramé knot, usually used as a weight or ornament on the end of a rope.  Tying them in rope is relatively easy.  When I learned it as a child, it was just a matter of sticking a marble between two fingers, and wrapping the rope around the marble and fingers, then around the marble through fingers and then through the loops created by the fingers.  Then the loops were pulled tight.

In wire, the stiffness of the metal, and its tendency to kink makes tying challenging.  There is also the issue of trying to get the proportions right:  thinner gauge wire is more flexible to tie, but the knot becomes very small and fiddly.  I found it impossible to tie wire around a bead without it slipping all over the place.  Pulling the loops tight at the end was also a non-starter, so I had to make the initial wraps as close to round as possible – challenging since without a bead in the centre, the tendency is to wrap ovals.  I ended up creating an invent-a-tool to help.

It took a bit of practice to get consistent results (doesn’t everything?), but I did end up with a satisfying “knot”. To get the “blue” part of the earrings, I decided on adding some pale 2 mm iolites. I would love to try these in a larger gauge of wire, but I think that would really only be possible with fine silver.  Sterling just gets too stiff too fast.

More photos:

While having a look at the blog earlier today, I discovered that our interview was posted!  You can read it here.

I’m thrilled to be included with the plethora of talent Tina has featured on the site!  Thanks Tina!

It’s been another productive week here in the studio, with two new ring designs (destined for tutorials), some bridal jewelry and this pair of earrings made.

The earrings are the product of some work I’ve been doing on a proposal for a one-day course.  The idea is to teach ancient techniques.  This pattern is assumed to be ancient Egyptian.  It was all but lost to time before being reintroduced in the 1840s by the House of Castellani.   The Castellanis were greatly influenced by jewelry found in excavations of ancient Etruscan sites.  As fervent nationalists, they studied the pieces coming out of the sites, and painstakingly reproduced the jewelry, in what became known as the Italian Archeological Style.  The Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia in Rome has in its collection a “Prehistoric” bracelet, manufactured by Castellani, which today’s wire artists would recognize as a variant of the Egyptian scroll.

The Etruscans had trading relationships with the Syrians, Phoenicians and Greeks, who all traded with the Egyptians, so it’s conceivable that the design traveled from the Nile Basin to Ancient Italy.

Ocean Jasper Pendant (2010)
Sterling silver, fine silver, ocean jasper
Constructed, cold-joined
L 5.4 cm x W 3.0

I’m in production mode, building up some stock, and that means digging through my stash of stones.  I came across this ocean jasper, which I bought last year from a fellow member of the International Guild of Wire Jewelry Artists.

I’m not normally an ocean jasper fan, but every time I look at this cab, I see celestial clouds and galaxies.  It draws me in, and I can imagine that I’m looking into the vastness of outer space. This is a really special stone.

Generally, my preference when setting is to leave as much of the surface exposed as possible. I also tend to favour the more substantial, heavier bezels achieved by doing binding wrapping all around the stone.  It would have been easiest with a straight prong setting, but I wanted to add the beads to create some visual interest.  They are structural in that they act almost like prongs, holding the stone, but they also add beautiful decoration.

Corners are challenging to get tight, and I’m happy to have managed a secure fit around these.  I don’t have a lot of experience setting stones with points – most of the time the stones I deal with are round, oval or teardrop shaped.

I’m undecided if I should hang this on a viking knit chain, or on a strand of ocean jasper beads. Thoughts anyone?

All in all, I’m very pleased with how this turned out.  Even my husband, who has a decided bias towards using a torch, likes the setting – very high praise indeed!

More photos:

I was sitting at my computer on Tuesday night, minding my own business,  when inspiration struck!  It was one of those “bolt out of the blue” ideas that forced me to get up right then, get my pliers & wire and start bending.

*Contented sigh*

I love it when that happens.

This design fulfills a long-standing desire of mine to create a pair of earrings with interchangeable bits.  The pearl drops can be removed and replaced by other drops, or can be left off altogether.  The result is a very versatile earring that can be worn with everything – from dressy to casual.

The sleek styling makes this an elegant earring for a wedding:  With the pearl, it can be worn by the bride, or without, by her bridesmaids.

These earrings are available from my Etsy Shop.

More photos: