A commission

It's a long time since I've made any chain maille jewellery, but the other week, I was in a meeting at work and one of my colleagues noticed the bracelets I was wearing.

He asked where I'd got them from and I explained I had made them myself.

Within 5 minutes I'd got myself an order for one Jens Pind Linkage bracelet and one Byzantine bracelet, both in copper, and he had paid me in full up front.

If only money was always so easy to earn!  (Not that I earned much in the end as I had seriously underestimated the cost of the raw materials - who knew copper had gone up so much in price in the last couple of years??!! - but never mind he is a lovely chap, and I enjoyed making them anyway :) )

I will have to make some more, as I do really enjoy making maille, it's almost meditative

I'm in for the long haul....

COIF UPDATE 1 of god knows how many....

The eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed a new item popping up recently in my “works in progress” section over there on the left <--------

(if anyone actually has noticed, I’m incredibly impressed, and you win a prize :))

The new item is Darby’s coif….and today, finally, I got to update it from 0% to 1%, whoop!

So, with the refrain of “60 rings down, only 5,940 to go” echoing around my brain, this seems like a good time to start documenting what is likely to be my longest-running project ever.

Darby is my 18 year old son, and for some reason I flippantly said, just before Christmas, that I could make him a coif (ie that metal balaclava thingy the dude is wearing in that there photo) for his Christmas present, as 1) he couldn’t think of anything else he wanted, 2) we had been talking about going to a medieval re-enactment fair thingy in the summer and 3) I thought they looked like they would be fun to make.

To my surprise, he said yes please….and so it began….

The first challenge was actually finding the rings I needed – 6,000 stainless steel rings of a particular wire size and diameter….not easy! Getting the raw wire would have been easier, and a lot cheaper, and people on various forums were suggesting I make the rings myself from scratch ...but I just don’t have the tools, the time or the energy for that, frankly, so I wanted to buy them in ring form.

There is one armour supply company in the UK that sells them, but ouch! The price!

In the end it was cheapest to order them in from Canada, even with the £22 customs charge I managed to get stung with.

They arrived last month, at least the advance guard did, I only had the first couple of bags sent Airmail, just to get me started, the rest are on a slow ship somewhere halfway across the ocean as I type.

So - here are the rings:

Look pretty unassuming, don't they?

Well, they're not!

The first time I tried to open a ring to join it to another one (which, in a nutshell, is how you make chainmaille), with my normal pliers, it just sat there and laughed at me.

So - new, chunkier pliers were my next investment (this is turning into a blinking expensive present - it would have been cheaper for me to just BUY him a coif :))

Here they are, next to the lil' dainty ones I use for chainmaille jewellery, bit of a difference :D


Armed with my new pliers, I started joining the rings into European 4-in-1 fivelets at work one lunchtime a couple of weeks ago....this is a fivelet:

Now remember that there will be 6,000 rings in the completed coif. Each of these fivelets contains five rings - plus you need one more ring to join it to the next fivelet - so I need to make 1,000 of these little buggers.

In a full lunch hour, I managed to make the grand total of....

.
.
.
.
.

FOUR!

and my hands were sore and my arms felt like I'd been pumping iron (instead of small amounts of stainless steel...)

oh dear.

I can't deny that I found my first attempt a little discouraging, when I thought I'd be whipping this coif together as quickly as I can a bracelet.

The retailer in Canada that I bought the rings from - The Ring Lord has a forum, so I asked on there that night whether it would get easier, or whether I am just too weak for stainless steel and should give up now. The response was mixed, nobody said give up, but a few said variations on "no it won't get any easier, just suck it up, soldier".

So - that's what I've decided to do.

Today I tried another lunch hour stint....and guess what....I now have over 70 rings joined, making a jolly good start towards what will eventually be the headband of the coif.

Here's how it looks so far:

It's only the first wobbly step, but it was enough for me to be able to update my W.I.P. bar to 1%, which was a nice feeling, and it was also much much easier on my arms than the first attempt.

At this rate of improvement, I'll be weaving armour like a pro in no time :) I'll update regularly on the project's progress so you can see it taking shape.

I'm Excited and Enthusiastic about this project again now - pity we just left 'E' fortnight behind yesterday! How about, I think it's going to be Fun and Fulfilling?

---

And, on a completely different subject, although it still involves making stuff out of metal, I made my first ring last night and I'm well chuffed with it.

(as it was after midnight, I'm claiming that F for First as an official 'F' :) )

Technically, it's actually only my first successful ring, as the initial attempt, also last night, ended up in the bin. And before that I did try to make a chainmaille ring, but that went all wrong too.

This one is made from 1mm copper wire, wound round a ring mandrel, twisted into a spiral, and then oxidised with Liver of Sulphur (good GOD that stuff STINKS!).

It was really easy to make, it can't have taken me more than 20 minutes from start to finish, if that.

I'm wearing it now, it's dead comfy and I love how it looks on, dainty but not too girly girly, I might make a similar one out of silver wire next...

Oh I do love making stuff :)

It kind of looks like I haven't been making stuff recently....

...when actually I have, I've just been too lazy to blog them....

So here goes, a little round up of things I've made over the past couple of weeks...

First of all, I made a necklace for my best friend for her birthday.

It was my first attempt at wirework with sterling silver, and my first attempt at wet felting too (the base of the pendant - the swirls were needle felted on top afterwards), so it was a bit nerve wracking, but it turned out ok in the end, and Alison loved it, so that's all that matters :)


It's actually quite satisfying to make something completely from first principles from just wire, wool roving and some beads.

I took the first couple of not very good pics, Alison took the much cooler one below.

The beads are Labradorite (which I bought in Granville Market, Vancouver, almost 2 years ago, with the express intention of making them into something for Alison, I've taken my sweet time) and Aventurine.


While we're on jewelery, I also made a chainmaille bracelet for a very cool young lady that I know, called Lauren:

This was super quick to make as her tiny slim little wrists are about the width of my thumbs:)

Very girly, not like the stuff I usually make.

And neither was the Disney CJ layout I made last weekend - all pinks and purples and glitter and bling.... I barely recognised it as one of mine :)

But the theme was "the castle", and you can't really do justice to Disney's castles without a bit of fairy dust....

Excuse the bad photo, I had my lens on manual focus I think not auto:


It's a real pity the pic doesn't show the sparkle overload going on here, from glitter paper behind, to opal dust around the photos, stardust pen used on the title, glimmer mist on the metal rimmed tags, and jewelled brads.

Like I said, it's SO not me :D

My interpretation of the brief was to compare the Disney castles (I didn't include a photo of the Tokyo one as it's essentially a direct copy of the one at WDW anyway)

And inside the Oscar stylee gold envelope is my verdict as to which one is best.

I'll give you a clue - it has the longest name and the most dangerous inhabitant....

And last, but absolutely nowhere near least, it was Valentine's Day last weekend but one, so here's my card for the J-dude:



th-th-th-th-that's all folks!

While I'm blogging....when I really should be sleeping....

....how do you like my new pebbles? :)

I bought these today in the local bargain shop (where Ethan used to work, sadly now in its last week) for 20p :)

I thought they might be good for photographing jewellery on.

They don't really work with this first one, which is a half Persian 4 in 1 bracelet I made last night for Connor, as the rubber rings make it hold its shape for dear life, which means the bracelet steadfastly refuses to drape attractively over the pebbles....

But they look fab with my, still work in progress, Euro 4 in 1 copper cuff, don't you think? Drapes like a pro :)

More chainmaille....this stuff's addictive :)

May I present, my purple wrist, so far :



I'm kind of enjoying trying out new weaves with nice cheap materials, purple anodised aluminium and rubber on my left wrist, copper on my right. I'm working on a Euro 4 in 1 cuff for the right wrist to go with the Jens Pind Linkage and Byzantine copper bracelets I wear all the time.

My left wrist now has three .... Full Persian 6 in 1 in red and purple AA, Japanese 12 in 2 in black rubber, purple AA and, because I had them handy, sterling silver lil' rings, which kind of defeats the point of cheap experimentation, and Helm in black and purple rubber, and purple AA.

I'm chuffed with how they look together :)

I also cracked Half Persian 4 in 1 today, woohoo! It was a bugger to start off but fine once I got going...this little bit is just a practice but I'll probably do a proper one in copper for the copper wrist soon:

(Propper Copper, that rhymes :) made me giggle :) little things please little minds...)

So that's 7 weaves I can do now, this is FUN! :)

My next project is a little more ambitious - I'm going to make one of THESE for Darby. Once I can find a cheap supplier for the steel rings I need, anyway. Wish me luck :)

a homemade Christmas

It's been an expensive year, especially after having my bag stolen in Florida and having to wire money over to replace everything that was lost (hopefully one day the insurance will pay me at least some of it back....)

So I didn't have much cash to buy Christmas presents with....in fact I had pretty much nada.... so I used some Argos and Amazon vouchers I had been hoarding, and tried to make as many presents as possible...

Here are a couple of the things I made, Jay got a hand stencilled t shirt (he likes graffiti hence the three spray cans - Banksy stylee) - and if you look closely you'll see his necklace that I also made - it's a Jens Pind chain in brass, bronze and copper.

Darby's girlfriend Beth loves turtles, so I made her this charm bracelet:



and I made Darby a dinosaur themed gift box and fake "tickets" for a Dinosaur show that he is going to go to next year in London - I'll buy the actual tickets next payday - forgot to take pics of that one, sorry

Last but not least, this one wasn't technically a Christmas pressie, but was delivered just before the big day so kind of counts, a Helm bracelet in rubber and anodised aluminium for my bessie Alison:



Next year hopefully I'll be able to afford to buy real pressies, but it was kind of fun having to be a bit inventive and thrifty this time :)

I'm obscenely proud of this :)

It's bloody hard work joining a full Persian weave into a continuous chain, you know (well I found it bloody hard work lol)

Dead chuffed that it worked out, the bracelet is just big enough to roll on to my wrist easily - so no need for a clasp - but not so big that it hangs loose.

Two more piccies, just because I love it :)





Did I mention I love this bracelet, and I made it all by myself, and I'm very clever? :D

PS the rings are red and purple, not red and blue, but it looks blue in the photos