Custom Creepy Earrings & My Bestie Niobium

Gone are the days when I could wear safety pins as earrings. My ears or should I say my ear piercings are fickle. I have cheap earrings made of who knows what, that don't give me problems and others with labels like nickel-free, hypoallergenic or surgical steel, that do. Which makes sense, if you actually try to make sense of the little regulation there is concerning costume jewelry. It's not surprising that seeing if my ears start to burn and turn red is a much more exact science then trying to figure out if those labels actually equate to any kind of standard or not.  

 

That's why niobium is my bestie, it's non-allergenic. I've also never had a problem with my titanium hoops, but then body jewelry standards are more stringent.  For this post I'm only using premade earring wires and those are readily available in niobium. I'm just going to show a few easy earrings you can make, but it's also just as easy to replace earring wires for that pair of earrings that you love, but are allergic to.

For the whys and what's of stainless steel, titanium and niobium this is good info.

I've successfully purchased niobium earring wires and other things from Artbeads.com, Beadaholique.com and Fusionbeads.com. They all carry relatively the same earring wires, at similar prices and they all offer free shipping for purchases over $25. The only factor determining which one I buy from, is who has what I want in stock. And no, there is no incentive for me to push any of these vendors, just stating my experience.

The following earrings all follow the KISS method. Keep It Simple Stupid. And if you do that, you too can have mildly fabulous allergen free earrings with minimal effort. So prepare to be underwhelmed and I say that with all sincerity. These examples are not meant to wow you or make you wonder in awe at the time or talent it must have taken to make them. This is a quick and dirty way to make inexpensive kitschy ghoulish earrings that won't burn your ear holes.

This is the simplest way to create an earring. One earring wire plus one charm equals one delightfully macabre earring. The loop of the earring wire is opened and closed just like a jump ring. To do this you need two small pliers. If you are worried about scratching the earring components smooth pliers are better than ones with teeth or you can cover the tips with painters tape.

You'll see I use this style of earring wire a lot. I like the look of the decorative wire coil. It almost looks like it's a wire wrapped loop, but it is not. The only disappointing thing is I've only seen it available in bronze.

I believe my desire to wear bugs on my ears was influenced by this movie, Bug. I was 3 years old when I saw it at the drive-in, with my parents of questionable judgement, in a double feature that also included the movie The Food of the Gods. In my parents defense I'm sure they thought I was too young to grasp what was going on. Which is partly true, for years I had no idea what movies were responsible for the various horrifying scenes that played through my memories and certainly no context of the storylines.

Even if you don't plan on going crazy making jewelry, having the superpower to open and close a jump ring is priceless. If you have jewelry that's too long, too short, too busy, or has a stupid clasp, a lot of the time you can easily modify it by adding, removing or replacing components via jump rings.

Here we have three tiny charms on three tiny jump rings (3mm) joined to the earring wire with a small jump ring (5mm). Again all you need is two pliers to open and close the jump rings. 

Almost the same as the previous earrings, the difference with these earrings is they used to be part of a necklace and the oval jump ring is a link from a chain. Note, that sometimes chain links are soldered and sometimes that solder can be broken by grasping the link on either side with pliers and wiggling them back and forth. I would not do this with a really expensive chain. 

In fact I wouldn't do any of this with anything expensive. I'm too much of a barbarian to have expensive or dainty things. My husband bought me a wedding ring with the diamonds channel set for durability.  And I still don't wear it, because I'm always do stuff with tools or my hands are covered in messy or gross stuff. I was always taking it off and I figured that would end with me permanently misplacing it. So my ring stays safe in a box and I occasionally bring it out to wear when I know for sure I won't be playing in mud, paint or salmonella. So like once every three years.   

But I digress, the take away from these earrings is you don't necessarily have to buy charms, you can rape and pillage jewelry you might already own. Or clearanced Halloween jewelry, but more on that in my next post.

And same concept again, this time a large decorative chain link shares the same jump ring as the charm. This earring wire came with the bead already on it.

The possibilities are endless, there are charms for every creepy crawly, or Halloween thing you can think of. 

Do keep size in mind when ordering online. Actually get out a ruler, see what 15mm looks like. Draw it on a piece of paper and hold it up to your ear. 

Also think about weight, which is a little harder to gauge online. Back in the old days you could just walk into a store and hold a charm in your hand. A small charm shouldn't be too heavy, but if you start getting more into pendant size, it might be a problem. Unless you like that look where your earring wire is weighted down so far it appears to be only a hairsbreadth away from ripping through your lobe.

Polymer Clay Skull Cane

This isn't so much a tutorial as an opportunity to learn from my mistakes and references that I found  helpful in my endeavors.  If I were a smart person, I would have started with simple cane designs and eventually work my way up to more complex designs.  I am not that person.  I jumped right into trying a skull cane, and big surprise it wasn't the most brilliant skull cane ever created, but it was a learning experience.  The beads above are from my second attempt, so let us travel back to my first round of mistakes and see how I ended with these.  For anyone else out there trying to short cut straight to skull canes, may the wind be ever at your back and your canes come out less deformed than mine. 

This is the base of my first cane.  I think it looks like an x-ray of Wallace saying, "Cheeeese."

Let's just go down the list of mistakes:

1) Thinking that reducing the cane was somehow magically going to make things look better. 

• I believe the opposite is true, the more flaws, the more distortion you are going to have in the final product.

2) Having big gaps in the design. 

• Again distortion as the clay pushes into those empty pockets.

3) Not filling out the negative space around the design enough.

• I originally intended for this to be a round design, but failed to flesh out a full circle. As if the first two mistakes didn't distort things enough, this only made it worse.

I wish I would've watched this video before I did any of this.  She fills in all the tiny gaps and you'll notice she works the center components further reducing gaps, before moving out to the next layer. 

Not a skull, but I think this hummingbird is a prime example of starting off with a really good foundation. The design doesn't change much from the beginning to the finished cane.



And this is what my skull ended up looking like. After seeing how the skull was morphing I went with a rectangular shape.  Not anything close to my original idea, but alright in freakish octopus ghost-like skull kind of way.

I tried a completely different approach for round 2.  I was inspired by this Hello Kitty cane video, I liked the way she started with a solid form and cut into it to add components.  I started with a thick disk of marbled white and pearl clay.  Then I printed out my skull image approximately the same size and laid it on top of the clay.  Then just like carving a pumpkin, I made pin pricks along the lines of the image and used those as a guide for trimming the clay.  I forgot to take pictures, but the photoshopped image below should give you an idea.  The dotted lines are supposed to be the pin pricks and the black line represents where I cut straight across the clay.  That made it easier to cut out the eye sockets and also to insert the black clay. 

Once the white clay was the proper shape, I made black cylinders for the eyes, those I sized up by laying them on top of the image.  Those were trimmed to the same thickness as the white clay.  Then I fit thin wedges of black in between the teeth. Here I should have used the red mix between the teeth or stayed with the black, but added a thin line of black all the way around the skull.  For the red I marble together a bunch of colors; red, orange, gold and a little purple and black.  I rolled it out into a long strip, cut it the same thickness of the skull and trimmed around the edge of the skull, plus some added bits to make it a full circle.

For the outer edge I made a separate cane and reduced it down until it was long enough to fit around the skull. The cane was then cut into chunks the thickness of the skull and place along the edge. Here's what it looked like before I reduced it. You can't see from this view but it was only a half inch thick, by the time it was reduced to the proper length the red details were pretty skinny and all those little colorful swirls were almost completely lost.  Just something to keep in mind when you're planning things out. 

I added a thin strip of black clay around the whole thing.  It wasn't until I had squeezed everything together that I noticed I had two pieces of the outer cane backwards.  I made an attempt at fixing, but it was already fused together and I felt I'd do more damage trying to fix it then just leaving it.  I know its a sign that I'm mental that it still irritates me.

 

Then I reduced the cane, cutting it at various sizes. I found this video to be very helpful for reducing canes. I've seen quite a few videos where after reducing by squeezing, they reduce further by rolling.  I have no idea how they can do that without any twisting.  I tried that for a little bit and immediately started twisting the cane.  Also the ends of the cane start to look a little alarming.  I was nervous that things had gone terribly wrong until I cut into the cane.  I think it turned pretty well. 

So cutting the cane is a whole other thing that I don't have a good answer for.  I read a lot of different methods, so many in fact that I ended up ignoring most of them.

The few things I did do was to chill the cane to firm it up.  I used a fresh cutting blade.  I stood up to slice the cane.  I guess you are more apt to cut at an angle toward you while sitting. And I rotated the cane after each slice, so I wasn't always mushing it down on the same side. 

I did make even slices, but I still distorted them a bit when cutting.  I also made a few  thin slices and used them to cover balls of of scrap clay.  After I had all my slices, I put on latex gloves to prevent fingerprints and reshaped the slices a little to fix any squished or flat spots. To use these for beads I poked a straight pin about halfway through one side and then poked it halfway through the other side.  Once it was all the way through I replaced it with a slightly thicker head pin.  With the head pin in place I gave the bead a few light pats to make sure it was level and smooth. Then I flipped it over and did the same thing on the other side. Sometimes it took a few more flips, sometimes I had to adjust the shape of the bead after removing the head pin.  I'll be the first to admit it wasn't the most expedient process. It's possible to avoid all this by baking the canes whole and then slicing and drilling holes afterwards, but I like how working each slice rounded the edges and I don't trust myself to drill straight. I thought ahead enough to give some of the beads vertical holes and the other half horizontal.  I wish I had done a few of the square beads with parallel horizontal holes near the top and bottom. 

Then I baked at 275, using the tile and aluminum pan set up described at TheBlueBottleTree.com 

So that brings us to sanding. I found this video to be helpful.  I used 3M sandpaper in 400, 600, 800, 1000, 1200, and 2000 grit from the paint department at Home Depot. They came in packs of ten sheets and I've only used a half sheet of each so far.  So I have enough sandpaper to last a lifetime, but I wasn't impressed with what I read about other papers sold in smaller quantities.

I spent the most time with the 400 grit, sanding until both sides of the beads felt completely smooth.  I liked that part because there was a notable stopping point, it's easy to tell when you don't feel anymore rough spots.  After that I sanded both sides for 20-30 seconds with each grit of paper.  Was that enough? I don't know. Did I really need to do all six grits? Don't know, but I'm happy with the results and I'd do it that way again. This was a bit time consuming, I'm thankful for kids in sports. To sand on the go I would bring an air tight container with a screw on lid filled with ice water and a squirt of dish soap to dip the sandpaper and beads in.  My work surface was a piece of soft foam on a waterproof tray. If I were going to get fanatical about making beads, I'd probably invest in a tumbler, as it is I still haven't sanded the round beads. 

After sanding, is buffing and I used a scrap piece of denim leftover from my binder. The more you buff, the shiner it gets. Sanding gives the surface a dull look and I found that a vigerous 30 seconds on each side was enough to bring the color back, with more of a matte finish. The more you buff the shinier it gets.  In the first picture you can see that the largest bead has been buffed the most.

And what I said earlier about a smart person starting off with a easier cane? Now that I've started to think about what I'm going to do with all these beads, it would be nice to have some accent beads with a simple pattern using the same colors.  Just saying...

...but I'll leave that for another time.

Itsy Bitsy Wire Spider Pendant

This is my last string pendant creation. See previous entries here and here. 
For this one, basic thread wrapping serves as a background for a little wire spider. 

Start with 6 inches of 18 gauge wire.  This is a smaller gauge than I recommended for my previous thread pendant.  Because this one is much smaller, the full length is 1.75 inches, 18 gauge will provide plenty of support.  To make the tear drop shape, bend the center of the wire partway around something small and round.  Here I'm using a seed bead tube, approximately 15mm in diameter. 
A thick marker would also be a good choice. 

Where the wire crosses at the top, bend each
wire slightly so the two ends rest side by side.

Measure the outline of the teardrop, in this case it's 3 inches, and then you will want to make a coil half that size. [see my coil setup]  For a 1.5inch coil I used 2.5 feet of 26 gauge wire. Stretch the coil until it's doubled in length.  Feed it onto the tear drop and wrap both ends around the top of the teardrop.

 

 

Bend the 18 gauge wire back at a 90 degree angle, then curve it around.

Trim the short end of the 26 gauge wire and

wrap the long end around the bottom of the loop.

 

 

Even up the ends of the 18 gauge wire and

give them a little curl with a round nose pliers.

 

 

 

Tie a thread around the top use a surgeon's knot to secure it. 

  

Drop the thread straight down the middle
and start working it in a clockwise direction.

Unless you are robot, in which case Cyberdyne called and they
want their arm back, your coils might not be perfectly spaced,
in which case you might run into this situation.

 

  

 

You can either just keep going, doubling over a few of the top coils until the bottom is filled in (left picture) or unwind everything and start a couple spaces over to the right and do it all over again (right picture) Yes, it's a negligible difference,
but if it will niggle away at you, now is the time to set it right. 

 

 

  

Now for the spider portion of this pendant, cut 4 lengths of 26 gauge wire, 3inches long. Your average craft wire is a little stiff for this part.  It's not impossible to use but I prefer a softer wire.  For this I used Artistic Wire's silver plated copper.  Another option is to use a smaller gauge wire.  

 

For the record 26 gauge is thin enough to poke your fingers like a needle

and the craft gods have been known to demand blood sacrifices. 

With that in mind form the wires into a loose overhand knot.

 

Or you can cheat, skip the knot and wrap a fifth

wire around the center to form your spider body.

 

 

Gently work the knot smaller by pulling the ends and also pushing the

wires out from the center of the knot to move the ends farther out. 

 

  

 

When you've moved it as much as you can by hand, spread the wires out and working one side at a time tug on each individual wire, pulling just a little bit.  Keep tugging each wire in rotation until the knot is fairly tight. 

If you like you can flatten it a little with a pair of pliers. 

 

 

Position the spider on the pendant and fold the legs over to keep in place. 
It looks like a big mess from the back.   

One leg at a time, pull the wire up and curl the end so you can poke it down and around the frame.  This part is fussy.  You have to follow along the curve
of the coil and also poke through the space between the threads. 
It's about as fun as threading a needle, sometimes it helps to hold the end steady with a needle nose pliers. 

 

  

Once you've successfully wrapped it around, it looks like this. 

Pull it all the way around to the back and then snip it with a flush cutter. 

Do the same for the rest of the legs.

 

 

Now this the fun part, grab a leg with a needle nose pliers and give it a little twist. 
About a 45 degree twist, counter-clockwise for the left side legs and clockwise for the right.
 

Do all the legs on one side and then the rest of the legs on the other.
I love how such a little tweak makes them look so leggy and ta-da it's done. 

  

 

Below, the one on the left I've done my usual curly swirly mess at the top.  It's pretty, but I think it detracts from the spider, which is why I went with a very basic design in the tutorial.  In both the pictures below I've reversed the direction of the leg crimp if you were wondering what that looks like.

 

This one I anchored the threads between wire wrapped beads.  If you like the look,  I think it's easier to wire wrap the legs in-between the beads. 
If I were to do this again I would thread wrap the pendant all the way around twice to give it a more solid background.

 

  

For size comparison here is the original spider pendant on the left, the current one in the middle and a slightly smaller one on the right.  The smallest one was formed using a thick Crayola marker and creating a shorter teardrop.

 

  

And just because I love the texture of those little wire twists,

here's something I played around with using junk wire. 

 

String Pendant Variations

6mm beads, 16 gauge wire

Last time I wrote about making string art pendants using coiled wire.  Here are a few alternatives to using coils.   

The first alternative is stringing beads on a wire.  The nice thing about doing it this way, is it takes almost no time to string a handful of beads on a wire.

Finding small beads with large enough holes to fit 16 or at least 18 gauge wire can be challenging. 

Coils by design have nice little spaces for the threads to go, beads do not.  With the purple beaded pendant below, the last few thread wraps were really tight. I starting getting nervous I was going to break the thread.  For the black and silver one I gave myself some extra room, but I had to sell my soul to keep the beads evenly spaced while wrapping them. The round beads on the skull pendant were a little more forgiving and even after space between them got tight, the valley between the outer edge of the beads was deep enough to hold a few more threads. 

18 gauge wire, Toho seed beads, size 8 left, size 6 right

The next alternative is to wire wrap beads around the frame.  I recommend 24 or 26 gauge for wrapping the beads.  The best part of this is being able to thread wrap at angles that wouldn't hold very well with coil. Also since the wire being used to wrap the beads is a much smaller gauge, smaller beads can be used too. 

The last alternative that I'm going to show is cup chain wire wrapped around the frame.  This is 4mm cup chain, with a dream catcher weave combined with a little thread wrapping.   

A few more tips.  Don't be afraid to add different colors or patterns together. 

If you finish a piece and decide later you don't like it, you can always add to it instead of completely redoing it.  Here I didn't like the gap, so I added the silver.

If you don't watch your thread tension you can pull your frame out of shape.  It's really easy to use a tighter tension when you begin a new color/thread, so make sure you are not pulling too much.  The fact that this was made with 18 gauge didn't do me any favors, 16 gauge is much sturdier.  Also when the frame gets out whack, the previous threads can come loose and then the whole thing unravels.  There is no shame in crying if that happens.   

One more thing I learned, looks can be deceiving.  I wanted to see how variegated thread would play out so I picked up a spool that looked interesting. The picture doesn't do it justice, but even though I now know this spool of thread only contains black, red and gold, I still see orange and fuchsia mixed in.   

I used it for the skull pendant and this lizard one. I still like it, but it's not nearly as exciting as it looks on the spool. 

One more string spider thing coming up and then I'll lay this project to rest.