Red Creek Goddess

You know how you sometimes get ideas for a design from things that are tangentially related?   :) 

A while back I made a pair of sterling silver earrings using an ancient Japanese chainmaille weave...

...and just recently I began making a copper bracelet using the same weave.  Here it is in progress: 

It occurred to me that the first segment of both the earrings and the bracelet (the large ring + the two small doubled joined rings + the larger ring) resemble a goddess figure (do you see it?).  So I thought it might be fun to create a pair of goddess earrings that could be offered to customers with a number of variations.  

I decided to make my first version in copper antiqued to a gleaming, warm brown, with sterling silver highlights (the ear wires and the rings that connect them) and 4-mm Red Creek jasper and Swarovski crystal beads dangling from the bottom ring.  

These earrings can be made in sterling silver, bronze, or colored anodized niobium rings, and with just about any semiprecious stones, pearls, or whatever else you can imagine.  They're only about 2 inches long and very lightweight, so they're a good everyday earring too--pretty but not fussy.  

As always, thank you so very much for reading!  I will be back in two weeks' time.  :) 

xoxo

Meridy

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Have Pliers, Will Weave Silver!

I learned my first chainmaille weave about seven or eight years ago and have been hooked ever since.  I read tutorials, experimented with different weaves, and then discovered the fabulous "Spider," a chainmaille teacher well-known and beloved in the chainmaille community.  I got her DVDs and discovered that she was a young woman with a soothing voice and a way of clearly explaining how to get those pesky rings to slide into place and weave together to make intricately patterned jewelry.  I also watched how she held her pliers and how she opened and--even more important--closed her rings (there is a very particular way to do it).  And I learned.

I love it when I get into a rhythm weaving a pattern from the rings, watching my project take shape.  It is surprisingly meditative.   I've made necklaces, lanyards, earrings (these below are antiqued copper in European 4-in-1, with spikes by Karen Totten)...

...and bracelets (this one is copper woven in half-Persian 4-in 1, with a pretty dotted heart by Kristi Bowman-Gruel):

I once even weaved a flat piece of chainmaille to use as a mesh backing on which to connect a LOT of little jasper gem dangles for the focal of a necklace.  This is the back of the focal, showing the mailled mesh:  

And the front of the necklace...

That said, I haven't been making much chainmaille recently.  There just seems to be too many other things competing for my time, creatively and otherwise.  But a few days ago, out of the blue, I got the urge to spend some time "weaving silver" (as Spider would say), so I decided to make some new earrings especially for Earrings Everyday.   They're made in one of my favorite weaves, Japanese 12-in-2, and are sterling silver from top to bottom.  I love their graceful, sinuous shape.  

These earrings can be found here.

As always, thanks so much for reading--I'll see you all again in two weeks!  

Meridy

xoxo

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