Items for sale on Folksy!

I went to Leeds at the weekend and bought lots of beads for making Xmas presents, but those will not appear on this blog till after Xmas. However, I also got some other things too, among which these nice bumpy beads. I made links by putting each on an eye pin and linked them together, then attached a length of Byzantine chain maille at each end, then a length of pale pink ribbon and fastened it with a toggle clasp. I've listed it for sale on my new shop on Folksy too.

And I listed this one - made with my jump ring maker out of turquoise and silver-plated wire linked in pairs with seed beads on alternate links.

Handmade jump rings

I've been enjoying the chain maille, which takes a lot of jump rings. So when I saw this jump ring maker, I thought I'd splash out. It came today (from The Bead Shop Nottingham, £9.95) and it's great! I got some silver-plated wire in two thicknesses, and some turquoise wire to play with as well.

You choose one of the widths of mandrel and screw it into the base like this:

Then you put the wire through the little hole to hold it in place and wind the wire round the mandrel as many times as you want jump rings. You cut the wire and take the resulting spiral off the mandrel and you get something like this:
Then you just cut through the spiral with wire cutters and your perfect little jump rings are complete. Like these:
I made these ones with 1mm wire on the 4mm mandrel. I got 0.6mm wire too, which is fine for 4mm jump rings for attaching clasps and headpins and so on, but is a bit thin for much bigger. It's really easy to use, mine came out perfect the first time I tried it, and wire is cheap so I think it's definitely worth just making my own from now on instead of buying them.

Things I have been doing lately

As promised, here are the other things I just hadn't got round to posting. This is the chain maille bracelet I made from a kit from Creative Beadcraft. I decided to get a kit even though it cost £7.95 and I normally wouldn't buy a kit because I thought it would be easier when it's a complicated technique to have the instructions for the actual components rather than try and match up online instructions with whatever I could get. And also the beads are Swarovski and I wanted to see what all the fuss is about, whether they're any sparklier than cheaper ones. I'm not sure they are, really.

You use the jump rings in pairs and make a chain of pairs (a 2 by 2 chain). Then you make another exactly the same. Then you link them with pairs of rings joining every other link in the chains, if you see what I mean. It's quite easy and not as fiddly as it sounds. The fiddly part in making this was wiring in all the beads - that took far longer.

This is the black bracelet made with beads from an old one. The one I took apart was a free gift I got with a magazine years ago, and I think I wore it once. These beads were knotted on black ribbon and it was pretty but impractical. I couldn't even fasten it myself. So I put them all apart from the one I used for this bracelet onto Elasticity and spaced them with black pearly glass beads and made a simple chunky black bracelet which is great for easy going out jewellery.

Byzantine chain maille

I've been learning chain maille! I've made a bracelet, which I'll post a photo of soon, from a kit. It was a good deal easier than I expected, so I did more. I learnt this new kind, called Byzantine. I don't know if it really looks like Byzantine battle clothing, but that's what it's called. I like it because it looks sort of natural, kind of fishy and less geometric than the normal kind. Here's a section of a necklace made with it:

And here's a zoomed out photo of the same necklace so you can see how it fits in. The bead is from Yum Yums in Leeds, and it's on a headpin. The whole lot is strung on suede. I like how the links add a bit of interest to an otherwise very simple necklace. This one's nice and long and would look good with a low neckline on a Christmas party dress.

And I did a similar thing but joined two beads with purpley colours on purple suede:

And some earrings, done with teeny tiny jump rings!