What's your pet peeve?

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Work Room chat:
Since I've made a mention about chainmaille, you've got to check out Rebeca Mojica from the Blue Buddha Boutique who makes gorgeous chainmaille jewellery. What's even more interesting is how she was was one of about 15 people across the US and Canada who worked on a maille curtain for one Omni Hotel's restaurant in Chicago. That's one crazy lot of maile, I tell ya! But oh-so-very-cool at the same time. Maille curtains! Fancy that? A work of art, no doubt. Details and pictures here.
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But of course what I mean is when it comes to jewellery making lar.

For me, it's predominantly the head pin and eye pin issue.

You know how these pins are sold in predefined length, right?

And as far as I'm concern, two scenarios can follow.

1. When the head pins or eye pins are not long enough for your need.
   
   Pain. Pain. Pain. That’s all that I can think of.
   
   Imagine this.
   
   
   An average length of these pins sold on the market is about 30mm long. You’re quite in luck already if you can find seller selling at 35mm length and you are VERY lucky indeed if you can find 40mm ones and it’s almost like a God’s gift if you can even find 50mm length!
   
   Now, let's say your intended design consists of one 4mm bead on top of a 12mm bead. Not a problem, right? They could still fit in nicely on a 30mm pin even if you used two 12mm beads. (Although that’s probably pushing it a little already.)
   
   
   So, exactly what is so annoying, you ask?
   
   
   
   That is if you are only making a loop to end your pins. What if you want to do wrapped loop?
   
   
   
   Hah!
   
   Now, tell me. How are you going to make that wrap?



2. When the head pins or eye pins are too long for your need.
   
   Waste!
   
   The longest pins I've ever bought is 2 inches long. That is 50mm long. With that length, you can pretty much do most of your wrappings.
   
   But………
   
   What if you're not using them for wrapped loop but just ordinary loop? Imagine a 4mm bead on a 50 mm pin. What are you going to do with the rest of the cut-off?
   
   
   I'm using a 4.5cm (which is also considered long already!) one for this demo.
   
   
   
   
   Well, you could re-use them.
   
   
   
   
   But what if you used one 12mm and one 6mm bead on the pin? Then you are left with a neither here nor there length which is not long enough for re-use and a waste to throw it away.
   
   
   
   
   
   Fine, so maybe I'm exaggerating a bit here but you get my point. :P
   
   Also, you know how we tend to forget about the small bits and leftovers when your working table is already in a mess with ongoing jewellery projects?
   
   Chances are, you’ll probably forget about them even if they are at a reusable length.


And don’t even get me started on….


3. Wrapping a teardrop shape bead.
   
   
   I know the picture here shows a round bead but this is still how it would be like if you use this method to connect a teardrop bead.
   
   Ok, I know you can just use a jump ring to attach those teardrop beads but I don’t like it that way lor. The jump ring which you need will have to be much bigger in size. My deduction is a jump ring of an inner diameter of probably at least twice the width of the cone where the hole was drilled.
   
   Also, this is due to the horozontal manner in which the hole was drilled across which makes it a bit difficult to fit it into a ring. Something like trying to fit a bugle bead into a jump ring as compared to a seed bead, I guess. It’s either you use a smaller bead or a bigger jump ring. Since you obviously have not much of a control over the size of the teardrop bead, the only option you are left with is to use a bigger jump ring.
   
   You see, the funny thing about teardrop shape beads is to leave some space around it in order for it to dangle, which is part of the beauty of teardrop beads. This is also part of the reasoning for using a bigger size jump ring, so that you get the dangling effect.
   
   Either that, or you may wrapped the cone of the drop tightly, forming a loop at the top, where the dangling now is due to the loop connection above. Doing a wrapped loop where both sides of the triangle so close to the bead but yet not a tight cone wrapped makes the dangling a bit….erm, ‘jerky’? Err….. get what I mean? ….. Oh, well…..never mind. -___- Next time.
   
   Personally, I don’t like the jump ring technique as I feel it gives an unfinished look to the piece.
   
   Neither do I like the Japanese technique of using a bended head pin. It’s something like how you loop an ordinary bead. but since the correct placement of a teardrop bead would have the hole across horizontally, you now shoved you head pin horizontally and then bend it upwards 90 degrees to loop it. It may be secure but it doesn’t feels like it looks secure to me. o_O
   
   
   
   Never mind, never mind….. next time, next time, ya.
   
   Anyway, this is just my preference la. I prefer to have it wrapped. After all, most of the tutorials I found in beading magazine and online suggested the wrap technique. So, probably that is why I’m inclined to want do the wrap.
   
   
   
   But how am I going to do the wrap with a 30mm pin? o_O
   
   
   How to wrap wor, like that? I think I'm probably gonna risk breaking it (which has already happened so many times before!). o_O
   
   
   
   
   
   Even a 50mm pin would be pushing it a little. Unless I use the Japanese beaders technique but I don’t like that method of finishing either.



4. Jump rings!
   
   When I first tried my hands on chainmaille, it didn’t turn out quite right. The rings didn’t quite sit in the way it was supposed to. I couldn’t understand what was amiss until I learn about the AR.
   
   AR stands for Aspect Ratio. It is a number that represents the relationship between the wire gauge and the inner diameter of a particular size jump ring. The exact formula to calculate aspect ratio is inner diameter divided by wire diameter
   
   AR, I learn is what makes or breaks a chainmaille. Each weave has a range of ARs that will work well. Without the right range of AR, the weave is either impossible or impractical to weave or even if it is .probably weaveable, it may be too loose to stay put nicely.
   
   The ability to calculate the ARs of your jump rings will let you know what weaves they are suitable and you can be at peace with this fact given that there’s loads of weave for you to choose from to begin with!
   
   So, what’s important here? Wire thickness and size of the inner diameter of the rings.
   
   
   
   Needless to say, it would be difficult to have control over the AR either since the standard thickness of the mass produced jump rings sold in the market in general is 0.6mm or even less. The thickest you could get is I think 0.7mm.
   
   The average size? 4mm, 5mm and 6mm. Anything smaller or bigger than that is pretty hard to come by and even if they do, whether if the wires are thick enough.
   
   I really feel like wanting to make my own jump rings lor. I know how to make them but I needed the stuffs to make them,

So, how now brown cow?

I need wires la.

With meters and meters long of wires, I won’t have the problem of pins being not long enough or wastage of pins. I can gain better control of my usage of material knowing exactly how much I need. Coming in different thickness, I can pretty much do all that I want and however I want with it.

Sterling silver wires are however, out of the question, ya. Too expensive for me to even consider although I do like the bright silver sheen of the wires a lot.

So, I tried copper wires. Bought a whole range of sizes.



But I didn’t like the dull greyish sheen. I just didn’t like the finished results with these wires. It looks more like grey rather than silver.

Then, I saw some private seller selling spools of artistic wire on eBay. They are not the artistic wire from THE Artistic Wire and I don’t even think she’s supplying either because it was only a one-off thing. I reckon it must be from her own collection.

Anyway, but because I was desperate to try artistic wire, I went ahead and bought it anyway.


Artistic wires from Darice.Really pretty colours! But these wires are not firm enough for my liking though. I wonder if those from Artistic Wires are any better?

But this did not work for me either despite the pretty colours. It feels a bit too soft for my liking and tends to break easily.

Thought of stainless steel wires too but it’s still the same dull greyish sheen that I didn’t like.

My Sa Kor’s visit back home at the beginning of the year changed everything. Find out how in my next post tomorrow and watch out for a small surprise in store for The Work Room’s readers. I'm sure you wouldn't wanna miss it! Stay tuned! ;)