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Dr. L's Jewelry (Part III): The Creative Process |
| Date: |
2009-01-27
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Dr. L's Jewelry (Part III): The Creative Process
And, yes, I use all of these tools for something. I know it looks pretty amazing but when you learn how to do this...you know, to make little circles with things, and to bend things, and to tweak things....
All of these canisters are here all the time because they are fixings that I need. Everything from ear wires, when I make necklaces, to spacer beads, to other kinds of spacer beads. These are so sweet. I'm going to show you these. These are little caps and I also have clasps and, you won't be able to see this, but, all around the ridge it says "Dr. Laura Schlessinger". One of our loving, and loveable, and very talented listeners decided to help me out and gave me these, free, so I could help with our charities... And so, wherever I go, I collect stuff.
Now, this container at the end here is if I'm working on a project and I have some things left over. I say what they are, label them and I put them in here because odds-n-ends are very important. You could be in the middle of a design and say, "You know what? I could use three tiny, little, blue things." So I go through until I find something. Nothing is wasted; everything is needed.
Now the first thing I need when I'm making jewelry: my granny glasses, because I can no longer see all the little holes. I remember one day I sat down and I could not figure out where the hole was. So I figured, at this point, we have to deal with glasses... I decided I wanted to make a bracelet with some pearls, so I got some pearls out and I put these here. And they're sort of round. And I always like working with turquoise, and these are tubes, as you can see, small tubes. And then I went here with some of these little new things that I've gotten. And I have these little tops that can go on...and I thought that was pretty interesting. But, you know, you have an indentation on there, and that doesn't look very sharp. So it's at that point that you figure out, okay, I'm going to put a silver bead and now, how am I going to make an interesting design?
So I will play with this. And there have been times where I will spend an hour on something, hold it up and go, "That is seriously ugly." And that's when I just go [makes a raspberry sound and with a hand motion] and let everything fall here. I redistribute all the pieces and I start all over again. And this morning when I set up to make this, I couldn't quite figure out how I was going to make this work. So I took the top, and I realized I need a gold bead and so I'll show you how to...oh, I use wire because it's as flexible as thread, but it doesn't stretch. And the thing about making necklaces and jewelry of all kinds with thread is that it tends to stretch or get dirty and get "ucky" looking, and I don't like that. I happen to use this company "Soft Touch - Softflex" because I think it's the best.
So, I will just start out with a length because a bracelet is generally nine inches long, including the clasp, and that's why I have a tape measure and I have a limp tape measure because, depending upon how you make the bracelet, you can't just measure a length, you have to include the fact that it has things sticking up and out which makes...you have to make it bigger in order to accommodate the wrist. So with basic things I start with nine inches and that makes it flexible for me to figure out what I have to do. So, I start out with that and...I have the round bead, I have the little top thing, and then I have this little bead. And then I figure, okay, if I'm going to make a repetitive pattern, what do I do? Well, I then went the other way, put another bead facing the other way and put another pearl through there. And it's so easy when you use the wire, you know, as opposed to thread. And I thought, now that's cool! That's pretty! If that were a necklace, I would probably now put different kinds of stones and then make that a repetitive pattern somewhere in there. But, since this is a bracelet, we don't have all that distance to do that. So I was trying to figure out how I could make a repetitive pattern and that's when I came up with, going through the drawers...and I saw the turquoise. Put one on each side, and then we can start all over again with a pearl, with a little...it's sort of circle, dot, circle. There we go. And put a cap on it. And, put a gold bead on it...I mean, I'm sorry...sterling silver bead. You can use either one. So now I've got a repetitive pattern, faced with turquoise, which becomes part of the design but it also becomes punctuation, like a sentence, so that I can make each of those segments like a word. Here you go.
So that's how it starts and I repeat that. And, just like one of those cooking shows, where they start throwing things in and stirring it and saying it's going to bubble for an hour...we shift over...where I've set up the finished bracelet. You can see, here's the segment [holds up the bracelet] those little bowtie segments with the turquoise in between. And, yes, you end symmetrically. This is one of my compulsive signs. Now, when you're using wire to close this up...and I found a nice, oblong clasp. These are called "toggle clasps", and I like to use these for bracelets because they're easy to get in and out of. Besides, they're very attractive. Aside from that, if you do your nails and then you have to press down on that thing to open it, to get it closed around that thing, you always chip your nails. I'm very aware of that. We put this little, itty-bitty silver sleeve on each side. That's part of how I'm going to close the...these are called crimp beads and I couldn't see these either.
Okay, now we take the opening to the clasp, we put the line back through the crimp bead, pull it tight, and there you are, right there. Now, we're not really right there, because that can open up. We have what's called a "crimping tool". We crush it one way, we crush it the other way and those wires are not going to move past each other. That's set for life. Now you don't want the edges to show, of course, so I try to put them all the way through the silver bead again. That sometimes takes a little working. Then we take our little clippers, cut off the end, and obviously these need sharpening, but it's good. You see real life here. Okay, I didn't pay attention, so I pulled it through. No big problem...ended up here again, and a big silver bead.
Oh, I'm going to show you something cute that I just discovered. Some of you who make jewelry probably already know about this, but for me it was a great revelation of enthusiasm. So, we're just going to do the same thing on the other side: put it through the clasp, put it through the crimp bead, pull it down, make it tight, and I would hold it up. And you notice there's a little space there. You don't want that little space. So we pull it down again and we just keep doing that until we get it in place. And we've got it in place...we use the crimping tool again, we squash it in one dimension, we turn, we squash it in the other dimension, and then we use this, which is not sharp enough, to cut the end. It worked better that time. Okay, now that's your bracelet.
But the problem is, if you look at it, that little crimpy thing isn't that pretty. Some genius, and I wish it had been me, came up with this little...basically a bead opened up on itself, like a round bead, and its sterling silver, so we're not doing trash here. I only use real, real stuff. You close it over that crimp bead and it looks like another round bead, instead of that ugly, little crimpy thing. See? Isn't that cute? We'll do it on the other side.
Now, since this was all set up, and I had already worked on it this morning, before you all came, it seems like it goes pretty quickly. But, I don't want to sound too weird to you, but the stones have to talk to me. So I will actually have spent quite an amount of time putting something together. I will then put it on one of those necks, that we have displayed the other things on, and it will speak to me. It'll say [sticks out her tongue & blows a raspberry] so I will take it all the way apart. And sometimes it just needs a different order of things, or it needs something added or subtracted. So it's not a matter of just throwing things together and saying, "Here. Buy it." There's an artistic experience that has to happen. And, it's like music. You know when something's discordant.
So that [holds up the bracelet] is the finished bracelet. And this will be on sale for our Valentine's day sale.
End of part III, to be concluded in part IV.
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