I’m a firm believer in making my own findings for jewelry; but I’m behind on making chain and took advantage of the opportunity to purchase some over the weekend. Yes, the photos below show “store bought” chain.

Tonight I feel lucky that I had that chain since these three pieces needed to be completed and time was ticking away. I’m doing a little art show tomorrow and wanted these to be ready since I wanted to take a few pieces with me that weren’t composed mainly of wire armatures.

The bird’s nest necklace was so easy and fun to make. You just wrap wire round and round a ROUND object and then weave lighter gauge wire in and out of the rounds securing the eggs (beads) with the ends of this wire. I also made a couple of rings like this. Hmm, I wonder what bird would lay this color eggs.

 

 

The metal lotus is similar to something I’ve previously created, but I wanted to try a more open look. This one presented a challenge in getting it to solder in a way that wasn’t super messy on the back. Should I tell you that it took two tries?

 

The third piece probably took the longest to make. It was quite tricky to get the three middle pieces of wire to all ball together in the torch. While you cannot see this very well, I can assure you it doesn’t look very ball-like. Yet, I wasn’t going to do it again! I think the wire weaving took the longest and I really do appreciate those of you who whip out these weaves with the greatest of ease. I’m making myself keep practicing and trying to learn to do this technique without gritting my teeth.

Am I glad that I bought that chain? Yes, today I am because it helped in a crunch. Yet, I realized considerable added cost by making these purchases and that has to go into my pricing. You would think that this should work out about the same as if I had charged for the time it takes to make my own chain. Alas, it’s much easier for me to charge for something I purchased than something I made. I MUST get over that! Is there therapy for pricing anguish?