Brooches in Copper and Silver wire

Making jewellery is a fascinating past-time. Holding a piece of copper or stained glass in my hand and imagining what it can become is exciting and exhilarating, gets the creative juices flowing and can lead to hours of immersion in the design. There's a certain thrill in looking down at the new piece just made.

.10mm Silver plated wire from Germany I mostly use. Other sizes are 0.8mm and 0.6mm, after that at gets a bit too thin.

Using wire and copper in making jewellery gives you endless choices in creativity. Wire allows you the freedom to get creative with twists, turns, and wraps and endless creative shapes can be cut out of copper. I mostly use silver plated wire from Germany, but also love the .20mm copper wire you can buy from electrical shops. It's thicker, firm, but still easy to bend into shapes.

A necklace with Green beads made out of copper wire

If you're interested in using wire in jewellery making, there are many tutorials on the internet, but I found this easy one for a 'Purple Passion Pendant' at Domestic Diva. At 'All Free Jewelry Making' you will also find some useful links.

I use copper sheeting bought by the roll from many craft shops, it's soft and pliable and very easy to work with and the solder takes to it perfectly. 5 Mil (.005 inches thick) 36 gauge, copper is thick enough that it will hold shape pretty well. You cannot tear it with your hands, but it can be be cut with scissors. It is very flexible and pliable. To use in jewellery as is, you have to have something solid backing it, but covering it in solder gives it the necessary rigidity for brooches and pendants. It is perfect for die-cuts and punches. 8 Mil (.008 inches thick) 32 gauge, copper is approximately 11 - 12 times thicker than typical household aluminium foil and 1.5 times thicker than the 5 mil. This is a heavy-duty tooling foil. 8 mil can be cut fairly easily with scissors and is still very pliable and holds its shape a little better than the 5 mil, but to punch it requires quite a bit of pressure. I rarely use 10 mil as it needs to be cut with heavy duty scissors or a utility knife. As with any sheet metal, the edges can be extremely sharp. Be careful when cutting or working with copper sheeting. Whenever I create pieces that have sharp corners, I usually use an old pair of scissors (so I don't worry about ruining them) and trim the corners so that they are slightly rounded.

Here is a fairly easy tutorial on "How to work with copper sheeting".

Hand-made brooch out of copper, wire and silver solder with a clear blue glass jewel in the centre

Two amber glass jewel brooches, the first surrounded with silver solder, the second with silver wire and silver solder and a ring for hanging something

Silver wire brooch with silver wire, filled with silver solder and two seed beads

Red glass jewel brooch with silver wire filled with silver solder

White glass jewel brooch with silver wire and filled with silver solder

An iridescent glass jewel brooch with silver wire and silver solder

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Goggo/Insect range - Scarlet Dragonfly

Handcrafted by myself - silver wire, silver solder and clear red glass jewels

This Keepsakes range consists of insects (for the insect-lover!) to display as ornaments but some of them can also be fashioned into brooches. Hand-crafted with silver, copper, pewter, glass jewels and silver wire, each Goggo/insect can take 3 or more hours to make. Only materials of the highest quality is used and great attention is given to detail and these little animals are unique, one-of-a-kind designs not to be repeated.

Although the items should be treated with care, each item is strong and sturdy. Taking care and cleaning of your unique insect is as easy as scrubbing gently with a toothbrush and Sunlight Liquid and giving it a good rinse with cold water, drying gently with a soft cloth. A natural patina develops over time, adding charm to the item.

Each insect comes with its own descriptive card:

Scarlet Dragonfly
The adult male Scarlet Dragonfly has a bright red, widened abdomen, and small amber patches at the bases of the hindwings. Females and immatures are yellow-brown and have a conspicuous pale stripe along the top of the thorax. The Scarlet Dragonfly is a common species in southern Europe and north Africa. It is recorded from every country in Africa and occurs across Asia as far as Southern China.

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A collection of Crystals and Keepsakes

A collection of crystals on hand-crafted wire stands in my lounge. The snake skin in front is from my resident Mole snake, Mollie, which she shed a couple of weeks ago

A collection of crystals on hand-crafted wire stands

A vintage bowl filled with earrings and brooches and a display of some of the insects I make

A few watercolour bird paintings and some Keepsakes jewellery

Rose Quartz crystal wand on hand-crafted wire stand

Rose Quartz crystal wand

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Goggo/Insect range - Large Green Praying Mantis (Sphodromantis gastrica)

Hand-crafted by myself.

The abdomen is a blue glass bead, the rest of the body is silver wire and solder. (Approx. 9cm long and 6cm high (3½" x 2½") 

This Keepsakes range consists of insects (for the insect-lover!) to display as ornaments but some of them can also be fashioned into brooches. Hand-crafted with silver, copper, pewter, glass jewels and silver wire, each Goggo/insect can take 3 or more hours to make. Only materials of the highest quality is used and great attention is given to detail and these little animals are unique, one-of-a-kind designs not to be repeated.

Although the items should be treated with care, each item is strong and sturdy. Taking care and cleaning of your unique insect is as easy as scrubbing gently with a toothbrush and Sunlight Liquid and giving it a good rinse with cold water, drying gently with a soft cloth. A natural patina develops over time, adding charm to the item. Each insect comes with its own descriptive card.

Large Green Praying Mantis 
Sphodromantis gastrica

It catches its prey with its distinctive front legs, which it usually holds up as if in prayer. Its diet of troublesome insects makes it a favorite with gardeners and farmers. It is said that the female devours the male after mating. Often well-camouflaged on twigs.

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Wire and Iridescent Glass Jewel Brooch

A brooch I made out of silver wire with an iridescent blue glass jewel in the centre. The brooch pin is behind the thick silver solder at the top.

The back of the brooch

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Stained glass leaf pendant

Green stained glass cut into the shape of a leaf with silver wire and silver solder, a perfect depiction of nature's splendour. Our lives, just like the leaves, will be forever falling and then growing again. If you’re not happy now, you will be. You may not return with a consciousness of what you used to be, but you will return. Don’t count the seconds of your fleeting life. Multiply them.

If words were leaves
Rustling in the breeze
Whispering with ease
Thoughts and feelings
I will then say
There will never be enough leaves
On any tree
To express me

 Can be worn with a silver chain or leather thonging for a more earthy feel

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Citrine Crystal Pendant on silver chain

My favourite pendant - Citrine crystal with silver cap, suspended from a silver chain 

My favourite pendant to wear because Natural Citrine is a premier stone of manifestation, imagination, and personal will. Carrying the power of the sun, it is warm and comforting, energizing and life giving. It stimulates the chakras like the sunlight of spring, clearing the mind and stirring the soul to action. Its frequency awakens creativity and imagination, and sustains the process of transforming dreams and wishes into tangible form. With its pure yellow energy, Citrine encourages fullness of life, fresh beginnings and new pursuits.

Yellow is the color of the coming of the sun and the warmth it brings. It is the color of the bright days of early summer. Yellow is a color of journeys beginning well, full of promise and sunny optimism.

Yellow crystals give you the power to solidify new interests and new relationships. They help you to see things in new ways and to become enlightened. They add clarity to your life. They help you wake things up and add zest, optimism, and meaning to your life and relationships.

Cosmic Orbit

 'Cosmic Orbit' - Silver wire pendant strung on leather thonging to enhance the earthy feel and matching earrings 

Connect to the Universe from within.

How do you activate the Cosmic Force?
You can use smiling energy. Rub the mid-eyebrow, spiral, and slowly breathe the Cosmic Force in through the mid-eyebrow and the nose. Hold each breath for a while.

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Goggo/Insect range - Paper Wasp

Arthropoda
Order : Hymenoptera 
Family : Vespidae 

Hand-crafted by myself. For the throrax and abdomen I used red glass beads 
and the rest of the wasp is made with silver wire and silver solder.
Approx. 5cm (2") long. 

This Keepsakes range consists of insects (for the insect-lover!) to display as ornaments but some of them can also be fashioned into brooches. Hand-crafted with silver, copper, pewter, glass jewels and silver wire, each Goggo/insect can take 3 or more hours to make. Only materials of the highest quality is used and great attention is given to detail.

Although the items should be treated with care, each item is strong and sturdy. Taking care and cleaning of your unique insect is as easy as scrubbing gently with a toothbrush and Sunlight Liquid and giving it a good rinse with cold water, drying gently with a soft cloth. A natural patina develops over time, adding charm to the item. Each insect comes with its own descriptive card.

Paper Wasp
Sometimes mistaken for a hornet, the larger Paper Wasp is a social wasp, building tube-like nests of a papery material under any convenient shelter. The smaller Paper Wasp builds much larger colonies that are aggressively protected. Larvae feed on paralysed insects.

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Lilac Stained glass pendant

Step out of the box with this lovely Lilac stained glass pendant, encased in silver solder and surrounded by silver wire. Hanging from a silver rope chain.

When one works with stained glass, you have a lot of off-cuts, a LOT! I just love making stained glass jewellery out of these lovely pieces of glass. There is something about the process with its many, many steps done in a certain order that I find very relaxing. It's a really satisfying creative process, as no two pieces can ever be the same.

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This is our year to dream

"If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there." ~ Alice In Wonderland.

Most people think about their goals and dreams too casually, eventually completely forgetting about them, and just drift through life, settling for whatever comes their way. In fact, most people spend more time planning their birthday party than designing their future...

If you ask a friend about what you should do with your life, the phrase "follow your passion" will probably come up at some point. But these words are mis-guided and often taken up wrongly as "I can't do any job that is not my passion". "Passion" and "job" should not be used in the same sentence. Of course, if your job IS your passion, that's excellent (and actually nobody should actually be in a job they totally hate, that destroys the soul), but following your passion actually means you must really do, in between job time, what you are passionate about.

Doing what you are passionate about and what you love opens up a life of peace, purpose and fulfilment. It's how you get through life, what makes everything worth-while.

And dreaming is part of this process. Many great ideas, successful businesses and achievements have come from dreaming. So don't throw away your dreams, dream them, and sometimes, act upon them. Take up those art classes you've been dreaming about, that course in photography, study further or start that little business with your friend, "Where the needs of the world and your talents cross," Aristotle said some 2,500 years ago, "there lies your vocation."

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