This is part three of my jewelry making series. I began a class at the beginning of the year at the Columbus Cultural Arts Center. It’s a beginning jewelry/metalsmithing class. We started with a two inch by 4 inch piece of metal (I chose to work with nickel) that will eventually become a linked bracelet. My homework for the week was to come up with a design.
I’m a little new to design, so I was having a hard time deciding what shape to come up with. After playing around on Etsy, I decided to do a bird/chick like link design. I drew it out on tracing paper and then transferred the design to my metal piece. Since my links are a little larger, I was only able to fit four chick designs onto the metal. Luckily, I have small wrists and I think four will be enough.
After deciding on the design and tracing it out, the next step is to cut out your design with the tiniest little saw blade ever! I spent three straight hours sawing and sanding. It was awful!! As my sawing technique was somewhat awkward (I broke 5 saw blades in a 20 minute period!), I went home with very sore hands. I don’t know what arthritis feels like, but I imagine it feels a lot like what my hands felt like that night. I came home and told hubby – “not sure if this class is for me, it was REALLY hard and not very fun tonight!” That’s what classes are for though – to see what we like and what we don’t like, right? Anyway, I went straight to bed, my hands ached!
I got up the next morning and looked at my little chick metal cut-outs. I reconsidered. It was hard work, but they look so cute and it is something I can be proud of. When I wear this soon to be bracelet, I can look at it and just know how much work went into making it.
Here's the design process:
Inspiration and then tracing onto the metal piece….
Cutting and filing…….really achy hands!
I should finish the piece tonight – can’t wait to see what the final linked bracelet looks like!
Comments
XO, Aimee