REVEAL - Crush on Copper

Today is the date that Mallory Hoffman of For the Love of Beads & I chose to reveal what we have been creating for our Crush on Copper, the first of our monthly challenges. The only guideline in this challenge was that our copper wire had to be used in the form of a "Love-me Knot" & after that pretty much anything was allowed.

Since I am nowhere near as organised as Mallory I haven't shown a teaser, but I feel the urge to do so now & prolong the suspense :)

 

Somewhere in the chats we had about this particular challenge we decided that we'd deviate from making a jewelry item. Easier said than done as the second I finished those Love-me -Knots I had a load of ideas for using them  in bracelets or as an earring component & then, for the life of me drew a blank as to what else I could make using them that wasn't jewelry.

I found the Love-me- Knots challenging to use in their own way as they are very structured & I tend to favour  more relaxed shapes & styles. The temptation to make earrings or a bracelet in a nice symmetrical, repetitive design with them was almost too much....I did say 'almost'!

And just because teasing is so much fun, I'm going to do it again.

In the end I managed to resist temptation. I looked closely at the piece of copper that I showed in the announcement of this challenge & decided to go with something that was already etched onto that sheet.....if only I could find a way to cut it out.

One of my stumbling blocks has been that the copper sheet I have been able to source locally is a rather substantial .7mm thick (it would work out at around a 21 gauge - if that gauge existed), & even after etching is a little on the thick side to cut with shears or use in the cheap disk cutter that were the only tools I had available at the time. In the end I purchased some jewelers saw blades & I was away laughing.

Tease number three about to appear,  of course at this stage you could just scroll down & see the end result & spoil all my fun .....

I promise not to keep you in suspense (or suspenders as I used to be fond of saying) for too much longer.

I decided that my components could be put to good use as a key ring, blithely ignoring the fact that I didn't have the required 'ring' part on which to hang keys. I figured I could make one easily enough. 

Yeah - right! Last night while hammering my nicely coiled ring flat so that keys could be slid onto it, I also managed to hammer the edge of my index finger. Hello to a nice big blood blister,ouch!! That put the kibosh on any further hammering. Subsequently my coiled ring became just a  ring as I had to trim it back.

Without further ado I'll show you my effort in this challenge..

Meet the "I Need Kelp" key ring

I've learned a lot from this first challenge. First & foremost - keep your fingers well away from hammers. Secondly, even though only a bad workwoman blames her tools, the lack of decent ones & a scarcity of supplies can be somewhat limiting.

Just as well my new disk cutter arrived today then isn't it?!

Check out Mallory's blog to see her Reveal for the Crush on Copper Challenge.