Torus necklace

Remember the Torus pendant that I’d made a while ago? There are more of those metallic-silver tori in my stash — three, to be precise — and I’d really wanted to use them for something. Earrings were my persistent initial thought, but these tori are too big for earrings. I know my wrists are small for a bracelet with a torus focal piece, and I didn’t want to make another pendant. So I decided they would all go together in one necklace. Of course, they needed something else to add to the look, and what better company than some jumbo pearl beads from my stash! 🙂

Torus necklace

I’d also recently bought some bead caps online, and they turned out larger than I expected. (This is a problem with Indian online retail — there aren’t enough details provided to trust that a purchase would work out well, and sometimes, the return processes turn out to be painful.) I decided to keep them just in case I bought large beads that would fit. For my jumbo pearl beads, these were the only bead caps suitable, albeit slightly oversized. So, well, I used them.

I cut wire lengths for the pearl beads, threaded each wire through a pearl between two bead caps, and made eye loops on both ends. I didn’t fully close the eye loops yet.

I then cut longish lengths of the wire (around 15cm). I wrapped two wires per torus, each one around roughly-opposite points on the torus. The wrapping itself is a simple one, with one end of the wire turned into an outward-facing eye loop, and the other end turned into a spiral that lies on the torus itself. I connected the pearl bead eye loops to the eye loops on the tori, and shut all eye loops.

To finish the necklace, I attached the ends of a silver-colored chain to the end pearl beads. This just might be a statement piece for me. 😛

Beaded partial necklace

My first attempt at bead crocheting resulted in a beautiful bracelet and some very painful fingers. 😦 I’d wanted to try my hand at Kumihimo instead, but I haven’t managed to buy a disc yet. While I’m thinking if I should make a DIY Kumihimo disc, I decided to give bead crocheting one more shot — this time, with cotton crochet thread instead of generic nylon wire.I tested out the pattern with a few color combinations before finalizing this one. The white seed beads are non-uniform and slightly larger than the others, which made me almost not use them, but it gives the piece a bit of a rustic and handmade look, so I decided to keep them after all. I like this look now. 🙂

The pattern is a 9-bead repeat of blue(3)-white(2)-brown(3)-white(1). It is broken in the middle by a 9-row single-color band of metallic silver seed beads. That makes it around 40 rows of the base pattern on each half, resulting in a partial necklace slightly longer than 16cm (about 6.5″).

To finish the piece — At each end, I used gold wire to make an eye loop that went through the visible crochet stitches and strung a bead cap through the remaining wire. I made another eye loop outside the bead cap to hold the cap in place. I then attached a large jump ring through the outer eye loop, through which I strung black rope to make the partial piece ‘complete’.

Macramé ornament

I was in the mood for macramé recently, and sat down to make something. I had all this remnant yarn lying around from my past knitting projects, and thought I would use a couple of them for this.

I first made a wire-based yoke from my 18-gauge copper wire. Since I didn’t really have anything planned, I just cut about 50cm of yarn (I think it was that long… The more I wonder, the more I’m unsure) — 8 pieces of each color. I started with reverse lark’s head knots on the yoke. Then I just… went with the flow with double half hitch knots. The yoke made for oblique macramé lines, so I quickly straightened them out. When the lines got horizontal, I realized I want some beads in there, so out came some metallic beads. I really need to buy more beads with larger holes for macramé — the beads I have are either too big or are meant for smaller cords / wires.

Anyway, I started keeping cord pairs from the side free so I can thread in the beads eventually. When there were only only two cord pairs remaining in the center, I started incorporating the beads. I also began to re-add cord pairs from the sides into the knotting. My cords were getting used up now, so it was time to also think about the finishing, and I began leaving out cord pairs from the center as the knotting moved outwards. Here’s where I noticed that my tension has improved much, but there are still areas that I need to work on.

When all the knotting was done, I made a long fringe by folding the piece in half along the vertical axis and roughly hacking off the cords diagonally. I finally secured the carrier cord with some glue.

For an impromptu project, I feel it’s turned out quite well! 🙂

A makeover

I had these two large beads with various etched amorphous patterns on them, which I’d set aside to make simple earrings — by which I mean just stringing a head-pin through each of them, making eye-loops at the top, and attaching findings. I set to work on the first one. Just when I finished making the eye-loop from the head-pin, the bead chipped. Gasp! 😮

The chip was visible, but hadn’t damaged the bead itself much, so my sister and I thought I could use one of her metallic paints to completely re-coat both beads. (I am so glad she has loads of painterly stuff for her cardmaking!) So I used a gold paint, painted one side of each bead, let them dry, and painted the other side. After both beads were fully dry, I added a coating of mod podge to both of them in the same manner. Beads ready post-makeover and reporting for duty again! 😎

This time, I was more careful while working with the wire, and here are the resulting beauties!

Torus pendant

I have a few of these metallic-silver tori in my stash, and had a few ideas on using them. This is the first of the ideas brought to fruition —

Torus pendant

I used a 22-gauge black wire for the embellishment, simply wrapping it around the surface of the torus. Every 4 turns, I added a blue seed bead to the wire, fitting the bead at the outer circumference of the torus. I’d originally planned to cover about half the surface of the torus, but I miscalculated the length of the wire needed, and it came to a little more than a quarter of the torus. But no worries, I like how it looks. 🙂

The torus is large and does not have any clasp of its own, so I made one — I added four more wraps on the opposite corner using the same wire, looping the centermost wraps through a jump ring.

The pendant is neither too light nor too heavy, and it works well with short chains, or longer ones that already contain some embellishments. I clicked only one picture, though —
I’ve been trying to banish this insistent idea of making earrings with these, because they’re going to be just too large. Making a couple of them a part of a long chain is another idea I have. Which jewelry item pops into your mind for a torus like this?