Yesterday I spent a large portion of the day drawing out wire for some braided rings. It took me about an hour to finish drawing out the wire today. So, with about six feet of wire I made four braided rings. However, after looking at them together on the finger, I decided I did not like them and made two of them into earrings instead. With the remaining wire that I had after making the rings I made a double wire braided strand and made two rings out of it. These I really like because they look sort of celtic and not so much like a braid. I like the braided earrings, but they are very very flimsy, which is kind of a drag. All in all, though, I am proud of these creations.



After making these I set out to make a rope ring. This would consist of about six wires being twisted together and then soldered. I twisted the remaining wire I had, but it wasn't long enough. So, I decided to make a pendant out of it with a penny pearl center. Since the piece was sort of an afterthought I didn't put too much effort into making it pretty, but it looks okay.

After all of these twisted and braided wire pieces I started on a ring for a friend. It had leaves stacked on top of each other, sort of like grain. I hand sawed the whole thing out, then used a bur to etch leaf patterns on the surface. After about two hours of this I had the ring all ready to go to solder. However, when I was soldering it...the entire piece melted into a pile of useless junk. It happened because the solder leeched onto the surface of the silver and instantly heated it to its melting point. Since silver is so conductive the heat spread rapidly and the whole thing was ruined before I knew it. Now I have to re-start the ring entirely!