Saturday, June 06, 2015

Beaded copper pendant

I created this pendant in the process of playing with ideas for making metal art charms.  I am participating in a 3 for 3 personal art charm swap on one of my groups. For this group, art charms need to be created rather than simply assembled so I went on line looking for inspiration for metal art charms.  And for this swap, they also need to be all metal.  I found a couple of ideas that I thought were worth pursing then headed to the craft room.
I started with very thick copper wire and formed the heart using my pliers, etc.  I am not a jewelery maker so it took some time to get it looking acceptable.  Once I was happy with it, I took it outside, placed it on a heavy metal plate and mashed it with a hammer until it was flattened to my liking.  Next, I hit it with a hammer with a textured head which really helped make it look handcrafted.  DH did not mind my borrowing of his tools!!  It turned out exactly like I wanted it too!!  Next, I used thread like copper wire and added seed beads.  I also used the wire to cinch up the middle and to add the jump ring.  Once I was done and admiring my work - it looked pretty cool! I realized the charms were supposed to be all metal!!  In the end this one is really too big to be a charm so it has graduated to being a pendant and I have repeated the process with smaller shapes for creating the art charms for the swap which I will be posting later.
This was a totally fun process and yielded some very unique looking pieces.

Therese