[ A length of aluminum wire with small loops at each end; it’s been crossed over itself, curving up and then tightly back down on the left, more gently on the right. Above it sits a hammered copper wire s-hook; inside the area within the wire is a spiral; and an inverted arch of wire arcs from one loop to the other. ]
It turns out that ‘lay it out now, hammer it later’ works out pretty well for actually getting these done — since starting is the hard part, after all. But since I can only do a bit once I start, until I’m somewhere I can hammer things, starting is an easier bump to get over.
… not that I’ve started any since I laid out those four, but, welp. Little steps. I had to clean a thousand things first. No, really, this place is a PIT.
but ANYWAY I’ve gotten FOUR faery home decor pieces done & since I’ve only put TWO of them up, only TWO have been sold, which means the NEXT TWO are STILL AVAILABLE or at least will be once I’ve gotten pics & done the thing.
I just. There’s a lot going on, okay, & too much of it is sleeping, especially for how tired I still am all the damn time.
ANYWAY here’s about this one, which I dutifully made from warm autumn tones because if I don’t do those sometimes I’ll have a huge collection of warm-toned beads I’m not terribly fond of. SOME OF YOU LIKE THEM SO IT’S JUST FINE.
[ A closer view; two dangly bits, each with a green glass leaf at the bottom with yellow glass and wood beads above it, sit just below where the aluminum wire crosses over itself. ]
I had to mess around a bunch to make this work, but I knew from the beginning how many dangles I’d have to work with, because I didn’t have more than a couple of each color of the glass leaves. I just had to do a whole bunch of these:
[ A closer view of one of the dangles; the thin copper wire drops down to the green glass leaf, passing through two yellow glass beads with a wooden bead in between them, then goes through the hole in the leaf and back up. It twists around itself, then around the three smaller beads at an angle, then wraps around itself again to finish off the loop at the top. ]
& then figure out what was going where.
[ Four small, clear plastic jars with beads in them; one holds glass leaves in various autumn colors, another holds glass pony beads in a similar palette; a third holds short cylindrical wood beads, and the fourth holds opaque brown pony beads. ]
I didn’t wind up using the brown beads, which is kind of a shame, since there’s still a lot of them; but I’m more than happy enough with how things turned out. Especially considering that once I sorted things properly, there was PRECISELY the right number of those glass pony beads to go with the glass leaves.
& then I DID NOT DROP ANY OF THEM. I’d call the Pope, but I don’t think he’s done enough stuff with beads to realize that’s a genuine-ass miracle.
… anyway
[ Dangles! The ones with green glass leaves have yellow pony beads; the three with yellow leaves have green pony beads; and the two with red leaves have purple pony beads. Two green ones, with a yellow dangly in between, sit below where the aluminum wire crosses itself; three more yellow ones, interspersed with two red, sit below the copper arc. ]
& then I had everything laid out! & having not dropped any of the beads, I decided to see if I could use PRECISELY the number of red beads I had to finish the whole thing off! There’s eight of them, it can’t be hard!
[ Eight small red glass pony beads sit in one of the little jars. ]
… which is when I stopped taking pictures, because of COURSE it didn’t work out like that. See, that damn spiral would NOT fit in the place I’d planned for it, no matter what I did, & I tried a BUNCH of things. So I had to rearrange everything, & then I had to sulk, & then I had to count eight red beads a bunch of times, & rearrange everything AGAIN, & then mess around with the wire some …
[ The finished piece. The spiral now hangs in between the two green dangles, all of them held in place by thin copper wire wrapped around the aluminum, with single red pony beads between them and one to either side. The yellow dangly has switched places with the spiral, hanging inside the bigger loop, just below the s-hook; more copper wire holds both in place, with wooden beads, two on each side, held to the aluminum wire between them. The other five dangles hang from the lower copper arc, which has been wrapped in much thinner aluminum wire; to each side, where the arc gets closer to being vertical, are two more red pony beads, adding up to eight total. ]
… anyway, it did work out, & this one also sold immediately, so the important part is it came out nice & someone loves it enough to send me a money about it. I’m good with that.
