Lead up to my first sale

As I've already mentioned, I discovered chain maille last year, and that is what started my progression towards where I currecntly am with my jewellery making.

Silver jump rings

Since I discovered chain maille I've become addicted to creating pieces of chain maille jewellery using mostly my favourite Byzantine weave and more recently a few other weaves.

I have found that I really enjoy taking a pile of insignificant looking silver jump rings (like those to the right) and turning that pile of metal loops into a beautiful wearable pile of metal.

My first love is the Byzantine weave, partly because it is deceptively complicated. I find it very easy to create Byzantine weave quickly and sometimes find ways to use it that are not in the book I learnt it from. From the first pieces that I made which were copied from the book, I have enjoyed including beads of various shapes and colours into my pieces.

The first bracelet I made used silver plated jump rings I had cut myself and purple glass beads. The result looks good from a distance, but close to you can see the problems with it.

Silver plated Byzantine weave with purple beads

As you can see, the jump rings are not cut cleanly as I used half flush cuters to cut them. Half flush cutters create two different shaped faces in the cut metal, one face is flat and the other is pointed where the blades met - this causes unsightly gaps and makes it difficult to close the jump rings at times. Also, the wire sections used to hold the beads is made with much thinner wire which lookings out of place.

But I am still pleased with the results, and the fact that wearing this bracelet around the office led to my first jewellery sale.

More next time

Anne