AEDM Week 3

Day 15: Copper and green Aventurine chainmail earrings. While browsing the Maille Artisans gallery, I came across this pattern of Byzantine weave zigzagging around beads, and I liked it. The one difficulty I had is that when I made the Byzantine units out of the same sized rings, they would slump unattractively when hanging. I fixed this by making smaller rings to put as the connectors, making the weave work better for this pattern.

Day 16: Copper and glass bead bracelet. More variations on Byzantine! As much as it's not my favorite weave plain, it is very versatile. Not much to say about this one.

Day 17: Gold chain and pearl necklace. Well, I did it. I finally broke down and bought more jewelry making supplies this day. I splurged and bought some gold-filled chain and wire, and this was the first thing I made with it. The necklace hangs slightly differently when worn, but that was the best I could arrange it in the lightbox.

Day 18: I made earrings to match the necklace, partially because I wanted to and partially to use up the leftover bits of chain that were created when I miscalculated for the necklace and had to shorten all of the segments in one strand by .25 inch. Regardless of the fact that I pretty much conjured this up from scraps, I'm really pleased with how they turned out.

Day 19: I was at an SCA event this day, so before the tournament started I whipped up these earrings from faceted beads (howlite?) and copper chain. I probably could have improved them a bit if I had spent more time fiddling with them, but jewelry making can't have priority every time, and I had fun fencing, playing games, feasting, and dancing with my friends.

Day 20: Silver link and pearl bracelet. This was another busy day and we were still up in Santa Barbara, but we had some time in the early afternoon and I persuaded Branden to come with me to the local craft store so I could pick up a few things. These were the items I found there that inspired me, so I made a bracelet out of them. That is, once I was done making cupcakes for a friend's child's first birthday party, which was fun too.

Day 21: Silver and brass two-tone chainmail bracelet. This one is a variation on helm chain that I have been wanting to try for a while. It was fun to play with different color combinations to see which one I liked best, and this one ended up being it. I think gold would've been a nicer color here than brass, but I already had the brass and can't really afford to buy more gold wire just yet.