Hint of Nature

We had a pretty family tree picture frame a few years ago; unfortunately we never used it. While cleaning up to sell the house, I accidentally broke the top branch. I pulled the dangling picture frame from the branch and added some fun beads. Simple and fun!

I'd give instructions but I doubt anyone else has saved a broken peice of a picture frame. :D It just goes to show that anything can be used if you have a pinch of creativity.

Musical Notes

A treble clef and two quarter notes for the musician at heart. That would be me; I love music even though I am quite terrible at it.

I also made treble clef earrings:

Loop-de-do

Fun and funky. Unfortunately, I can't give good instructions for chainmaille, even a simple thing like this. So I will simply post pictures.

The chain can be hooked through any one of the rings.

Geometric Chainmaille

Blame my mother for the name. She is the math geek, and her first remark on this chainmaille charm was "Oh, wow... I love this. It's so geometric!"

Which I suppose it is. Geometricity is the nature of chainmaille, and it is a very pleasing look!

I made this from the few similar size-and-color rings I got in my sample set from UnkamenGifts. (I should have just ordered multiple colors of one size!).

It is a helm weave folded in on itself. My first attempt at this pattern was pictured HERE.

This is so tiny that it would work well as earrings, too. If I had enough rings.

Chainmaille Celtic Flower Pendant/Keychain

Wow. Just wow.

I know, I am wowing something that I made. But I just had no idea you could do this with chainmaille.

In my first post on chainmaille, I mentioned that I first ran across it three or four weeks ago at UnkamenGifts' Summerfest booth. Instead of buying a necklace from them, as I originally planned, I bought their Celtic Flower Kit. I picked out my colors, and they gave me the exact sizes. I then used their tutorial on Flickr.

Of course, I used cheap rings from Hobby Lobby and rings that I made to weave my first flower. I wanted to be sure I could do it before using the good jumprings.

I found that the needle-round-nose pliers I have have a "tooth" that harms the copper rings I bought. The only other pair of pliers I had was a pair of small needle-flat-nose in bad shape from Dad's toolkit. I needed two pliers to open the copper rings, so I raided his giant toolbox again, and emerged triumphantly with a pair of way-too-big flatnose pliers/clippers. If I am careful, I can use the corner of it as jewelry pliers.

This is the Celtic Flower halfways through it's creation-- it begins as a string of complicated chainmaille knots. It looks like dragon scales, doesn't it?

Then the chain is pulled into a circle. At this point the flower was incredibly floppy.

Here is the completed flower with the "structural rings" woven in.

And then I had fun taking pictures.

I decided to make a keychain that I could put the flower on when I am not wearing it as a necklace:

The chain is an intricate box weave called the Byzantine. Instruction can be found in the "Byzantine Weave" set on UnkamenGift's Flickr.