Wrap Rings, Twisted Bangles and Fotor

I've had another busy week making rings and bangles for orders {which is great} so sometimes it's nice to just play without having to worry about getting things done for a certain time. I was inspired to make something quick and easy so thought I'd make a couple of no-solder rings seen in One Hour Rings by Helen Driggs. I loved the look of them and the fact they are adjustable {to a point}. They consist of a long triangle shaped piece of metal that is formed around a ring mandrel. I wasn't sure how sturdy they would be but after trying them with 20g/0.8mm sheet I would be quite happy to sell them knowing they will keep their shape well.

They become work-hardened pretty quickly as you shape them on the mandrel and I did need to anneal them in order to finish shaping them properly. I used a leaf vein texture for the first one which has to be one of my favourite textures. The second ring was textured using masking tape. It was a bit of an experiment and involved cutting small rectangles out of the tape with a scalpel before carefully sticking it on to the silver sheet and running it through the rolling mill. I tried a practice piece on copper where I cut the tape on top of the metal but I didn't like the cut marks that showed in the metal so did it the harder way!

The holes in the masking tape form the raised areas and the masking tape itself creates the texture on the rest of the metal. I'll be doing more experimenting with tape very soon as it's an easy way to texture with a rolling mill.

I also had a play with 2mm copper wire which I twisted into a barley twist then soldered to form bangles. The soldering was a bit tricky and it helps when forming the join to make sure you cut each end at the same point in the twist. I'll remember that next time!

•• Fotor ••

Have you seen those photos on Etsy where just one point is in focus and the rest of the image blurred? Or the main item is in colour and the rest of the image in black and white. Yes, so have I and I wanted to know how to do it so I Googled it and up popped lots of links including one for Fotor. It's a nice looking, free to use site that lets you edit, tweak, create photo collages and just play with images to your heart's content. You can then upload them to all the usual social network sites or save them to your computer. It has some of the editing features you find on Instagram but is much better in my opinion.

I had a little play with some of the photos I used above and with a photo of one of my cats.......

This is the Color Splash feature that allows you to choose which part of the image is coloured. You can also change the "background" colour too.

The Scratchy Pencil effect.

This effect is called Tile-Shift which lets you select an area to stay in focus and blurs the rest of the image.

With a frame added and a Moonbeam Lens-Flare on the ring image.

And finally a photo collage! 

What a very cool site. Check it out and play.................

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