New Copper Bangles - Flowers, Beads, Twists And Linked Designs!

My recent holiday gave me a chance to come up with a few new copper bangle designs. They are a good seller in my Etsy shop and website so I figure expanding the range makes good sense.

I started by making an intertwined set using 2.6mm round copper wire. It's very simple to link the bangles - it just consists of an extra step once you've soldered, shaped and textured them. Two of the bangles need to be cut open again at the solder join and one of them linked with the remaining soldered bangle and the other bangle linked through the first two before they are soldered closed again and finished. I made the bangles slightly bigger than normal to allow for the space taken up by the bangles being linked. I then had a bit of a brain freeze moment about it all and thought they were still going to be too small but opening them out fully and measuring the inside diameter reassured me they were the right size {does that make sense? I hope so!}

Next I made a set using some lovely etched lampwork glass beads made by Su Bagley of Pixel Pyro Lampwork on Folksy. She made the beads with a larger hole than normal so they would fit on thicker copper wire. I made a set of three bangles with a hammered and line texture with one of the bangles having two of the etched lampwork beads threaded onto it before being soldered closed.

The beads are in four lovely colours.

Next are two sets of poppy bangles - one with a copper poppy and one with a sterling silver poppy. I enjoyed making these even thought the soldering was a bit tricky to begin with {things moved!} However, now I know to make sure the flower has good contact with the bangle before I start soldering.

The poppy is formed then a balled piece of copper/sterling silver wire is threaded through the centre and the flower wire wrapped onto the bangle. I then added another wrap of wire on the other side. It's all soldered in place and the ends of the wire smoothed for comfortable wearing.

I am slightly biased but these are my favourite of all the bangles I've made so far ♥♥♥

The last new design is a set of three with one bangle with a single twist. Deceptively easy to make by folding the wire into a U shape, flattening the top section of the U with a hammer or rolling mill then annealing and pulling the ends in opposite directions. Then just cut to length and make as normal.