Cinnamon Jewellery

I'm always on the lookout for variations I can give my bangles and I came across some paper wrap beads recently and thought a metal version might work well on a bangle. I've never made paper beads but they start off as a long thin triangle shaped piece of paper that is then wrapped onto a thin rod and glued to create a bead. Here's my attempt at a metal version. It's a bit long-winded and clumsy as I was making it up as I went along! {I've since worked out a much simpler way of doing it too :D} I started with some 24g/0.5mm copper sheet that I rolled through the rolling mill to approx 0.35mm thickness. I cut out three different shapes for the beads and annealed them to soften the metal. Using my fingers and a mallet I started to curl the end of the copper strip around a scrap piece of copper wire. I decided that the end needed to be fixed to the copper wire to make it easier to wrap the rest of the strip tightly around the wire. So I flowe...

Having recently become interested in anticlastic forms I was quite excited to come across a pair of synclastic pliers on ebay. Synclastic is basically the opposite of anticlastic in that it is a shape that curves towards the same side in all directions or if you need a more simple explanation {I do!} think of a ring that has a domed profile - the convex shape of the dome and the curve of the ring both go in the same direction. So I bought a pair of the synclastic pliers. They cost about £36. You can see from the photos they are quite a hefty bit of metal. They consist of a convex side and a domed side. The flat piece of metal sits in the convex curve and the handles are squeezed to press the the two sides together. The domed side pushes the metal down into the gap in the convex side resulting in the metal starting to take on that curve. I decided I'd experiment with a soldered mini bangle to see what the pliers could do... I started ...