Cinnamon Jewellery

I love the look of twisted wire and thought I'd have a go at making a double twist copper bangle. I took a length of thinner gauge twisted copper wire I'd had hanging around for a while and decided to twist it together with a length of 3.25mm copper wire to make a round bangle.  As this bangle started off as just a practice piece I didn't pay too much attention to what gauge wire the thinner twist was but I think it was two pieces of 18g {1mm} that I'd twisted in my flexshaft. In order to twist the two pieces of wire together I was going to need to use my vice and a pair of locking pliers. I soon realized that the vice and the pliers weren't going to hold the two separate pieces of wire together securely due to the amount of tension produced as they were twisted so I needed to solder both wires together at either end to keep them in place.  Once I started twisting the two wires they soon became work hardened and I could feel the tension produced...

Up to now I've always regarded the wire grooves on my rolling mill as slightly annoying as they take up space on the rollers that I wish was smooth. Then I'd be able to texture wider sheets of metal instead of the measly 4cm I can do now. I've never had any inclination to make my own wire so the grooves are those things that are just "there". That's up til now! I've known for a while you can make square shaped wire using the grooves so thought I'd have a go. I have searched for square copper and bronze wire in the past and only managed to find the thinner gauges in the UK. Being able to make my own in thicker gauges is a real bonus.  I just need to apologise now for the blurry photos. For some reason I decided not to brace my arm/hand on anything when I took most of the photos..... If you move the two rollers close together on the mill you can see the diamond shape gap the  grooves leave. I annealed some bronze wire and fed it...

So having ordered five of the Knew Concepts titanium strips about a year ago {!} I thought it was time I actually did something with them. I've heard great things about how useful they are as soldering aids so why it's taken me so long to get round to it who knows. I think I was worried they would be hard work to bend, saw and shape being titanium and to some extent they are but not beyond most peoples' ability. Warning! This post contains lots of photos. And the tri-colour ink on my printer was running out which is why the print out looks as though it's had a sepia filter added to it :D My camera also developed the white screen of death half way through {and is currently away being repaired} so I had to change to my tablet to carry on with the photographing. I decided to start with the easiest looking "clamp". This one........ I marked two points on the strip where I was going to bend it and using an old pair of flat nose pliers I made my ...

Several months ago I swore off using texture cards with my rolling mill after some pretty unimpressive results with copper and silver sheet. The last lot of patterns I bought were from a different supplier than usual and left me feeling that using the cards wasn't a good idea anymore - the imprinted patterns were so faint.  Then a friend told me that Tracey from Rolling Mill Resource  on Etsy had a GoFundMe page as she needed to raise funds for a new laser cutter machine. In return for pledging a certain amount of money she was offering double the value in texture cards - so $50 would buy you $100 worth of texture cards. Ooh, very tempting, especially as she was promising lots of fab new designs. So I gave in to temptation and paid $50 {about £35} then waited a few weeks until Tracey had her new laser cutter and had listed her new designs. I then spend ages choosing my designs.  And here they are...  Aren't they lovely? I chose a lot of the smaller c...