Playing with Fire and Leather

It's been a bit busy around here this last week and as a result I missed my blog post. Busy is a good thing around here though and I am not complaining!

I played a bit last week. Picking up scraps of this and that, little bits of things I twisted up, sawed off, and bought. Put flame to some and wire to others. All in all a productive week and I enjoyed myself to boot!

Originally I had thought I might just play with an idea I got from this tutorial over on the House of Gems Pinterest board. I had two pieces of leftover copper I had sawn off another project and I thought it might be fun to dangle some chain from them.

Since I was playing, I thought why not emboss them? They're a slightly heavier gauge metal so I knew I'd have to anneal first. I lit the torch and thought.... why not play a bit with fire painting, I have to torch it to anneal it anyway. (You're getting a real good look at how my brain works here) So I torch and get some really pretty purples YAY! And I emboss and get great matching imprints for a pair of earrings. Next up we'll drill holes to hang the chain from. Zip zip zip and done woohoo.

I'm really liking the iridescence of the purples.............. I think I have some daggers with that color.
Yup! Then I notice a little piece of wire I had looped up and it fit so nicely into the arc of the shield, so I made another and I really liked it. At this point no matter how I played with that chain I just didn't like it. Too bad too, I had planned on suspending the whole thing from that chain....hmmmm

I really like the rib bone chain I made for my Dia de los Muertos piece and the bars Dana sent for bead soup... I could make some bars to hang these from! So I did....  I played a little too long before sealing so I lost a bit of the deeper shades but they're still really pretty!

Flame Painted Shields

Next up I decided to play with my leather scraps. Rebeka Payne of Tree Wings Studio has these leather feathers that I absolutely adore, I though I might play some and make my own feathers. I even got the kiddo in on it and gave him a piece of leather to play with while I cut and designed a few things. He LOVED it!  and I loved it.

The color of the first feathers I made were the exact shade of the stone I've been playing with the woven bezel for the last couple weeks and I just happened to have one wire left I had no idea what to do with, and tadaaa!

Copper and Leather Wrapped and Woven

Alex claimed this one just as fast as I was able to get those feathers on it.
I've made up several more feathers and have many more ideas for them already. 

Thanks for stopping by!

We'll see you next time!