Hoops and Loops

You know what makes things take forever? Procrastination and fear.

Making my circuit board necklace took the span of a many weeks. Weeks! It took me so long because there were two things that this piece was missing that I had trouble making, and was timid about trying. One was end caps for the VK chain. The other was a bail, a thing that would hook the pendant onto the necklace.

Thanks to the magic of the internet, I found two tutorials that helped me fill those gaps.

There's this one on the Katrina Lum Designs blog on end caps.
And this one on bails made with head pins,which is a small length of wire with a flat knob at the end to keep things from falling off.

As I was making my copper necklace for the circuit board pendant, I knew I wanted silver end caps to go with the silver in the bits of the circuit board, but I didn't really like the style of either of my purchased end caps. The end cap tutorial was awesome for the look I wanted, but after a failed attempt at making a pair, I was discouraged and it took me a while to get up the guts to try again.

You can see in this image below that it didn't come out perfect (there is a gap in the loops).

Then, when I saw that the circuit board pendant didn't come with a bail to attach it to my necklace, I thought "No bail? No problem."

But pride comes before the fall.

I thought maybe I could just put a silver ring through the hole, but the pendant is almost a centimeter thick. I tried to make my own bail with some 20 gauge wire that I ordered especially for the job, but I had no idea what I was doing, so nothing I made turned out very nice-looking. I was starting to get really irritated, so I gave up for a few weeks.

Then I finally got the bright idea to check out some online tutorials. (Why hadn't I tried that before??) I found one that was pretty easy, sticking a head pin through the hole, curving it up and around and making a little hook with itself behind the head. Presto!

After all that hemming and hawing, I eventually finished.

Maybe the time it took was part of the process. Maybe I needed time to recharge after each roadblock. I'm open to that idea. But I'm glad I wasn't stopped indefinitely. This necklace delights me so much! Thanks be to the infinite creative energy that keeps projects moving along -- even at a snail's pace!

Branching Out -- Nerd Style

As with many of my other stories, this one starts off with an object -- a piece of raw material from which inspiration grew.

Meet mother... board.

OK, it's not "mother board," per say, but a circuit board. It might not even be from a desktop computer, but you never know.

I saw this little number on clearance at my favorite hobby shop. Score! It's always exciting to try new stuff on the cheap.

Next, I took some time to think about what sort of chain it should be attached to.

I thought the copper wire would look pretty sharp with the green, but I wanted to use silver findings for the end caps and clasp to echo the silver-colored bits in the pendant.

You can see from the above picture that at first I had the hook clasp in the "middle" of two equal lengths of silver rings. I decided to change it so that the length could be adjusted by the wearer.

The result is a wonderfully, ostentatiously geeky necklace unlike anything I've yet made!

Read my next blog for some of the hoops I had to jump through to make useful hoops!! (The pendant didn't come with a way to attach it to a necklace! Ack!)