I Said What What! In the Butt!

 Maybe I should just start titling my posts with random memes. Have I mentioned that I find internet humor to be a thing of beauty, a performance art, an entirely new form of creative interaction for humanity, a revelation of the profound cleverness of the anonymous masses and, finally, a butt-load of awesome sauce?
Changing gears...

I'm sure you girly girls will like this. I did try to balance it off with the cording.

Re: your questions-> Are we talking beading wire? Like Beadalon and Soft Flex?  I've never found one type or brand to be better or worse, though some is thinner. What does make a difference is the glue. You have to use G-S Hypo Cement. It's amazing in tiny spaces, though useless for anything bigger. You can also use crimp covers and all that. I never remember to get any so I end up winding wire over the crimp. I really should get some.

 Speaking of crimp beading. This here.

Now this right here is waxed polyester cording. It's very strong but also slipper. So I also dab that glue on the knots and then cover them with wire. It's my own thang. 

In any case, for both of these necklaces I had to drill head on through a copper rivet to detach this from its original home.

Here I hammered the crap out of some copper wire, I think it was 14 ga, then soldered it together for a coin bezel.  I then oxidized. I'd done so much dremel filing to get the excess solder off that my copper had a lot of 'tooth' for the oxidizer to get into, that's why it looks so dark. But then it was murky and young Elizabeth wasn't very visible. So, I eeever-so-gently buffed her down with some fine steel wool. But then too much of the coin got buffed too and looked very red. I tried carefully re-oxidizing just the spots I wanted, which worked, but not that perfectly. So, I tried out a new purchase- black alcohol ink. It's quite potent. I thinned it some with rubbling alcohol. In fact, the colorful necklace above was my 1st alcohol ink experiment. I shmeared it on the eyeball-searingly bright yellow glass.
I've had a recent fixation with that color:

It's just such a surprise neon pop. Another way to balance off the dour antique hardware. And the brights are rather tribal, in a Bollywood way.

And, guys, it took me, like, 3 hours of hammering to get this thick piece of bronze to bend. I didn't have the guts to try heat again. I was able to inaugurate my other new tool- a mini anvil!Though after the 3 hour beating, it doesn't look this pristine any more. But it did have me hammering spoons and things- super fun and really works. You'll see in some upcoming pieces.
Here's this hot mess:

 I over thunk it in my attempt to do something with some square bits. So actually, from fussing so much, I broke the link of the glass frame part. So. Back to the solder.

Oh but the soldering gave me an opportunity to bust out my new this guy:

 My new 'Helping Hands'. Which are pretty awesome but not for something with lots of different parts to solder. Why? Because, as you heat and attach your second or third parts, the solder is liquifying on it all so your first or second parts are dropping off. So next time I'm busting out my new:Magnesia Block. And just soldering on that. And I'm going to remember not to fold the little tabs til after the coin is inserted.

That's it for today. Hope you enjoyed. *curtsies* 

Oops. Forgot this guy.