Cheaty, open-backed prong bezels for coins.

Have you seen this stuff?

It's called "gallery bezel wire" and you can find it on etsy. Being the creatively perverse maker that I am, I saw it and instantly thought of a cheat for setting coins, like if they're too thick or precious to pierce.

Wrap it as tight as you can around your coin to find where one 'eye' opening overlaps. (As you can see here, it isn't a perfect overlap so I chose to use the tighter holes rather than having the bezel all loose.)

The overlap is where you're going to thread your pin.I used thick tin snips. 

Cutting one angle, then the other. 

And not worrying about sanding or nuthin'. 

On this one I decided to just use two connections.

You can also do three, depending on what you're up to. 

So I mentioned the tight overlap- it took me lots of fidgeting and pushing to get the coin in after finishing the two connecting loops. 

But finally he was in. At this point, don't even realize you put him in tilted and that he looks ridic. 

Now you can bend down the little 'prongs'. 

Going around to all of them. 

Now do realize you put him in tilted and go oh shit then scramble for half an hour trying to swerve him around even though this is tight as balls. 

Finally get him sort of acceptable, even though if the connections were going north-south instead of east-west, you could've done more than a simple choker with him. But oh well. Here he is after oxing, polishing, sealing and putting in an actual piece. 

At this point I was like, what a cool dude this is, I wonder what this coin is. Only then did I realize it was a 2011 Euro and that basically means anyone who's ever been anywhere near Europe won't find this cute at all but that's ok.

Here's the three-connection coin. 

After oxidizing.... See, now it looks like I reversed the background and foreground from the last pic and I really didn't and it doesn't suddenly look like a light peach color. It's the frucking camera acting up. Oh also, the bezeling wire I got was anti-tarnish and the little bit of oxing I was able to accomplish was after a bunch of annoying sanding, so watch out for that if you buy some.

I also got this awesome big-ass coin which I managed with lots of elbow grease to make slightly curved for a bracelet, Though you can't tell here. So I had these big brass circle things which I was able to cut down with snips, hammer and shape: 

Oh and the piercings I just eyeballed with a fine marker. I'm not about to pull out a ruler. If I wanted to deal with numbers I'd be some kind of math teacher or masochist or something.

I used my metal piercing pliers then I clipped some steel for prongs, again eyeballing instead of measuring.

Fitted them in from the back. 

Sat the coin in there. 

And folded the wires down.

Then I straightened the wires to point directly to each other. 

Then I lifted them a bit so I could clip the excess off. 

Folded back down. So I guess before folding back down you can sand the sharp edges but I decided to try hammering at them instead. Had to use the mini anvil cuz of the curve. 

And it actually worked! yay.

 Here's the back 

And after oxing, a little buffing of the coin and sealing. 

So. I was feeling so crafty and my comfy winter boots I've had for like 9 years came apart:And I'm like, sure these are all scummy anyways and I could drag my ass to the shoe place, but I got jewelry supplies! 

 

They're as good as new. Not as pretty as new but you know.

     

So Cold.

Welcome to the arctic midwest where all water is a solid and penguins roam the land...

Chunky Babies.
Played with some poly to test out some ideas.

Little Chunky Babies.
A bit of tinted liquid poly over these pink guys. came out waaaaay too pink. I think I need to try liquid Kato, the liquid sculpey is way too milky. Though I wonder how they'll act mixed together? Hmmm...

Sparkle Babies.
Yeah iridescence and chunky facets, we've seen this before Marina... but wait!
Grandma Grunge.
Suddenly in the horizon appear the wackiest set of polys ever! Tensha decals for glass and ceramic beads used with polymer, made frosty with liquid poly and grungy with facets and paint. Oh yeah.

Grandma Grunge.
Look at this wack-a-doo set. I kinda love it. Would you use these together? There could be like thin chain between each element... a few white beads...
Oh, ok so see the one above that looks like it has a core? Well, that's actually an eyelet I used to cover up the fact that the hole was a mess. I'd used a toothpick to make holes on these and just decided to cook them on there and the really big beads the polymer was like infused into the wood and those damned toothpicks wouldn't come out so I had to re-drill the holes. Well, turns out a drill would much rather go through soft poly than stiff wood, thus causing destruction and other hilarity to ensue. Here:

I was able to save this one you see in the middle but the last one was a disaster. You can even see the green scrap clay I'd used as a core bead there. I was psyched for this set because of the dramatic graduation. Oh well. This is why it's experiments. And that's another thing! If they're not experiments, I get super bored. If I know what I'm doing, I don't want to do it. And when they are experiments, I don't mind so much selling them at a price which maybe makes me earn far less than minimum wage...


Tiger Tea.
The rest of today's stuff I think I've shown already but they're actually listed and shit now.
Daydreamer.
Playing with some of my polys that I kept for myself.

A Daytime Moon.
Aw man one of those green faceted ones would've been perfect in here but I hadn't made them yet when I made this oh well.

Bricolage 1.
OK, so someone commented begging for a tute for these bangles but...

Bricolage 2.
Aren't they self-evident? Like, cut strips, rivet together measuring to make sure they're the right total length for a bracelet... taking rivet overlap into account....

Bricolage 3.
Sorta re-cut any that are too wildly mis-matched in width from whoever they're riveted to... sand, hammer if you want, oxidize and seal? And I got inexpensive rivets and they were kinda longish so I smooshed them apart in back with just pliers before hammering and then sanded to make sure it wasn't scratchy on the wrist. Eh? Questions? Mostly it's about collecting the tins I think, and I can't help you with that. Other than to say, "Go forth and collect tin my pretties!"
[Yeah so a while back someone asked which fanfiction I read. So ... yeah. Um, Sherlock? And it's super gayporn-y? And my parents read this blog so, um.... yeah. (I found some Thor/Loki ones that were SO pervy and hot, omg! But this is not the place! Inappropriate!! Lets just forget this paragraph ever happened.)]
Finally, can I re- post this gif because I think more people should have responded to the wonder that it actually is:

OK? Do you see that? Do you see what's happening there?

Doin' ma thang

I made a poop-load of riveted bangles:

And I've divided them up into sets of three by size.

I've just been too lazy to take proper pictures and list.

And with the snow-stormy weather, the light hasn't been motivating me either.

But I've been busy making away as always. Here's this big chunky necklace:

Here's this cool-ass bracelet with a big shimmery piece of Roman glass which looks to once have been the edge of a bottle base:

I finally figured out a way to finish this cuff that's actually functional and attractive:

Though it still needs a touch of oxidizing along with like a million other bits of wrist candy I have waiting to go:

And these too.

I've been super busy taking care of these fools:

While my parents are off visiting Uruguay with my sister and bro-in-law who are taking the kids there for the very first time. They're getting to know all their new cousins:

And some new fuzzy relatives as well:

And you can thank my mom for that big ol' finger there as well.

Now it's time to catch up on some gifs: