Red-Tail Designs

Sparkle and shine from canning jar rims.

My canning jars needed an upgrade. They’re hand-me-downs from my mom, so after years of pickles and preserves, it was time for new rims. But what to do with the old rims?

Turn them into dress-up bling!

They have all the necessary ingredients for 5-year-old jewelry bliss: jangly noises when worn together, shiny metallics, and sparkly beads.

My helper got creative with the bracelet at the upper left. She wove wire in and out of the holes, string beads along the way.

Here’s how my 5-year-old and I made old canning jar rims into fun new bangles.

Supplies

• old canning jar rims
• block of wood
• safety goggles
• hammer
• center punch
• pliers
• metal file
• non-toxic spray paint
• latex gloves
• newspaper
• 

  Position the center punch on the inside of the rim.

• screwdriver (for removing spray paint cap)
• beading or craft wire
• round nose pliers
• beads
• messy workbench (optional)

1. Place the side of the rim on the block of wood. Position the center punch where you’d like the hole and hit with hammer until you punch through the rim. Punch hole from inside to outside of rim. If a smidgen of metal remains in the hole, pull it off with a pliers.

2. After you’ve made as many holes as you’d like, file each hole with a metal file to remove sharp edges.

Filing the burrs.

3. Spread newspaper in well ventilated area, don latex gloves and spray paint inside and outside of each rim. We used gold and silver and gave each band two coats.

4. After the paint has dried, add beads. Cut a 2 inch piece of wire. Grab the end of the wire with a round nose pliers and roll the pliers make several loops in a row. Thread wire through hole in rim, so the loop is on the inside.

5. Thread bead(s) onto wire. Cut excess wire so you have 1/4 to 1/2 inch of wire above beads. Grab the end of the wire with a round nose pliers and roll the pliers back toward the wire to make a series of small loops.

Little spirals of wire hold the beads in place.

6. Although you are finished, allow the bracelet to cure for 7 days to a month so that the paints are non-toxic to the skin. Rust-oleum said its spray paint is nontoxic within 7 days. Krylon suggested waiting 30 days for paint to cure fully to a non-toxic state. If you’re not sure, call the manufacturer.

Safety and other notes

• Always wear eye protection when hammering, filing and spray painting.
• Be sure the paint you use can be worn against the skin and that it does not contain lead.  If you’re unsure, call the manufacturer. I used Krylon silver crafter’s paint and Rust-oleum metallic paint.
• Spray paint can be removed from your forehead with nail polish remover.

The beads woven into this bracelet reflect the colors of the morning glories in my garden.

This week I sent off four custom horse hair pieces to their owners. Hoepfully they’re all happily wearing them right now!

Custom work always makes you stretch. Sometimes it stretches an idea you already have.  This customer asked for turquoise-colored leather rather than the standard brown. Brilliant idea! I’m going to try some other colors in the future.

The bracelet is reversible so you can wear the horse hair side out or the leather side out.

Other days it’s a stretch to find all the supplies. Inevitably, my manufacturer decides to discontinue the one finding I use a lot. Then it’s off on the treasure hunt again, finding a new supplier or replacement part. That was my reality this week as I worked on a quote for a new piece.

With the two round horse hair bracelets below, the client requested magnetic clasps so the bracelets were easy to get on and off. Part of that treasure hunt was finding super strong magnetic clasps that can withstand a little tugging. This is a bracelet after all.

Fabulous Four: Recent custom pieces.

Sometimes custom work just stretches your brain to create a new style that matches the vision of your clients. I have that challenge coming up as I embark on 5 new custom pieces in the coming weeks.

The most important thing I’ve learned from doing custom pieces is to capture a clipping of horse tail from your horse now.  I often meet people who wish they had some piece of their horse now that it’s gone. After their horse has passed they understandable don’t feel they can cut off a piece of its tail.

So if you do one thing today, make a momento of something important in your life. Whether its your horse, your child, a favorite fishing hole, a secret vacation spot, your best recipe, record the here and now of it. Take a picture. Write down what it stirrs in you. I know you won’t regret it.

Dancer from the Spring Powwow

The August Powwow at the Museum of Indian Culture snuck up on me! It’s next weekend.

Thoughts of quilling turtles and birds got me up the hills on my 4-mile run the other day. Hopefully I’ll have time this week to put those ideas down on leather.

Visit the tipi in the LifeWays area.

If you haven’t any plans for these beautiful days of summer, come on by and see Native American Indians show off their regalia and dancing skills. The Powwow runs from 10:30 a.m. until 6 p.m. on both Saturday and Sunday, August 16 and 17. Dancing doesn’t start until after opening ceremonies at noon. Then chow on a buffalo burger or Lakota taco. Yum!

I’ll be in the LifeWays area, demonstrating porcupine quillwork and selling my quill and horse hair jewerly. If you’re thinking of getting horse hair jewelry made, come on by with your tail. I can show you the styles in person.

Speaking of horse hair, I have a new Horse Hair Bracelet class coming up at Out of Our Hands on September 21, 2008. The class will last from noon to 2:30 p.m. and you’ll walk away with a horse hair bracelet you created with your own hands.

Porcupine quill plaiting technique.

On September 20 I’ll be teaching Quillworking at the Museum of Indian Culture. Quillwork Part 1 will go from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. and Quillworking Part 2 will be 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.

See the events page for more details.

Hope to see you next weekend!

At the torch with tiny wire and my nemesis the copper earring.

I was back at the torch bright and early determined to leave the class with a pair of leaf earrings. I cut new patterns, sent them through the rolling machine, grinded, sanded, annealed (that’s metal-talk for heated with a torch), bended, annealed, bended again and welded the rod on.

Annealed copper leaves.

Leaf cut outs and the earring goofs from Saturday.

Sending the leaf cutouts through the roller to get the shape.

That was the easy part.

See where I have that tiny little rod in my hand? I had to heat and bend that without melting it in half.

My pièce de résistance for the weekend: the leaf copper earrings. I liked the unpolished look, even though one has purple bands. The purple will eventually fade.

Doug Salmon, the instructor, was very up front with us on the first day: “I’m going to show you the hardest way to do things, so that from now on any other skill will be much easier to do.” He wasn’t kidding. This was hard.

Instructor Doug Salmon helps a student.

An hour and 2 goofed earrings later, I had a fairly close match to my first earring. (Not to worry, the goofed earrings will be pendants.)

The thing about this, I realize, is that sheer determination will not yield results with this kind of work. Determination will get you to try again and mess up another 26 earrings, but only skill and learning to do it right will get you to create with this medium.

Doug is offering the next level class at his studio at Spruce Forest next month and I highly recommend his classes. He has a sense of humor, he isn’t afraid to let you burn up a bit of brass and he tells you there are more ways than his to metalsmith.

I am definitely not a stellar welder, but after this weekend I left with a some jangly jewelry, dirt under my fingernails, a bit of soot on my face and great big smile.

The beginnings of copper earrings.

Yesterday I played with copper and brass, hammers and grinders, acid and fire. And look what I made!

Finished cuff bracelets.

I had such a blast at my metalsmithing class and I can’t believe I get to do it again today!

I’m so impressed that I made this jewelry.

I can’t wait to work on these copper leaf earrings again today. The curlicue on top takes a lot of coaxing of the metal with the torch so you bend it without severing the rod. Ooops! That’s what happened to the other piece. But, I’ll bend the hook and make it into a pendant. I meant to do that, right?

Necklace pieces before hammering.

The torch had me a little leery, but after a few tries I’m fairly confident with it, and I have all my hair intact (although I did come close to melting someone’s sunglasses).

The two cuffs were the first half of the day. Lots of filing, welding, buffing and bending. I also had a lot of grinding to do because, although I get along with the torch, I’m not adept at it, so I get huge blobs of brass instead of smooth joins.

Necklace to be assembled today.

We moved on to the necklace in the afternoon and today I’ll assemble it. I wanted to add different beads so after class I ran over to The Bead Works in Lancaster. The 18 gauge wire limited my choices, so I settled on these darker red stones and some gold beads.

I loved hammering out these shapes. More than just banging with a hammer, shaping the copper is what I imagine bonsai tree trimming must be like…you just know where to apply the tool next. I could have hammered out shapes all day.

Cooper and brass cuff ready to be welded.

My hands are a little stiff from all the bending and hammering and cutting with sheet metal shears, but I’m read to head off to class again today. The instructor is awesome; he doesn’t take himself too seriously and he loves letting us fix our mistakes.

Wish me luck that I can make a matching to that earring.

Fireman's name engraved on the back.

I sent this custom horse hair bracelet off a week or so ago.

Oscar's name engraved on the front.

Hopefully by now the owner of Fireman and Oscar has it in her hands or on her arm. Her friend had this bracelet made after she lost both of these horses in one short month. Her friend wanted a memorial of the two and asked me to make the bracelet with the stainless steel nameplated engraved front and back with the horses’ names. Both horses’ tails are woven into this bracelet.

The barn where she kept the horses also creates memorial stones for lost horses. The stones and bracelet arrived within days of each other so both could be presented at the same time to the owner. They were presented together so we’ll “only have her cry once,” her friend said.

Here’s to Oscar and Fireman.

On a lighter note, I’m off to class this weekend to learn metalsmithing with Doug Salmon. The class is through the Pennsylvania Guild of Crafters, and I’m hoping to come away with not only $175 worth of handmade jewelry (that’s the promise from the class literature), but also some new applications for my horse hair jewelry. I already have ideas brewing and hopefully we’ll cover ringmaking because I’m anxious to develop a horse hair ring using silver to protect the horse hair.

Someone suggested I could encase the horse hair in resin to prevent wear and tear of the horse tail. Obviously this was not a horse person, for he didn’t understand that horse people would actually want to touch the horse hair.

I realized this is only the second art/crafting class I’ve ever taken. Sure I had art class in school and learned a variety of crafts in Girl Scouts and from my mom. But last year’s Precious Metal Clay class was the first time I ever paid an expert to teach me something.

Interesting, considering how many different classes I’ve taught. I taught basic jewelry making at Michaels craft store, horse hair work at local stores and porcupine quillwork at the Indian Museum. All these crafts (and many others I’ve tried) were self taught, requiring lots of trial and error to get it right.

That was back in the day when I had seemingly endless amounts of time. Now, it’s great to have an expert show me in 2 days what I could take years trying to learn on my own. So off I go to burn up some silver (they’re not letting us near gold…too expensive these days!) and brass and copper. I’ll let you know how it goes.

This is Wenda, modeling horse hair earrings. She made them on Sunday at Out of Our Hands during the Horse Hair Earring Class.

Wenda brought some of her beloved Opie’s tail to class. She cleaned the hair ahead of time and was ready for braiding as soon as she walked in the door.

We had a great time at the class, braiding and gluing, chatting and creating. Wenda walked away with a momento of her favorite horse and can tell everyone, “I made these myself!”

If you’re interested in attending upcoming classes Horse Hair Earrings or Horse Hair Bracelets, contact me or Out of Our Hands. We’re putting together dates for these two classes now. All supplies are included, but you can bring your own horse hair if you choose.

Not everyone is so crafty or has the time, so I create horse hair earrings and bracelets for others, as well. Head over to the Horse Hair Jewelry page to find out more.

Ever wonder how artists go from idea to product? Me, too.

On Friday, I took photos of a new idea to see how it developed. Here’s what happened:

Idea! As I was gathering supplies in my studio to work outside, this hematite circle and blue fossil bead in a random dish o’ beads caught my eye.

I also wanted to use porcupine quills with these materials.

Three quills, to be exact. This is a good start, but I don’t like the way it hangs.

It needed something in the middle to stabilize it. And it needed more color. However, the triplet of quills didn’t slide over the beads, so I took off the bottom jump ring. Definitely not the look I was going for. Added a new jump ring at the bottom, but it was too big so the quills slid all the way down to hematite.

Pshoo! (that’s the sound of beads hitting the floor). I dropped the whole thing. Beads EVERYWHERE. Just a few seconds before I thought, “I should put tape on the top of this in case I drop it.” Should have listened to myself.

Back on track and figured out a different way to get the quills over the beads.

Don’t like the beads, so go with turquoise heishi. Roadblock! Heishi holes aren’t big enough to slide onto headpin.

Found a different turquoise heishi that fits on the wire

Finished earrings! I love that the quills can spin around the heishi, so the earrings change as you move. What do you think?

If you really like them, you can buy them at my Etsy Shop.

Out Of Our Hands is sponsoring a new class in July: Horse Hair Earrings!

As you saw in a previous post, we had a great time learning how to make porcupine quill earrings. You get to see what goes into creating something by hand, plus you go home with a new piece of jewelry.

Here are the details:

Horse Hair Earring Class

Sunday, July 13 from noon to 2 p.m.

at Out Of Our Hands, Emmaus, PA

Class Fee: $45

Please contact me or Out of Our Hands at 610-965-4806 to register.

While we’re on the subject of horse hair, click out the Horse Hair Jewelry tab along the top of the page. I finally added the horse hair earrings to the page so they are available for custom ordering.

Also notice the changes in the product descriptions. Each product is named after a horse I’ve known during my life. In the future I hope to include photos of each of these horses, but given some of them are steeds I met 20-some years ago, I have to do some digging to do.

Remember the days of film cameras? Push the button, advance the film BY HAND. Then wait ages, no eons for the film to get developed and sent back to you in the mail (the anticipation alone, made me stare down the mailbox for days). Then, the big question: are the photos good…no heads cut off or blurriness.

Yup, those were the days before digital cameras and many of my four-legged friends were captured this way. So after I wade through that huge box, I hope to add those critters to the site.

In the meantime, enjoy your summer. I know I am!

The first day of June saw four friends come away from Out of Our Hands with handcrafted pairs of porcupine quill earrings. Above, Melanie and Ann Marie work on gluing and adding the ear wires.

I taught a Porcupine Quill Jewelry Workshop at the Emmaus, PA, store on Sunday, the first of many workshops to come at Out of Our Hands.

Each lady created a unique version of my single quill earrings with stone chips. We had a lot of laughs and learned a little about porcupines and porcupine quillwork while chatting about growing up in the area. Two of the women and I graduated from the same high school. We’re amazed that Emmaus has turned from the “boring” town of our youth to a quaint little place the people come to visit!

Shannon knots the thread before adding ear wires.

Coryn threads the needle for one last pass through the beads.

The women had such a blast, they want to take the horse hair earring class. I will be offering a Horse Hair Earring class at Out of Our Hands, as well, hopefully in July. If you’re interested in learning how to make horse hair earrings, contact me or Out of Our Hands to sign up. I’ll post more about the dates and times as the information becomes available. Click on my events page to find out more.