4 more done

[skystone]

Got a new batch of 3 buterflies & 1 dragonfly done today. I used some really nice blue/green Turquoise for some of the wings & a brighter blue for the bodies (one BF the other way arround LOL). The Turq. is just beautiful & I really like the look of these. The dragonfly tail is articulated & swings. Two of the buterflies are pin/pendants & have removable bails. I may make necklaces for some of these. I just got some Turq. beads that exactly match the blue/green. Hope you enjoy them let me hear from you. Nobody seems to be saying much these days.

[liz]

They're beautiful!!! You should do well with those.

liz

[Medusa]

lovely colours and I really love the malachite dragonfly eyes.  I have to ask though, how on earth did you get such uniform granulation?  Did you use jump rings or something?

[skystone]

Medusa I'm not sure what the question is. Jump rings?  For what? The eyes? You mean bezel cups? No I make all the pieces by hand.

[skystone]

Here's a pic. of the number of individual pieces that go into a buterfly. Not including the antenni, bail or pin (if it's a pin/pendant)

[Medusa]

Medusa I'm not sure what the question is. Jump rings?  For what? The eyes? You mean bezel cups? No I make all the pieces by hand.

Ahh ok, it was bead wire!  I was complimenting you on getting uniform sized granulation… I didn't realise it was bead wire :)

The only way I have ever EVER got regular sized silver balls was melting pre-formed jump rings down.

[skystone]

Oh ok I understand the ref. to jump rings. I've done that type of thing too. Like cutting two balls off of bead wire & melting them to make the same size balls. Yes I used two difernt size 1/2 round bead wire on two diferent buterflies.

[Medusa]

heh, I will endeavour to be clearer next time :)  I forget that what I am thinking doesn't always get translated to the page!

[GregHiller]

>The only way I have ever EVER got regular sized silver balls was melting pre-formed jump rings down.<

I was experimenting with granulation myself the other day.  It is a pain to get balls the same shape.  I tried one technique:  I took a sheet of silver and rolled it as thin as I could, then cut a small snippet rectangle and checked the size of the resulting ball.  When I got the size right I drew graduated lines on the sheet, and cut it up into a few hundred tiny rectangles.  I have a few large fire bricks so I scattered them on the bricks and carefully brought my flame down from directly above so they don't roll away when they melt.  This worked reasonably well for me.  Cutting lengths of really thin wire would also of course work.  There are places you can buy tiny uniformly sized sterling balls from, but they want about 4X the cost of the silver. 

[GregHiller]

When I tried making balls from small wire I was using Argentium and the smallest (reasonably priced) wire I could find was 28 gauge.  To make 1.2 mm balls (15 mg) I had to cut wire only 1.2 mm long...really hard to do accurately.  Perhaps the answer is to run the wire through a mill to make it thinner and then slice it up.  Still a lot of cutting! 

[Medusa]

When I tried making balls from small wire I was using Argentium and the smallest (reasonably priced) wire I could find was 28 gauge.  To make 1.2 mm balls (15 mg) I had to cut wire only 1.2 mm long...really hard to do accurately.  Perhaps the answer is to run the wire through a mill to make it thinner and then slice it up.  Still a lot of cutting! 

I think milling it thinner makes it easier, agreed. 

Isn't 28g wire like super-thin?  I get confused with US sizes but thought that if you wanted 1.2mm balls then a length of 1.2mm would need to be 0.8 or even 1mm or something? 

I am however crap at math and I'm also a bit… freeform with my designs, so seldom go for such accuracy on decorative stuff.