The last time my bead buddy Christine and I got together we tried our hand at doing some wire weaving. As is often the case when I'm trying something new, I walked away stabbed and bleeding. Truly. I'm such a klutz sometimes. I managed to run a piece of the wire up under one of my finger nails. ouch!
This is my second attempt at using this technique and I think it is going to take a few hundred more before this is comfortable to my hands.
That said, I do like how this second one turned out. I pulled out a large coin-shaped jasper bead I had in my stash and treated it like a cab. I glued it to some lacy stiff stuff and then added a leather backing that I stitched along the back edge of the cab into the wire weave casing. The results are a framing of the bead in a cab-like setting.
It isn't perfect and it has too many imperfections to put this one in my shop, but I like the technique enough to try it again. If any of you are interested in learning how to do this, I highly recommend picking up Lisa Barth's Timeless Wire Weaving book. Great instruction that is easy to follow. Hey, if I can do it anyone can!
I recently wrote a book review on Lisa Lynn Barth's new Timeless Wire Weaving in the most recent issue of Bead Chat Magazine (page 120). I had been noticing her work on Facebook quite a bit over the last few months. The patterns had me in awe of the way she can wire weave around all kinds of rocks and stones, or into a piece of leather.
Every time one of her pieces posted over on Facebook I would stop and study it. I decided I really had to try this technique, and I decided that one of the best ways to review her new book was to test the instruction on myself.
I ordered her book, and went through it front to back several times over the course of the next week. And by the following weekend I was ready to give this a try. I picked one of my favorite patterns in the book, and a rock gifted to me from Christine (who found this one on the shores of Lake Michigan) and then began my project.
Of course it took me a bit to get this started, and I did have a few places where I had to back up and rework things. It took about 3 hours, which I'm sure is much longer than it is supposed to take. But what was amazing (at least to me) was that this example here is truly my first time ever trying this technique. Lisa's instructions were so clear that you really can use this book to teach yourself.
Lisa regularly teaches classes, and you can see that in the way she's written this book. She is the kind of teacher you hope for when you sign up for classes. She is thoughtful, and attentive and you walk away feeling like you've really mastered a new technique. A wonderful thing to find in a teacher.
That said, I do like how this second one turned out. I pulled out a large coin-shaped jasper bead I had in my stash and treated it like a cab. I glued it to some lacy stiff stuff and then added a leather backing that I stitched along the back edge of the cab into the wire weave casing. The results are a framing of the bead in a cab-like setting. 