Some of you may know my daughter is getting married soon, and I am making the jewelry for her and her bridesmaids. She wanted a hair vine. Since I am no stranger to wire-wrapping, I figured I could handle it. Rather than reinvent the wheel, I went looking for some instructions, and I found them here, on the Fire Mountain Gems Website.
I had planned on using real pearls (I really dislike fake ones), but my daughter sent me a picture of one she liked that had ends with three little tiny pearls on them. I don't know if you can get real pearls like that (tiny and perfectly round) but I don't have any. So I used Swarovski 3mm pearls. As you can see, I did make a few modifications to the design. The main one being that I could not attach the Swarovski crystals by running the wire through twice. I was using 24 gauge Argentium sterling (dead soft), but the holes weren't big enough to run it through twice. So instead I made myself some long 24 gauge head pins by balling up some wire ends with my torch. Also, maybe I wasn't paying attention (it's an ADHD thing) but I learned something that I didn't notice in the instructions. When adding new wires, you need to keep the ends of the old ones in there for an inch or so, otherwise your vine will have a joint in it.
It took me over 4 hours to make. It is 14" long however, so it's longer than average. I think it turned out good, though. Here's a close up:
I had a lot of fun making this -- I think you may see some more appearing on my web site soon!
Please do visit ShanghaiTai on Art Fire!
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