Weaving Wednesday - The Bracelet Revisited

This week I'm sharing with you a revisit to that bracelet I did last week.  As I mentioned in the last post I picked up a tutorial on Etsy to get an idea of how the bracelet was made.  It was cumbersome and time consuming.  I literally spent 8.5 hours on one bracelet.  I decided I wanted to go back and rework some of the steps of the tutorial in order to make it a little easier on my hands and maybe cut back some of the time spent on it.  I'll share my photos and some basic steps on what I did.  The main thing to learn here is that tutorials are intended to teach.  Not replication. But teach.  I learned basically what needed to be done structurally.  I now know that I can make this bracelet with any weave at all and in any number of wires.  Here's what I did; I hope you enjoy.


First let's start with my finished bracelet.



Ok now here's my steps.  I cut the same number of wires (11) that the tutorial said but literally you could use any number you wanted. I also shorted the wires from the 11 inches in the tutorial to 9 inches.  I have small wrists so this size fits me perfectly.   I am going to make another one with a thicker center set of wires. Maybe using a basket weave instead of this simple one. I was going for time saving on this one.


Photography and Jewelry by Renee Sosanna Olson
 I then just took the wires an created sets using my favorite weaves.  I created two weaves and I wanted to have two plain wires in the mix as well.  As it turns out, I needed to go back and cut one more plain wire to have enough. So this piece used 12 wires instead of 11.

Photography and Jewelry by Renee Sosanna Olson
 Next using a basket weave style stitch, I began to put the three woven rows and the two blank rows together.

Photography and Jewelry by Renee Sosanna Olson
 After one end was stitched, I made an over under "braid" until the ends lined up.  I did remove some of the weave at the end to make sure the ends all lined up.  I then used that same basket weave at the end to bring the bracelet closed.

Photography and Jewelry by Renee Sosanna Olson
 I then cut and curled the ends to make loops for my clasp to fit in.


Photography and Jewelry by Renee Sosanna Olson

Photography and Jewelry by Renee Sosanna Olson

Photography and Jewelry by Renee Sosanna Olson

Photography and Jewelry by Renee Sosanna Olson
Tutorials are a great way to learn how to weave wire.  Don't be hard on yourself if it doesn't turn out exactly how the picture looks.  The idea is to learn the basic craft and then create your own designs. And most of all, have fun.   

Farmer's Market Veggies - A Witch's View

This week I'm sharing some photos of the amazing veggies we saw at the Farmer's Market in Raleigh.



Photo Credit - Renee Sosanna Olson 


Photo Credit - Renee Sosanna Olson 

Photo Credit - Renee Sosanna Olson 

Photo Credit - Renee Sosanna Olson 

Weaving Wednesday - Bracelet

This week I thought I would try a new bracelet Tutorial  I will link the Tutorial at the bottom of this entry.

This is the finished bracelet.






Jewelry & Photography by Renee Sosanna Olson

The tutorial asked that I start out with 11 pieces of 18 gauge wire.  I only had 20 gauge so I used that instead.  I think it worked ok.

It starts with a weave to connect the all the wires together and then you weave a specific set of wires with a specific weave.

Jewelry & Photography by Renee Sosanna Olson

Jewelry & Photography by Renee Sosanna Olson

Jewelry & Photography by Renee Sosanna Olson

Jewelry & Photography by Renee Sosanna Olson

Jewelry & Photography by Renee Sosanna Olson

Jewelry & Photography by Renee Sosanna Olson
It took me about 8 hours to complete this weave.  I think that I can streamline it a bit and change the tutorial to work for my style.  Mine ended up not looking exactly like the tutorial but that's ok  I think it gives it a bit of personal style.

I recorded a short video to get an idea of how it looks.




I purchased this tutorial on Etsy at MaxxBelleCreations - The tutorial is here for $6.  Not a bad investment to learn this technique.  

Weight Update

Hubby and I just got back from Pagan Pride Raleigh. We had a wonderful time. This is our biggest festival of the year.  We took the Vardo down and stayed the weekend.  We went to Whole Foods in Raleigh and found some fantastic things.  Because we're eating vegan now we have to find new foods to eat.  We tried a couple of new things the first of course was pizza. Pizza is one of my favorite things.  Needless to say it was only a matter of time before we had to try some.  We picked a mushroom, tomato and spinach as our first try.  First I have to say that I have always hated mushrooms.  But I'm finding they are not so bad now.  It was a pretty good slice.  Sunday night we were going to hit up Chipolte for some Soffritas but the parking was horrid so we went back to Whole Foods and this time they had a Mock BBQ Chicken Pizza (also vegan) --  it was freaking amazing.  It did have red onions on it which I pulled off but yeah, hell yeah.  :)

Me and Hubby at Pagan Pride Raleigh


We got up at about 5 am and walked around the fair grounds to make sure we got our steps in for the day and made sure to drink lots of water and eat fresh fruit.  I'm excited for my weigh in tomorrow. I'm really hoping I made my goal loss finally.

So I guess I'll get on with the update.

I started out at the following measurements

August 27

Bust - 44 3/4
Waist - 42.5
Hips - 51
Pants - 20

September 16
Bust - 43
Waist - 38.5
Hips - 47
Pants - 16

A before and after photo -  the kitty in the photo was rolling around in the grass. He's fine.


I'm really excited about how quickly my body is changing.  I'm looking forward to getting down and staying down this time!  Go Vegan!

Flowers at the Farmer's Market - A Witch's View

Today I'm sharing some photos of the flowers that they have available at the Farmer's Market in Raleigh.  It is about an hour for us to get there so we don't go often.  When we do, I like to snap a few photos.

Enjoy

Photo Credit - Renee Sosanna Olson

Photo Credit - Renee Sosanna Olson

Photo Credit - Renee Sosanna Olson



Photo Credit - Renee Sosanna Olson

Photo Credit - Renee Sosanna Olson 
 

Photo Credit - Renee Sosanna Olson 
 
Photo Credit - Renee Sosanna Olson 

Wrapping Wednesday - Bumblebee Jasper

This week I'm sharing my wrap of a bumblebee jasper!  Here's the finished piece before we get started.

Photographer & Jeweler - Renee Sosanna Olson


First I measured out about 30mm of copper and about 20 feet of weaving wire.



Photographer & Jeweler - Renee Sosanna Olson
I did a weave that reminds me of a sort of chevron pattern.  I decided I was going to wrap the entire piece this way. 



Photographer & Jeweler - Renee Sosanna Olson


Photographer & Jeweler - Renee Sosanna Olson
I then take two of the top wires and wrap them around the back in order to create a frame to hold the stone in the back.

Photographer & Jeweler - Renee Sosanna Olson

 I use the weaving wire to secure the back to the front of the frame.

Photographer & Jeweler - Renee Sosanna Olson
The stone will sit inside the the frame nicely.

Photographer & Jeweler - Renee Sosanna Olson
 I then take the four center wires and create the bail.

Photographer & Jeweler - Renee Sosanna Olson
 The six wires on the side will become the decorations on the side.  I went with the basic three three weave for piece.

Photographer & Jeweler - Renee Sosanna Olson

Photographer & Jeweler - Renee Sosanna Olson
I then take the pieces on the top and create the weave to go down the side.

Photographer & Jeweler - Renee Sosanna Olson
 Finally I attached the remaining decoration piece and prep for LoS.



Photographer & Jeweler - Renee Sosanna Olson

Here it is all finished after the Los has been applied.

Photographer & Jeweler - Renee Sosanna Olson
 And then the back.

Photographer & Jeweler - Renee Sosanna Olson


Stormy Morning - A Witch's View

This morning I'm sharing some photos I took of a pretty impressive storm rolling in with the sunrise.

Enjoy!

Photo Credit - Renee Sosanna Olson 
Photo Credit - Renee Sosanna Olson

Photo Credit - Renee Sosanna Olson

Photo Credit - Renee Sosanna Olson

Photo Credit - Renee Sosanna Olson

Photo Credit - Renee Sosanna Olson

Photo Credit - Renee Sosanna Olson

And the Winners are....

You can see my review of American Witches: A Broomstick Tour through Four Centuries here.





I have notified the following people of their prize via email.  They will have 24 hours to contact me with their shipping information.  If I do not hear from them within the allotted time I will redraw names.


Rafflecoper Winner Screen