Sunday, December 1, 2013

Scarab Rings, Pinterest, and You . . er, Me.

Sometimes, I go on Pinterest trawls.  I find awesome things.  Including scarab rings (which are a bit out of period/location for my persona), but also other sorts of rings, including one with a completely wire-wrapped band, intaglio rings with essentially a bead, and plain wire rings.

I was given a carved bead to work with about a year ago, and I wasn't sure what to really do with it until today, when I saw the scarab ring on Pinterest and decided to experiment.


Most of the time, when I experiment, I end up having to try a couple of times to get the results I want.  No exception here.  I first tried with 20 gauge Artistic Wire, and I found it difficult to get enough of a wrap on the bead to stabilise it.  So, I removed that, and went with 22 gauge non-tarnish brass wire, which is a little thinner, and a little less flexible, because of the nature of the brass itself, and just passed it through the bead hole twice.  In period, rings like this are almost all universally made of gold, as far as I've researched.  Gold is a much more flexible material and can be pulled, twisted, wrapped, and manipulated much easier than brass can be.  You'll notice that I also wrapped the brass wire around the scarab bead to keep it from moving around too much.  After all of this, I started to wrap the ring itself, stopping when the wires met each other at the bottom of round.  I then clipped these short and then smooshed (it's a technical term) them so they would lie flat and not get caught on anything.

The ring itself is large enough to wear comfortably on my left pointer finger, but as it's not really my period, I'm going to tuck this away for some largesse basket for my kingdom to give.  I'd be interested to see where this little guy goes off, and hear all of the adventures it has.

I now also have a great way to use up orphan beads, and it really didn't take too long.  In fact, I managed to make another ring today using some of the same techniques as this one, but that one looks quite a bit more suited for modern tastes.

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