My Memory Wire Has Amnesia

After the traumatic experience of losing all except one of my precious jump rings on the floor (which a lovely reader referred to, very aptly, as "the black hole"), I thought I'd try my hand at a memory wire bracelet.

How I imagined my new bracelet would look

Memory wire is so called because it remembers its original shape, and will always revert to that shape.  You can purchase memory wire for rings, bracelets and necklaces, generally in coils but sometimes as a complete piece with a clasp already attached. 

You can imagine, to a novice artist, that this has a lot of appeal - hell, most of it's done and I only have to get a really lovely combination of beads and bits on the wire to end up with a beautiful piece of jewellery.  So I bought my memory wire bracelets (multicoloured wire, just because I could, and it seemed more artistic somehow than plain old grey), and a pleasing variety of beads.

So not only did a memory wire bracelet sound like a relatively simple project, it also seemed like one of the smarter pieces of jewellery that you can buy. Best of all though, I felt like the possibility of it following the jump rings into who-knows-where was fairly remote.

I started off full of enthusiasm.  It didn't last long.

These lovely little bracelets have a connector (trust me when I tell you that connectors will be featuring in a future blog!) that screws one side of the bracelet to the other - obviously so you can get the bracelet on and off without dislocating your thumb.  Suppliers think of everything really.  Under the side of the screw connector, with the hole for the screw, is a crimp bead (fairly self explanatory - it gets crimped onto the end of the wire to prevent everything sliding off when the bracelet is undone), and the other has the screw piece sticking out.  "Screw piece" would be one of those technical jewellery terms I use now I'm an artist.

So I uncrimped the bead (that only took an hour or so - I think Hercules had crimped it) and prepared to thread my gorgeous beads on, in an artistically pleasing way.

Hmmm, forgot to suss out the hole size in the beads versus the diameter of the memory wire - they're both the same.  Rookie mistake, it could happen to anyone!  Luckily enough of the beads had a minutely larger hole and I managed to slide them on (i.e. push, shove, beg and plead until they moved).  As luck would have it, because I completely forgot to set it out and measure it first, the pattern of beads I'd chosen fitted exactly (I can only think that whoever watches over us must have taken pity on me).

As you might imagine, by this stage I was feeling fairly pleased with myself, even if I had sore arm muscles from the pushing and shoving - and the bracelet was looking great too.  Just had to pop the crimp bead and connector end back on and a new bracelet would be looking for a loving new home.

These things should have come with instructions!  No one mentioned that the connector should be on before the crimp bead.  And no, it didn't occur to me to look how the stupid thing went together as I pulled it apart - it was a simple connector with a simple crimp bead.  Why is it called memory wire if it can't remember how it goes together?

By the time I'd managed to pull the whole thing apart again and start over the end of the wire was sort of daggy and needed to be chopped off. And no, it didn't enter my head that if I chopped off a couple of millimetres of daggy end that my lovely pattern of beads wouldn't fit anymore and would be completely lopsided and wrong.

How my new bracelet really looks!

And no, I didn't think about how hard that crimp bead would be to get off a second time, when I put it on anyway, because I thought it wouldn't be noticeable that the pattern was lopsided and wrong.

The positive side to all of this was that I discovered my artistic temperament and invented a new swear word. I tried the new word out on the memory wire, while I was trying to work out what to do, but it didn't seem all that impressed (there's a distinct possibility it had heard it before).  I guess I just chalk it up to experience and start with a new bracelet.

And that's as far as I've made it.  The new bracelet is apparently a smidge thicker and I can't get the beads on it!  Lucky I like shopping - I need to buy new beads.

But as I write this, I can feel the lopsided and wrong bracelet looking at me from the bench - sort of like it remembers something unpleasant and might just get it into its little memory wire head to come alive, find an axe and visit me in the middle of the night.

I'm thinking elastic may be the perfect medium for me next.

Jump Ring Circus

In my newly found artistic bone (located somewhat near the funny bone) I've had to learn what all the little bits and pieces of jewellery making, known as findings, (this much I sussed out quickly...after I looked in a dictionary) are called.  Here's a few of the ones I've come across so far, and what they're used for.

First, we have chain.  Now chain isn't just chain much to my surprise!  It can be twisted, linked, belcher, double linked and so on. (Thank goodness for the dictionary and Google!), which you can buy in lengths such as a metre, or already prettied up into a necklace or bracelet length complete with the doing up bit known as a clasp.  Oh, in case you're wondering, the belcher chain doesn't actually burp the national anthem, I listened.

You can also purchase various types and hardnesses of metal with which to make your own chain, however being in the affordable category of jewellery, I've given that one a miss.  I'm also getting on in years and believe I might not finish constructing a single necklace chain from scratch before I move on to the great jewellery store in the sky.

Clasps seem to have an infinite variety of styles - toggles, lobsters, parrots (which I think might be the same as a lobster, but that could be entirely wrong so don't quote me in case the parrots or lobsters get miffed and attack me), magnetic, screw and so on and so on and so on.

Then you have connectors.  This one I worked out all by myself - they connect things (oh, go me!).  But that's the end of the simple bit, there are oodles of types of connectors as well.  I think it would be safe to say that if you imagined something you wanted to connect one bit of jewellery to another, there would already be a connector made exactly that way.

And then there are jump rings.

Jump rings are those tiny little circles of metal joining beads and charms, connectors and clasps, onto things.  They come open or closed which is exactly as it sounds - open ones have a break in the ring, closed ones don't, and they come in all different sizes.

I bought 3mm open jump rings (not knowing any better at the time and having to start somewhere).  3mm looks quite largish on the ruler, but the reality is that 3mm is TINY!  And jump rings, well,  jump!

Me on a good jump ring day

An open jump ring needs to be held between two pairs of pliers and twisted sideways to open them far enough to slip the whatever into the opening, then moved sideways back until it's closed neatly again.  Certainly sounds simple.  Until you put two pairs of plier ends onto a 3mm wide piece of metal that's about a poomteenth of a millimetre thick.  Then trust me you need to be an octopus, and a particularly dextrous octopus at that, to open, hold, slip something on and close again smoothly.

Here's a riddle for you.  If you have two hands (which I do) and each is holding a pair of pliers (which they are) which are in turn holding a 3mm jump ring, where is the spare hand that slips the pieces over the jump ring?

Not being an octopus, I've had to resort to other measures.  I've found that teeth don't work to hold any of this stuff, and neither does the man of the house who has sausage fingers (now that was a mistake - live and learn!). Throwing the piece in the air and hoping it lands in the right spot over the jump ring didn't work all that well either.

In the meantime, the second your attention wavers on the pliers in one of your hands the damn jump ring thinks it's the main event in a circus and jumps right out of them.  And bounces...and bounces...and bounces around the room.  Being only 3mm wide and a poomteenth thick they are nearly impossible to find if you don't locate them by sound before the bouncing ceases.  (If anyone knows an out of work lion tamer with chair and whip, please get in touch - I have a job for them).

As I wasn't fast enough for sound location, I tried various measures to recover the escapees.  Firstly, the 'find the lego block in the middle of the night' method i.e walk around in bare feet and you're sure to stand on one.  Didn't work.

Then I tried the 'crawl around on your hands and knees peering myopically at the dark corners' method.  I got sore knees and squinty eyes, but didn't find any jump rings.

Then I even resorted to sweeping the floor.  Hallelujah!  Found one.  Yes - one. 

So the jewellery making's on hold for a bit while I bring in the search and rescue dogs to find the remaining 299 jump rings that have to be on the floor somewhere.  Unfortunately for you all, hearing about my dexterity in making a little loop in the end of a connector pin is going to have to wait.  Sorry, but learning to live with a little disappointment every now and then is a good character building exercise.