As you can see, I twisted two colors of wire together.  I then wound some in the middle of the heart, and used some for the loop on top.

The twisted wire

This is the final result…

Look for the listing on etsy soon.

Final Product

After a few attempts at playing with the jig and shaping the wire, I finally settled on this:

Fresh off the jig

After I got a style I liked, I made the second heart, and matched them up to themselves to make them as identical as possible.  I have to decide whether I want to wrap the hearts in wire or intertwine the middle and fashion loops in order to hang crystals from them.  The first choice will allow me to weave the beads into the wrapping process.  The second will cause me to create small millimeter chain to hang the hearts from the ear wires.  Then again, I may get nutty enough to make two different styles of earrings.

A basic plastic wire jig

This is a jig that I purchased many years ago when I started toying around with wire jewelry.  It is small, and doesn’t tend to cooperate when I want to make large pieces, but, fortunately, I haven’t gotten to the large piece phase.

I have placed the pegs where I want the wire to go, and and imagined what it would look like once I put the wire onto it.  I chose 16 gauge wire instead of the 14 I originally planned to use because the smaller wire (16 gauge), looked better artistically, in my humble opinion.

The Beginning of an earring...

So, here I have wrapped the wire around the jig.  The next step is to pull it off and set it just the way I want the heart to look so that it can have crystal accents.  I may wrap wire around the main wire.  I haven’t decided yet.  I never know what the finished piece is going to look like until I am done.

More Later…

…Or how to turn a heart into jewelry.

It starts, with me a least, a picture I see clearly in my mind.  Sometimes, it goes from the picture in my head to the idea being put together.  There is a rare occasion that the idea becomes a sketch in a book.  This series of posts will be a pictorial journey of how something goes from sketch to reality.

Heart Earring Sketch

As you can see, it will be a pair of earrings.  I’m already thinking that it should only be one large heart with three crystals in the center.  More like this:

Revised Sketch

I am also thinking silver wire instead of red.  They will be large enough so that the crystals dangle freely.  This sketch, like the one above is a very rough one, but I hope it gives you enough of an idea of what I want it to look like.

The original design will still be revisited;  I think, maybe.  I just won’t do it now.  I’m thinking 14 gauge wire at least.  This will make the design more stable.  They won’t be as fragile.  The next step is bending the wire into the shape.  I have to see if I can use a jig in order to shape it.

It may sound simple, but the design is the tricky part.  You always have to keep in mind that the more you fold the wire over itself, the thicker it becomes.

More Later…

This is the original design.  The inspiration for these came from a design that is mass-manufactured for a clothing store.  Sassy, a friend of mine, had brought earrings by and asked if I could fix them.  I wound up re-doing them completely.  They were too short for her taste, and left with a different pair.  This was winter/spring ’09.  I had made them in three different colors I took pictures of them at a later date.

Leverback three

They were listed on etsy, where they sat for a while.  They received a few views every now and then, but no one seemed to want to give them a home.

Enter:  Year 2010

Two friends of mine, Travis and Ruth came to visit in January (16th-18th).  I couldn’t tell you truthfully how long it had been since all three of us had been together at the same time.  I felt like a kid at Christmas. The 17th was the day.  I couldn’t sit still.

When they arrived, there were plenty of hugs to go around.  We came into the house via the garage, where some of the jewelry is displayed.  I told Ruth to pick out a piece and consider it a birthday gift as she would not be here on her birthday.  She chose the pair at the beginning of this post.  We spent the rest of the day goofing off and wandering around Atlanta.

After my friend Ruth got back home to Illinois, she called me to tell me her daughter (then 14), thought the earrings were pretty but a little short.  Ruth asked me if I could make her a pair a little longer than hers.  Ruth said she would but them for Shannon’s birthday.

It’s been a week since the Sunday the earrings were made:

Shannon's Earrings

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

SHANNON!!!