Deryn's tutorial!

Did anyone follow the link I posted to Deryn's fabulous tutorial yesterday? You really should. I checked it out, and decided to create the links she showed myself. I really had a lot of fun making these, and i was quite pleased with the results. I also have a couple suggestions if you try this yourself.
























Check out the totally sweet links i made from the tutorial! I find myself quite proud of how they turned out. I made the white ones first, and they are slightly smaller. I used silver wire, musical score paper, yellow transparent beads, and one pearl for this one. For the second one, i used shiny brown/brassy wire, blue scrapbooking paper, thin gold wire and pearls for the beads. I am really quite pleased with how these turned out.

This is a good tutorial to follow, as the pictures are clear and the instructions are sufficiently explicit. I did learn a couple things/change a couple things while doing it myself:

1) Use good quality wire. I have not yet found good wire here in Seoul, and therefor have had to make do with cheap stuff. The hammering and twisting puts a fair amount of strain on the wire. Three of mine that i was making snapped from stress midway through.

2) You can use a variety of things instead of the fabric she used. I used paper on both of mine. For one of the sheet music, i made the triangle as she suggested. However, i find that if you have a pattern on your paper (or music notes) it becomes quite difficult to read after the layering with the triangle. I prefer myself to have more of a long rectangle, and just wrap it straight like that. It doesn't create the pleasing bump as you see in hers, but it does keep the pattern on your paper visible and makes for a tidier look.

3)I was forced to make small modifications as i lacked some of the supplies Deryn had access to. I only had needle nosed and round tipped pliers, with wire cutters built in, I had no bench block or pillow, and i had no sanding block. I found that i worked this out okay, using the pliers on hand, the floor as a bench block and skipping the sanding. I can see how these would all be useful things once we get to have the mad skills Deryn does, but it is still possible for us who lack the supplies to create these links.

All in all, this is a really wonderful tutorial that i would highly recommend checking out :). I don't yet know what exactly I will use them for, but i suspect the brown ones will look very nice in this necklace i've been working on. I've been slowly working my way through Stephanie Lee's Semiprecious Salvage. For those of you who have this great book, I am currently working on the 4th necklace in the book (the one with the doll arm). I think these links will match in nicely.