The Making of the Bluebell Chainmaille Flower Bracelet

I know that some of you enjoy seeing the process that goes into making my jewelry. This is a not-really-tutorial that shows how I made the Bluebell Chainmaille Flower bracelet! It is inspired by the purple-blue "bluebell" flower, also known as harebells and fairy thimbles.

"When dim and dewy twilight falls, 
Then comes the time 
When harebells chime 
For fairy feasts and, fairy balls. 
They tinkle while the fairies play, 
With dance and song, 
The whole night long, 
Till daybreak wakens, cold and grey, 
And elfin music fades away."
~Cicley Mary Baker, artist of the flower fairy paintings

Also, as of this month my Artfire shop is officially closed. I am now selling only on my Etsy store, Shealynn's Faerie-- please check it out as I am adding more items! 

 Next week is Thanksgiving, and with it comes Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Stay tuned for some flash sales!

One last announcement: My queue for custom orders is nearly full, so if you have anything custom that you would like me to make for Christmas, please email me straight away. Thank you!

The Shoppe!

Announcing...

The Shoppe! 

Check out Shealynn's Faerie Shoppe on Artfire!

Visit Shealynns-Faerie-Shoppe's ArtFire Shop

A Medley of Chainmaille

Some of the stuff littering my room...

Chainmaille is addicting. I never knew just how fateful that one day at the Summerfest would be. I saw UnkamenGifts, and was immediately hooked.

I've been working hard on some new chainmaille items. Shown here is most of what I have made (that I still have; I've made and given more!). 

Click to enlarge the image. Which is your favorite? Leave a comment!!!

PSST! I've discovered the secret to getting a good picture of chainmaille!

It's called a scanner. While, as an artist, a scanner is very annoying, it is a lifesaver in the way of chainmaille. Of course, the scans are not very artsy, but boy do they show detail! I'm sitting here grimacing at all the pliers' marks and the half-shut rings.

Escaping Marble

This little fella sure lived up to it's name. Let me explain...

Once upon a time...

     I spent a very long time trying to make this captured marble. I'm pretty sure it hated me. I used a random assortment of rings, all quite munchkin-ier than the rings I used for the Truly Captured Marble.

     The rings were much smaller, which let me make a "window" in the front-- while securely held, the marble was able to move. Whenever I wore it, I couldn't stop fiddling with it. The marble moved. Thus it was named "Escaping Marble." It never really escaped. It only tried to. As I said, it moved. 

     Thus it was doomed to half-escape and moving for a whole month.

     Then I wore the necklace to a dance, got it tangled in my hair, and instead of doing the rational thing and going to the bathroom to untangle it, I yanked really hard. And broke it. Go figure. And now I can't get it back together. Go figure.

And so the marble truly escaped.

The End.

(Thankfully I snapped some pictures before the necklace was doomed to the painful death of yanking.)

In all its pre-yanking glory.

Escaping marble, Captured Marble, and a little trapped bead.

Byzantine Cross

Here it is, in all its finished glory!

This cross is by far the most complicated chainmaille project I have ever done-- especially because I had absolutely no instructions. I'd seen someone on Etsy make a chainmaille cross, but it was in a Persian weave, which I have not yet learned. So I winged it!

I got the jumprings from UnkamenGifts-- the colors are spectacular. As soon as I opened the bag, I knew that I had to make something in a rainbow fade...

I'm calling this the Byzantine Cross because, not only is it made in a Byzantine weave, but because the colors are typical of the artwork of the Church's Byzantine rite.

First try

The first attempt turned out rather well, except for one problem:

FLOPPINESS!

(Note how small the cross is-- it is just over two thumbnails in length. )

So I pulled apart the connecting rings and experimented with various sizes and numbers of rings.

Pulling it apart

Putting it back together.

The back of the revised edition.

I wound up using a brown mobius (3 interlocked rings) in the center and small green rings for structure. 

The bottom part was still floppy-- I couldn't get the three supporting rings in the middle of the weave--, so I attached an eyepin to the back. (It's bent in this picture, oops!)

Here it is-- the product of several hours of experimentation! It's quite sturdy now, don'tcha think?

It's hard to believe that I first heard of chainmaille jewelry this summer! I love it so, sooo much. ^_^

Chainmaille-ish Necklace

I made this necklace for a friend. The bits of chainmaille are the Byzantine weave. I loved using some of my pretty charms. ^_^

Some More Stuff!

Here are several new things-- all in one post because I didn't feel like making separate posts for each one.

 Another Evenstar ( <--- check out my tutorial!) The top leaf flipped over, and I didn't notice it until it was too late. Oh well.

Another Helm Weave chainmaille bracelet.

Small fantasy-ish wrapped aquarium rock.

A pretty pendant from Walmart; I've yet to do anything with it but take a picture. :)

Fiction Teardrop

A (slight) variation on my Star Wars pendant. It is a Byzantine chainmaille weave.

It reminded me of something from a sci-fi or fantasy film. Hence the name!

Pretty Purple Orbitals

A third variation of the Firework Orbitals-- this time totally girly and topped with "diamonds"!

See also: Exploding Fireworks

Fun Way to Organize Jump Rings

Like I'd mentioned before, I bought a set of sample jump rings from Unkamen Supplies. Well, I had to have a way to sort them...

So I used these memory card cases (I have a nice, padded case for camera memory cards now-- funny story how I got it...)

Exploding Fireworks

Oh, dear! Some incredibly mismatched jump rings and a touch of color exploded all over my desk, changing my Firework Orbital design into a bright and cheerful explosion of dangling rainbows.

Teaching friends!

I recently got together with some family friends, who are like little sisters almost. :) They are SO quick to catch on. In the space of an hour, Marlena made the wrapped rock pendants (and developed a cool way of wrapping them) and Christiana made the earrings shown below: The rocks, and some other creations, are for our Church's Oktoberfest.

The top two earrings are based off of my Peacock Garden. I loved how Christiana used Christmas colors in them, and then plain bronze topped with blue!

The bottom left earrings are based off of my Musical Notes, and the right are based off my Fireworks.

Peacock Garden

These reminded me of the striking tones of peacock feathers... And the chainmaille mobius looks rather like a flower of sorts, doesn't it? The flower beads on the earring wire only add to the garden effect.

This is the sort of creation that occurs when you have a random assortment of jump rings.(Although very nice quality, from UnkamenSupplies) I had a total of four bronze-ish rings and two blue rings. What could I possibly do with such a tiny amount?

Mix and match in the mobius! I wonder why I never thought of that before!

Captured Marble

It took me awhile, but I finally caught that elusive orb, the marble. I have captured it inside of a chainmaille globe, so that its fiery spirit can be forever seen-- but never again shall this marble roll under the depths of the couch, where it was discovered!

I wanted to post instructions for the making of this marbled cage or caged marble, but for me it was simply attempting to get the chain of rings to loop around the marble. It seems straighforward, BUT! marbles love to escape and fly underneath beds.

Here is a picture of how I began (note that I used another blue ring after this).

The marble makes a great necklace:

Or keychain, when I am wearing my Celtic Flower pendant:

Star Wars Chainmaille

This is actually supposed to be a pendant, not an earring. Actually, I wanted to make two of these as earrings, but I did not have enough jump rings. So now it is a necklace pendant. A really small one. It's just a little bigger than my fingernail!

I made this for a friend, who is going to be doing a small acting part in a homemade Star Wars movie for another friend before she leaves to join the convent!

It is half a Byzantine weave with a little dangle bead on the bottom.

Helpful Chainmaille Links

Maille Artisians International Leauge This website has a huge number of weaves, including descriptions of traditional historical weaves and the newer, decorative weaves. While some of their tutorials are confusing, this is the place to go with all chainmaille questions. Look here for inspiration, too.

CG Maille Computer generated images that clearly explain the weaves. Best tutorials I have found.

UnkamenGifts' Flickr Wonderful tutorials, although sometimes a step or two is left out.

Etsy The online site for everything handmade. Type "chainmaille", "chainmaille jewelry" or any number of chainmail related words into the search bar. You can purchase other artisian's work, or simply look for inspiration. You can also purhase quality handmade jumpring supplies here.

I'm sure there are other good sites out there-- these are just the ones that I find the most helpful. Chainmaille is a relatively small niche in the jewelry community, so instructions can be scarce. Of course, it is quite easy to find instructions on making chainmail armor-- but that takes FOREVER.

Firework Orbitals

Chainmaille! Little random things like these earrings are the result of having a limited number of jumprings to work with-- and an even smaller number of similar color and size.

Orbitals are chainmaille rings that are not hooked into anything-- they are trapped inside of other rings to be held in place. (The Helm weave which I have used in my Geometric Flower and Chainmaille Bracelet uses orbitals).

While the firework dangles are not technically orbitals, they look like it. And the little red rings on the top certainly are.

Loop-de-do

Fun and funky. Unfortunately, I can't give good instructions for chainmaille, even a simple thing like this. So I will simply post pictures.

The chain can be hooked through any one of the rings.

Geometric Chainmaille

Blame my mother for the name. She is the math geek, and her first remark on this chainmaille charm was "Oh, wow... I love this. It's so geometric!"

Which I suppose it is. Geometricity is the nature of chainmaille, and it is a very pleasing look!

I made this from the few similar size-and-color rings I got in my sample set from UnkamenGifts. (I should have just ordered multiple colors of one size!).

It is a helm weave folded in on itself. My first attempt at this pattern was pictured HERE.

This is so tiny that it would work well as earrings, too. If I had enough rings.

Chainmaille Celtic Flower Pendant/Keychain

Wow. Just wow.

I know, I am wowing something that I made. But I just had no idea you could do this with chainmaille.

In my first post on chainmaille, I mentioned that I first ran across it three or four weeks ago at UnkamenGifts' Summerfest booth. Instead of buying a necklace from them, as I originally planned, I bought their Celtic Flower Kit. I picked out my colors, and they gave me the exact sizes. I then used their tutorial on Flickr.

Of course, I used cheap rings from Hobby Lobby and rings that I made to weave my first flower. I wanted to be sure I could do it before using the good jumprings.

I found that the needle-round-nose pliers I have have a "tooth" that harms the copper rings I bought. The only other pair of pliers I had was a pair of small needle-flat-nose in bad shape from Dad's toolkit. I needed two pliers to open the copper rings, so I raided his giant toolbox again, and emerged triumphantly with a pair of way-too-big flatnose pliers/clippers. If I am careful, I can use the corner of it as jewelry pliers.

This is the Celtic Flower halfways through it's creation-- it begins as a string of complicated chainmaille knots. It looks like dragon scales, doesn't it?

Then the chain is pulled into a circle. At this point the flower was incredibly floppy.

Here is the completed flower with the "structural rings" woven in.

And then I had fun taking pictures.

I decided to make a keychain that I could put the flower on when I am not wearing it as a necklace:

The chain is an intricate box weave called the Byzantine. Instruction can be found in the "Byzantine Weave" set on UnkamenGift's Flickr.