Melismatic Art Jewelry: leather

Sunday, August 31, 2014

AJE Component of the Month for August - Leather Feathers!

This month, our component comes from the talented Rebekah Payne of Treewings Studio. She created these fun, organic leather feathers...she talks a bit about the process here! We had our choice of an earring pair, or a larger focal feather.

I opted for an earring pair and received a gorgeous set with purple, blue and metallic designs! I knew that I wanted to create a copper backing to somehow attach the feather to, but it took going to BeadFest this past weekend to solidify my idea in my brain!

Gorgeous lampwork headpins by Jen Cameron and Sue Kennedy!

See the ones circled in yellow? Yep, the orange swirls with purple stripes! As soon as I saw them, I knew what I was going to do. I set about making my copper back plates, adding texture, measuring, punching holes and creating balled headpins and earwires. The plan was to rivet the feathers to the copper piece using the lampwork headpins at the bottom and copper balled headpins at the top. The tips of the leather would be folded over so the copper headpins would go through twice, making a loop for the copper jumpring.

A not great photo of everything all laid out after I patina'ed and tumbled the wire and metal...except for 1 stupid jumpring that flew out of my hands never to be seen again!

Ta-Da!

The design itself, I really like...I wish my construction had been a bit neater. I had a mishap with one of Jen's headpins...I started swirling the back and couldn't get it straight for some reason, so I gently straightened it back out, hoping I hadn't work hardened the wire too much. When I went to try a second time, the wire snapped. Luckily, there was enough left to work with to get it riveted fairly tight, but I may go back and add a drop of E6000 to make sure it holds.