Adventures in Wire Wrapping

An interesting observation: it's hard to concentrate when you're under stress due to financial troubles. Duh, right? My ability to multitask seems to be temporarily affected these days. I'm not getting work done in the house that I should be doing; I've been neglecting some of my artisan groups because I've been distracted and unfocused.... but somehow I've managed to try my hand at a new skill.

Sitting at my worktable surrounded by beads and findings brings me a kind of peace and comfort that is lacking in other areas of my life. Hmmm... I should qualify that. Sometimes it brings me peace... other times when you're working on something that's not quite turning out right, you have to beat down the urge to throw your tools across the room. :-)

Anyway... art evolves so I thought I'd try my hand at wirewrapping. I've always liked the look of it but was afraid to try because my attempts weren't perfect enough.. or so I thought. We Virgos have a hard time with imperfection. No matter what I did, it seemed the wire wasn't wrapped tightly enough or the ends were sticking out or the wire wouldn't lay neatly across the gemstone the way I'd seen other artisans do it. Then came the lightbulb moment: it doesn't have to be perfect. Part of the charm and soul of handcrafted jewelry is just that: it's crafted by hand, not machine. I used to drive myself nutty trying to find a set of gemstones that matched exactly in order to make a perfect pair of earrings.... until it occurred to me that due to the nature of gemstones, it's sometimes difficult to find two that are exactly alike, but that's OK.

So my wire wrapping is just a little bit messy. But I sold a pair a couple of weeks ago at the place where I vend so I guess I'm doing alright. :-)