August ABS Challenge Piece

Summer Thunder

By Hosteen Klah

Weaving, Wool

Mom and I finally completed the August ABS Challenge piece. I have come to the conclusion that mom and I will never finish a piece before the end of the month. But - at least we completed it :)

I wanted to share some of the process of us creating the piece. Above is a picture of mom drawing out a pattern to put on the copper to saw out. There is very rarely, if ever, that I will draw out the design - mom is the one I have nominated to make the designs!!!

Once the pattern has been drawn, and scanned for future pieces, then it is glued down on 20g copper. Mom doesn't like to saw out the perimeters of the pieces so I actually sawed out the perimeter. I also started sawing out the larger designs - since I hate sawing out the smaller designs in a piece.

Almost done being sawed out.

The piece after it has been sawed out, file and sanded. The next step is me enameling the piece.

A picture of the enameling process.

And then I make lampwork glass beads to go with the pieces we create. I have several reds laid out to use for the beads.

And finally - the piece is laid out in several variations and then we decide what we like before we string it. The above picture is mom stringing the beads on a test wire to see if we like the way it looks. I think we went through two different layouts before we decided what we liked.

So - here is the final piece:

Mom and I don't have a name for the piece yet. I really love how it turned out - I think it is one of our more awesome pieces.

Here is a close up of the pendant. I wanted the pendant to be black and then pull in the tan and red from the painting. Mom does awesome sawing!

A closeup of the lampwork glass beads I made that is accented with Jasper and gunmetal spacer beads. The necklace is long enough to slip over your head - so didn't need to use a clasp this time.

So - that is our piece for the August ABS Challenge. I think mom and I had a lot of fun with the creation of this piece. If you have a chance - check out the two ABS Challenge boards on Pinterest - Beads Monthly Challenge and Jewelry Monthly Challenge.