Loom-work Bracelet Update

I tried to rework the Modern Loom-work Bracelet to double the size and it came out well… except that I decided to use black Beadalon wire (nylon-coated stainless steel) 7-strand for the warps and although it gives the bracelet an ideal structure (unlike regular beading wire which can easily kink), WOW, you can really see the warps in between the bead rows since it is so thick.  Overall, I’m going to scratch that technique.

I was itching to weave a bracelet based on a Native American rug I saw in an art gallery book so I sketched out a modified version of it and then went to work.  Mid-bracelet I decided that I didn’t like my sketch and decided to change it up a bit.  Then I wasn’t sure whether I liked red-based or blue-based stripes better so I gave it both.  I think it would work better with one stripe motif, red or blue but not both, and will make the appropriate changes for next time.  I used regular white beading thread for the warps and weft and decided to try a tube clasp.  Good choice.  I LOVE the tube clasp because it is a really easy way to join together the ends of a multi-strand bracelet and then attach the finished product to your wrist (unlike a barrel clasp or a lobster claw which can be a very frustrating apparatus).

But of course math got the best of me again and I didn’t account that the tube clasp takes up about a half to a third as much room as a regular clasp so my bracelet came out too short.  Believe me, I tried and tried to smush my wrist into it but it just wasn’t having it.  My sister was all to eager, though, to take the bracelet off of my hands.  So, I suppose in the spirit of sisterly affection, I’ll send her this one since she had such nice things to say about the Fret Board Bracelet and even gave it a marvelous debut out on the town.  I’m going to affix some crimp covers before I send it to her though, assuming they work appropriately with the design once they arrive.

For this bracelet I used:

• 11/0 opaque seed beads
• Regular white beading thread
• Sterling silver crimp beads
• Sterling silver tube clasp

Fret Board Loom-work Bracelet

My sister really likes what I have been weaving and has been begging me to send her my creations. She has a small wrist, though, and so I decided that instead of re-weaving one of my past designs, I would make a custom bracelet just for her. After watching Ray Davies (The Kinks) play a beautiful guitar on Austin City Limits, I found my inspiration. I sketched out a design which included all colors and the general design of Davies’ guitar - white, black, pearly midnight blue, deep brown - but it turned out to be way too chaotic. So I chose a simple fret board pattern which is a combination of different patterns I had seen on interesting instruments like banjoleles (a miniature, ukulele-sized banjo). Ultimately, I think the concept was greater than the execution, although I’ve received quite a few compliments so far.

I thought it was high time that I expand my skills beyond the 10-column matrix and so I sketched a design which incorporated 20 bead columns. My sister said her ideal bracelet was no more than 6 1/2 inches in length so I accounted for the beaded loom work to be about 5 1/2 inches long. I accounted for 81 rows of beads which turned out to be a little less than 5 1/2 inches. I decided instead of using thread for the warps I would use wire to imitate the appearance of guitar strings (What an instrument it would be, with 21 strings!). I did, however, stick with thread for the weft.

I edged the loom work with plain white and black stripes and then created a pattern of silver (for the frets), pearly white, pearly midnight blue (for the inlays) and dark brown beads (for the wood). I think if I were to redo this bracelet I might drop the white and black stripes and add an extra row of silver beads to either end. I used both 11/0 Delicas and Toho Treasures for this project. My original design had plain dark brown beads without the inlays but I thought it might look too plain. I now think it could go either way.

This particular project raised a few challenges:

• Some of the colors are so similar it’s hard to tell them apart (midnight blue and black, pearly white and white) so keeping them separate in your tray is vital.
• It’s more difficult with wire to make sure the weft is woven over each row. I found I had more mistakes on this one than a thread-only bracelet.

I happened to be driving from my home in California across the desert into Arizona while making this bracelet so I fortiuously was able to stop in Quartzite, Arizona (a crazy rock-hound and jeweler’s paradise) and visit their big bead store (literally one of a handful of businesses open in town after March) where I found, at 50% off, just the findings I was looking for. I snagged a 1-inch five-strand end piece which was just about the right size (maybe a 1/4-inch too small) for my bracelet.

After the bracelet was woven and I removed it from the loom, I used the technique of threading the end warps (4 to 5 at a time) through crimp beads, through the end-piece loop and back through the crimp beads and then applying the crimp tool to them. NOTE: Follow the above technique for each bead one at a time or else it will be really hard to crimp the beads if you thread all the warps through the end piece and then try to crimp them. I originally attached a magnetic clasp to the end piece but the bracelet was too heavy to hold it so I switched it out with a barrel clasp. (For functionality, I probably should’ve used a lobster claw, but I like the clean look of the barrel clasp better.)

With the loom-work plus the findings, my bracelet is a little over 7 inches long. Which fits me perfectly but may be a bit big for my sister. This might not be a big deal since the wire warps give the bracelet a nice structure. She can always send it back to me and I’ll wear it, ha ha.

P.S. This bracelet REALLY sparkles in the sunlight!

Finished Mondrian-Style Loom-work Bracelet

The Mondrian-Style Loom-work Bracelet is finished!

I changed the pattern a little bit from the original design because the two red blocks felt conflicting to me with one half of the bracelet more “blocky” and ordinary than the other half. I tried a three column alternative with one red rectangle and two white rectangle which I don’t think is perfect but at least throws in an interesting element.

I was worried about the length of the piece as my other bracelet came out about 1/2 an inch too short and I was running out of space on my loom as I wanted to make sure that the warps were long enough at the end so I could finish them off in a sane manner. I ended up having to scrap three or four rows of delicas off the original design and came out with a bracelet 6 1/2″ long - exactly the circumference of my wrist.

But the tricky thing is calculating how long your finishings and clasps will be and factor that into how long you should make your bracelet on the loom. I am still a novice “finisher” and thought that I could easily finish my loom-work bracelet off by feeding the dangling warps (12 on each side, including the excess weft) through five double headed knot cover / crimp things (per side) and then attaching the crimp end to a five-holed multi-strand end piece. Unfortunately the double-headed not cover / crimp things proved way to bulky both visually and geometrically and made the end of the bracelet look clunky and ridiculous.

So I yanked the knots out of my first finishing attempt which consequently mangled the bracelet. I had to push the bead-work down the warps on one side to give both sides workable warp lengths. I was faced with a do-or-die situation. I only had long enough warps to try one last technique to finish the bracelet ends.

I decided to string some silver crimp covers onto the loose warps, feed the warps through the five-holed multi-strand end piece and then back through the crimp covers and knot the warp to itself at the base of the crimp bead. It was tricky because of the warp length, but not nearly as time-consuming as my previous technique of weaving the warps back through the bracelet.

Once I got everything tied down, I placed a dab of bead glue to each knot and let it dry for a little bit. Then I trimmed the warp ends as close to the knot as possible. Then, for extra measure, and because I felt that the round crimp beads were not working in harmony with the bracelet’s design, I took a pair of pliers and flattened each crimp bead. I don’t have a crimp tool so I can’t say if this technique was better or worse than the traditional two-step folding-over crimp process but I think the end result works well. I positioned the flattened crimps at right angles to the beaded loom-work which I think better highlights the actual beading technique.

To finish off the piece, I attached a jump ring and magnetic closure to each end of the bracelet. Sadly, I was sloppy in my calculations and so my Mondrian-style loom-work bracelet turned out to be 7 1/2 inches long instead of 6 3/4 inches long which would’ve been my ideal length.

Oh well… it’s a great excuse to make another bracelet!

Mondrian-style Bracelet Supplies Used:

• 11/0 black delicas
• 11/0 white delicas
• 11/0 blue-purple delicas
• 11/0 red delicas
• 11/0 lime green delicas
• pre-waxed thread
• size 11 sharp beading needle
• 10 silver crimp covers
• 2 silver 5-hole multi-strand end pieces
• 2 silver jump rings
• 2 silver magnetic closures

Mondrian-style Loom-work Bracelet Design

Mondrian, in the De Stijl art movement, believed in abstraction to idealistically reveal color and form using horizontal lines, vertical lines and primary colors. Interestingly, modern art got a push in the 20th century from the rediscoveries of Native American and African art designs - all of which capture my attention. So, with geometric patterns naturally fit to be woven, I sketched this bracelet with Mondrian in mind.

My grid will translate into a bracelet which is a 1/2-inch (10 beads) wide and 6 1/2-inches long. The design may be better suited for a bracelet 1-inch wide but I’m mainly focusing on the end-clasp problem and am not quite ready to move onto a 20-bead array.

Noticeably, this bracelet design does not incorporate wholly primary colors. In addition to red, I am also using a blue/purple and a lime green which I think will give it more harmonious feel than a choppy bright red-bright blue-bright yellow combination.

Modern Loom-work Bracelet

I’ve been working on a lot of projects in March and wrapping up some other business ventures so that I can concentrate primarily on Totem Outpost, so things have been a little helter-skelter (but EXCITING!) around here.

I decided to try my hand at loom weaving and dreamed night and day about getting a loom. I wasn’t sure which kind to get or if I even should try MAKING a loom. I saw some pretty nice top of the line looms for a few hundred dollars but decided that I should start with the bare-bones version for a better understanding of WHY certain things are necessary in the more fancy versions.

I found a sturdy wooden loom for under $6.00 which is basically just two 12-inch dowels connecting two five-inch wooden boards with small slits in the top for holding the warps. On the other side of the wooden boards are, on one side a pair of removable knobs, and on the other side, a pair of stationary grooved (wooden) screw-like thingies to hold the warps when you warp the loom from one side to the other.

I checked out a few arts and crafts books from the library (an excellent resource) and found directions on how to warp a loom and then weave with seed beads. Even though the directions say that the craft is suitable for anyone six and up, frankly, it looked a little complex. But I decided to give it a whirl anyway and it did prove to be quite simple.

At first I purchased a package of seed beads, size 8/0 (meaning that there are eight beads per inch). However, when I popped open the package I found that, by nature, not all the beads are exactly the same size which could therefore render the loom-work project wacky. So I ordered a few colors of delicas, size 11/0 (the only size offered, which actually works out to about 20 beads per inch in modern times). Delicas are Japanese glass beads which are cylindrical in shape with a larger hole for the thread to pass through than typical seed beads. I opted for opaque colors only so I could concentrate more on the geometry of my designs rather than shading and tone.

Because delicas are more symmetrical than seed beads, it’s easy to use graph paper to sketch out designs without getting the length-width discrepancy inherent to seed beads. My graph paper has squares a little too big to get an accurate view of the finished project but I found a nifty graph paper generator online that you can use to print out appropriate-sized templates. I sketched my designs in a few monochromatic shades and then added color to complete the look.

I chose an easy pattern of squares in three bold colors (red, white and black) which I think looks simultaneous modern and organic. I decided to apply my pattern towards a bracelet 6 to 7 inches long, 10 beads (or about a half-an-inch) wide.

Before I made this bracelet, I loomed another bracelet with beading wire for the warps and pre-waxed thread for the weft (the thread that you string the beads on). I liked that the beading wire gave the bracelet structure, however, when I was finished with the piece, I had no idea what to do with the stiff wire warps. I decided to make the “Modern Bracelet” with pre-waxed thread for the wire and warps.

The end result is a bracelet which hangs naturally on the wrist which I’m not entirely sure I prefer. I wasn’t too sure, also, how to incorporate the latches into the bracelet. On one side I affixed a toggle ring by weaving it right into the bracelet along with the beads. I tried the same technique for the toggle on the other end but two problems arose:

• I made the bracelet a half-an-inch too short, thus the toggle pulled and stretched the last few rows of beads.
• The toggle loop was too stiff in the loom-work to pull through the coordinating toggle ring. I would need to attach a jump ring or something of the sort.

Unfortunately I didn’t think to buy any jump rings so I took apart the last few rows of beads to free the toggle bar. I had this five-holed spacer bar so I threaded the warps through that to stabilize the beads and then attached a knot cover/crimp thing. I didn’t know exactly how to work the knot cover/crimp thing so on close inspection it looks sloppy. I attached the toggle bar to the crimp-end of the cover/crimp thing to complete that side.

I wove the warps on the other end back through the first square of bracelet. (This took a LONG time!) I tied one of the strings to the warps but didn’t have the patience, or it was too hard to do the others so I just snipped them as close to the beads as possible. I’ll have to see if it holds up.

Voila! I made my first wearable (but somewhat sloppy) bracelet!

I have a lot of ideas about how to attach clasps and what to do with the warps for my next bracelet. I purchased a set of magnetic clasps which I think will work better for loom-work bracelets and some double-headed knot covers which I think will yield a better geometry than the ones with the crimp thing on the end.

I can’t wait to see what my loom will make next! (Although now I totally get the necessity for a device at the end of the loom to pull the warps taut. I’ve been using scotch tape, crikey.)

Starts with a Bead

This past weekend I had the true pleasure of running around town with an incredibly accomplished photographer friend. While he has a few decades on me, he also has the vim of an entire continent and my brain is reeling, reeling, reeling, from having stuffed a lifetime of art adventures into 48 hours.

The Photographer undoubtedly has a huge effect on my outlook on the world and thus my creative output. Although I have an artsy degree from quite a fine school, I often wished for a mentor who was more in line with my world philosophy of fantastic creations via social responsibility. Never did I entertain the notion that I would be hitting the town with someone of such epic proportions. But isn’t it amazing how a simple conversation can so luminously burst into a genuine meeting of, in this case - off the hilt - minds?

Particularly in Southern California, I feel as though the excitement and energy of creating true-to-the-heart things (materials or concepts or whatever) can often get lost in the bottom line mire. But wow, this escapade has proven quite a clarifier. I now have crafts projects lined up for the next six months, thanks to a serendipitous discovery in the local used book store.

As The Photographer roamed the stacks in search of interesting tomes for his book-dealing relations, I found myself looking for a book about mosaic techniques in the arts aisle. Instead, a beautiful volume fell into my hands… a pictorial guide to world beadwork. Highlighting exquisite creations from all around the Americas including the Arctic, Africa, Asia, Oceania, the Arabian Gulf and Europe, this book contains some of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

I went to an Ojibwe cultural center this past winter and saw an exhibit on weaving with beads. This may be naive to say, but I really think it’ll be not entirely difficult to make wonderful and structured things using this technique. Famous last words, right? But either way, I can hardly wait to get my own loom set up and give it a shot! Stay tuned!

About All This Stuff…

I started the 2008 with a pressing need to downsize. I took a look at my duds and realized that most of this stuff has neither a useful nor meaningful significance to me. I live in an area which, while beautiful, also often has to reconcile with nature’s whims. Seeing locals jam their cars full of must-haves and running off into the night every so often makes me wonder… if that were me, could I even locate the important stuff at a moment’s notice? I reckon I’d probably end up with a backpack full of maracas and licorice.

So I packed up a sizeable amount of my junk (I probably still have too many shoes) and sent it off to the local charity, hoping that they would find some benefit in it. Considering everything that made the exodus made me realize that I don’t even know the history of how 99% actually got into my hands from idea to sale. As not only a craftsman but a merchant, I have a comprehensive understanding of distribution processes, cost of goods sold, profiteering and all of that stuff that’s commonly accepted under the larger banner of “how to be successful” but it’s so easy when we’re deciding what to purchase as either a business or consumer to overlook the reasons WHY certain things are so.

Sure I want to be able to purchase things at the most economical price available but will I really buy that 200-piece $1.50 art set knowing that there is no logical way that it could be assigned such a cheap value? I definitely have been guilty of overlooking and even ignoring such incongruence. But I have positive hopes, especially in this global world, that if we just spent an extra moment to consider why we are bringing certain things into our lives and really understood how those things came to be we might be able gain greater internal satisfied and not be so dependent on stuff to provide that for us.

With this project, my Totem experiment, I’ll provide detailed accounts on WHY I create the things that I do and for curios that come from other places, I’ll attach its history and an explanation of why I find it relevant and/or interesting.

For more information about how stuff becomes stuff, the please watch THE STORY OF STUFF, an short film which most excellently illuminates extraction, production, distribution, consumption, disposal and future tips.

Mosaic Projects

In addition to hammering out things on the back-end of Totem Outpost — getting all of this technology to like each other — I’m planning some exciting mosaic projects for this year. Cutting things up and reassembling the pieces into brand new craft-scapes has always appealed to me. I have a few different designs that I’ll be concentrating on in the next few months. Realizing this design will be my first mosaic endeavor of 2008:

I created this design (using Photoshop) specifically because I’m of the philosophy that simple is better, or at least I feel like by effectively developing the base idea, the rest only needs a little, if any, accessorizing. You don’t want to throw so much ooh at a project that by the time it’s done it’s plain chaos. This is the primary reason why I’m not into modern scrap-booking. In a lot of the pages that I’ve seen, superfluous doodads complete scuttle the photograph’s emotion.

Anyway, I know the above mosaic doesn’t feel very “outpost-y” except perhaps to fashion a back-story of a trinket that might be hanging in the dressing tent of a satin and frills vaudeville performer touring the Old West. I’m choosing to make this for the very specific purpose of using the techniques to apply to a very outpost-y project to follow with a similar block color matching. Stay tuned for the results!

Giant Pine Cones

Last weekend I drove out to the desert for a really fascinating flea market/mineral show/RV rumble which - as advertised - was a rockhound’s paradise indeed! Wow! I’m not an authority (yet!) on grading minerals and rocks and meteors and 50 million-year-old fossils but my relative ignorance made me no less impressed with stall after stall of the beautiful natural creations. Color and geometry catch my eye so I was pretty much in heaven sifting through the endless strings of turquoise, malachite, quartz, tourmaline, etc., etc., etc. (I think this calls for a few gemology classes!)

I had just purchased a strand of earthy-colored squares to use in a future mosaic project when I came across one of the most AMAZING things I have ever seen… a display of enormous pine cones. Some of them were over two feet long! A very nice couple who hailed from Northern California explained to me (a southern Californian) that they were Sugar Pine Cones from the Sugar Pine Tree which grows in Northern California and Oregon at elevations above 35,000 feet and drops their cones every three or four years.

I thus made my second purchase of the day, the above cone. I particularly like its colossal-ness and the way it hearkens to an almost Jurassic era of lush nature and the way the pine scent is still infused in its bristles. The sugar pine, incidentally, is the largest species of pine and can grow to over 200 feet. Sugar Pines are important to the creation stories of the Achomawi people of Northern California.

Sugar Pine Cones are most commonly used for home decoration, craft projects and as fire starters. Blazes!

Howdy and Welcome to Totem Outpost!

G’day, folks! Hotfoot on up and explore the wonders of the Totem Outpost brain-works! Housing adventures in art and illuminating outstanding marvels from the Americas and beyond, this interactive experience of art, crafts, lore and natural curios aims to create new perspectives in crafty delight.

The process of achieving the Totem vision shines through step-by-step accounts of the elations and rigors native to building a system capable of supporting artistic enthusiasm. Totem Outpost is the ultimate assemblage of my experiences as a craftsman, artist, adventurer, naturalist, multi-media maker, entrepreneur, world citizen and daydreamer.