I have some cool and funky office supplies lying around; I pick them up at office supply stores when they are on clearance. For the office supplies challenge, I rediscovered these round paper clips and realized they would make an easy, attractive ring in the shape of a flower.
Since making it, I also found it makes a great "fiddle ring" - the spinning beads are fun to play with, which can also be great for those stopping smoking.
Since making it, I also found it makes a great "fiddle ring" - the spinning beads are fun to play with, which can also be great for those stopping smoking.
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This is a simple project that uses a minimum of materials and tools.
- Round/spiral paper clips. I bought mine years ago, but you can get similar ones on Amazon - like these, for example.
- Flat beads
- Needle-nose pliers, the thinner, the better
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Like the idea though
This is a brilliant use for the clip that I wish I had thought of...the most creative use I found for mine was to use them as "danglys" hanging from the circumference of a lamp shade.
Can't wait to get started on this project!
You can see my most recent -ible for hammering techniques.
Anodized aluminum, steel, brass, copper - with any of those wire stocks, this will work. Wire is made bendable by being annealed (heated up to a certain below-the-melting point where any rigid organized "lattice" structures the metal molecules have formed are - kinda - softened up and disorganized). Repeated shocks from whomping on it will form new lattice structures in the metal, making it more springy and less bendy.
Here, you prefer not to make dents or bumps in the wire because then the beads might be hard to slide into place. So I'd try laying the formed wire (form it while it's still bendy, of course!) on a metal, rubber, or plastic mat and pound it repeatedly with a metal, rubber, or plastic hammer. This may taken a while; make a list of things you want to imagine you're hitting.
Another way to get work-hardened wire is to pull it through a "draw plate." That's a metalsmith's tool made of material much harder than the wire, with a hole in it that's ju-ust a little too small so the wire has to be forced through. The squeezing and stretching work-hardens the wire. But (a) you end up with a STRAIGHT wire that doesn't want to bend, which isn't what you want here, and (b) you might not personally have, or know anyone who has, that rather esoteric doodad.
And how timely!!! Everybody's got those "borderline" folks where you're not sure if you'll be exchanging gifts with them; you might not even SEE them before the hols are over. Or they're in that "more than a card, but certainly not the &*!? iPad the Apple RSS won't quit suggesting; do they think I'm the %^&$ Monopoly Man or what?" category. Or those "surprise" people who pop in or trail along to others' planned gift exchange occasions and you hate for them to feel left out.
It's probably a sign of a deeply disturbed mind, but I refuse to get "Gift-Krieged" without returning fire. Thanks for more ammo! Wonder how many I can make in time for my dance-troupe-alumnae dinner tomorrow?
Sunshiine
Sunshiine