Week 1: I wasn't happy with trying to twist wire by hand and so I dug through my drill bits that fit my little hand drill that doesn't have a chuck (it has push in bits) and found a drill bit that had a hole in the tip (to keep the bit cooler, I think). But that worked to help twist wire really tight. It never broke the way Sharilyn said it would but started to double twist so I just stopped at that point and cut off the even parts to use for jump rings. - Artists of the Round Table's Photos- powered by SmugMug

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Artists of the Round Table > Week 1: I wasn't happy with trying to twist wire by hand and so I dug through my drill bits that fit my little hand drill that doesn't have a chuck (it has push in bits) and found a drill bit that had a hole in the tip (to keep the bit cooler, I think). But that worked to help twist wire really tight. It never broke the way Sharilyn said it would but started to double twist so I just stopped at that point and cut off the even parts to use for jump rings.

Artists of the Round Table > Week 2 Eye pin varieties

Artists of the Round Table > Week 2:I made my twisted wire over a skinny knitting needle because I don't have any 18 guage wire, just 22 to 26 guage. The silver wire is 24 guage and the copper is 22 guage but I think it came out looking kind of cool to have such a big coil over a skinner wire.

Artists of the Round Table > Week 2: This is my double wrap. I had trouble keeping the 26 guage wire even over the 24 guage 'mandrel' but when added over a scrap of 20 guage copper I found at the bottom of my box, it worked out ok. I think I'd like to try this again the way I did the previous one with skinny over a knitting needle than twisted around a thicker wire, then wrapped around the knitting needle again and then twisted onto the final wire, and I'd like to alternate copper, silver, copper just to keep it interesting. But my hands were sore from doing that fine twist and it will be a couple days before I can try something like that. My hands don't strengthen from being used for this kind of work, they just swell up and ache.

Artists of the Round Table > Week 3: beads beads beads! Had a blast adding beads to headpins, eyepins and some of the spirals from lesson one; also opening and inserting beads into the coils from the last lesson and making a couple more just coils; then using scraps of wire to cage tiny beads and making headpins from the scraps too. I plan to make a 'class necklace' from all these lessons (so my color choices are moving more towards silver and red and copper and blue-green). Enjoying finding my old bead stash!

Artists of the Round Table > Week 3: In case you are interested, here is my finished Paula's Kit Club/French Envy Notions necklace. All the buttons are either mother or crystal. The top two reddish buttons with holes in them I attached with my new twisted jump rings.

Week 1: I wasn't happy with trying to twist wire by hand and so I dug through my drill bits that fit my little hand drill that doesn't have a chuck (it has push in bits) and found a drill bit that had a hole in the tip (to keep the bit cooler, I think). But that worked to help twist wire really tight. It never broke the way Sharilyn said it would but started to double twist so I just stopped at that point and cut off the even parts to use for jump rings.