Fun with the Coiling Gizmo!

I love gadgets and I especially love getting to grips with a new one and exploring what it can do. Our new Artistic Wire Coiling Gizmo is no exception. I take my hat off to the inventor, LeRoy Goertz, for creating something so simple and so easy to use that makes short work of what can otherwise be an arduous task, making wire coils.

For the modest sum of £12.95 from GJ Beads we've acquired something which opens up a whole world of possibilities and is fun to use into the bargain! I've been wanting to make a greater variety of wire beads for a while now but in the past all I'd ever achieved was simple spacer beads made with short coils wound round various diameters of crochet hook (well, my crochet skills are very rudimentary so those had to "come in handy" for something!)

So, here we go...

Coils upon coils, oh my! The Gizmo comes in 5 different diameters, so given that and the huge variety of wires available we're going to be having lots of fun experimenting.

Had some fun stretching the outer coil for this one... (Modelled on one of my A Level set books from the 1970s, that has miraculously escaped being "chomped" for a vintage paper pack!)

My new fastener design - this took a bit of fine tuning but I am really pleased with it! Did someone say brass is the new gold? It certainly costs a lot less and I am in love with the colour.

Multicoloured dangles, some on brass and some on copper. I love enamelled copper wire, the range of colours available is just breathtaking. And I am well pleased with how good this photograph done on my maternal Grandma's lesson plan book looks.

And to sign out with, here's something completely different! The boss, the one and only Stanzi, posing for the camera. She was on the verge of doing her silent maiow thing, where she tries to convince us she's so weak from hunger she has lost her voice. As if, this cat could eat for England! I actually think she was brassed off because we had both been really busy with stuff and had been ignoring her...

Well, that's it for today folks! I was up at 3.00 a.m. with vicious heartburn (own silly fault for eating too much creamy sauce) managed to catch a few more hours sleep later on but I am still pretty much sleepwalking. Thank goodness for that traditional old remedy, brandy and hot water!

More fabric adventures

Following on from a brief excursion into making fabric beads (to which I will return, oh yes!) I've turned my attention to making yoyos. This decision arose from looking at my vast fabric stash and realising that I have to do something with it otherwise we will end up living in one room becasue we can't get into any of the others. (Note - slight exaggeration but not much.)

Back in the mists of time, when there were still such things as jumble sales, I used to attend as many as I could find and as well as buying designer labels to spruce up and sell on E-Bay I also bought more run of the mill clothes for the sake of their lovely fabrics. I washed everything (of course, just felt the need to put that out there...) disassembled it all, folded it neatly and put it away carefully in my fabric cupboard.

From time to time this stash was supplemented with items of our own clothing that had given up the ghost.

Fast forward a goodly number of years and I realise I haven't used any of it. Having also very recently acquired a large number of end of roll synthetic satins the truth dawned on my and I set about deciding how to use this treasure...

And this is the result - yoyo heaven! Big ones, little ones, round and heart shaped ones. And I'm going to do some ovals very soon...

Some of my lovely satin, photographed on one of my maternal grandma's lesson plan books.

  More satins. The two on the left were made by sandwiching a fine green net with the ox blood satin.

I couldn't resist using grandma's diagram of climate zones for this photograph... 

  I love gingham, it speaks to me of childhood and innocent simplicity. 

Lovely jumble sale fabric! I can't remember what this was, I think a blouse.

So this is how it all began. Be warned, if you start making yo-yos, it is addictive. "I'll make one more and then stop", you think. Then the "last one for today". Then, "oh, just one more"                   

      

 

Adventures with fabric beads!

Well, hello again everyone and here I am at last after heaven knows how many long months (a year or more, even!) away from this blog, very sorry for the over long absence but I *will* make up for it, I promise!!!

I've now taken early retirement from both my posts with the local Council and am attempting to follow my dream full time so here we go, adventures with fabric beads.....

These are made from a mixture of fabrics, felt and fibres, I'm kind of leaning towards preferring the felt ones but the ribbon based ones are quite fun too:)
Following a disastrous attempt at using a hot glue gun (why oh why do I always burn myself when I do stuff like that?!) I've used PVA glue and it's worked brilliantly.
Initially I was winding them round a crochet hook but got confuzzled with getting them so that I could still thread some wire or tiger tail through, then I hit on the idea of cutting up drinking straws to wind them round; ta da, success at last!


I've also just done some that are wire wrapped and I'm really excited about those, no photos of them yet but there soon will be:)


<<< And these ones are now listed in my Etsy supplies shop! The first of many and I am definitely going to carry on with the wire wrapped idea, the more I think about it the more I like it:)