The Year of Jewelry Project ~ Week 6



This project took me waaaay outside my comfort zone.

I haven't really done any masculine jewelry.

So when a fellow asked me to take this medallion and add a

stamped copper bail, put it on a beefier braided "something"

and add the two bears teeth,  one on either side,  attached somehow.....

Oh and could I make the braid red and black...

And it needed to be really tough

cuz he is going to wear it pretty much all the time.....

I was a little nervous☺

I decided we needed to go with leather, so I pulled out the Kumihimo disk

that I had to have a while back because it looked like

 it would be fun to learn, and up to this point  had never been used and 

found a tutorial on youtube

and made a couple different sized braid samples for him to choose from.
(All I had was brown leather so I had to order the red and black.
Only proving that I obviously don't have enough supplies)

He went with a 12 strand size



I snuck in some dark brown cord cuz I like the way it looked☺

I needed something that would fit a braid made with

12 strands of 2mm leather (it is definately beefy)

and I found this awesome clasp.

It is made for really thick greek leather cord.
It's magnetic and very cool.

Then I had to figure out how wide the bail had to be to fit the word Deadhorse,

(which is a town not an actual horse☺)

Thank goodness for aluminum cans!

I practiced A LOT!  I lost count of how many times I stamped
Deadhorse and only ruined one piece of copper.

Then I had to figure out how to attach the teeth.

Seeing all of the gorgeous wire wrapping that has been

 posted in the group  I decided to give it a shot.

I figured if it was a dismal failure I could always tie them on with leather cord☺

But after about 4 false starts and a few broken wires, I kinda like how they turned out.

After all, when you are wrapping teeth, who wants perfect ~  right?

I was still really nervous that it wouldn't be "right"

but I'm pleased to report that it is officially

 "Bad Ass"

Yay!