Year of Jewelry ~ Week 16... and the awesome trade☺

Once again this week I did not follow the prompt,

which was "Hidden from View".

Instead I took the opportunity to learn

another new jewelry making technique...

Chain Maille!

It wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be.

I'm sure there are super complicated patterns out there, but this pattern was kind of fun.

It's call Byzantine.

Learning the Beaded Russian Spiral

Russian Spiral ~ the green one and the blue one in front

was, at least to me, much more difficult.

And it is MUCH easier to go back and fix a mistake later in the

Chain Maille. And quicker. Much, much quicker! lol

I have already ordered a couple of chain maille kits,

(surprise) so I can play with this some more.

In other news,  I think I made the trade of the century this last week:~)

A lady came in the shop to drop her car off for some services.

While waiting for her ride, she noticed my display cases and we got to

chatting about jewelry making.

She is a metalsmith and she used to do some lampworking.

We had a nice chat, her ride came to get her and I went back to work.

Anyway, long story short (HA! too late☺)

Services were completed, vehicle was picked up.

Then about two hours later the nice lady came back

and asked if I would be interested in a trade.

She had a lampwork bead set-up that she hadn't used for a few

years, she was moving and she didn't want to have to ship it

AND she had noticed a couple

of items in the display case that she would really like to have...

so... would I be interested in a trade?

 

UMM.... Hell yeah!

 

She got this

and these

And I got this

along with these

I am super excited!!!

I got over my fear of the torch last year

when I did this,

now I just need to figure out what the heck I'm doing.

It was all I could do at work, not to stay glued to YouTube☺

I hope to be able to play with this stuff next week.

Since my only visual resource right now to learn

(and I am definitely a visual learner) is YouTube,

if anyone has suggestions for books, tutorials or videos,

I would be extremely grateful.

And we are talking basics here people, like

 "what consistency the bead release should be for dipping the mandrels"

kind of basics. lol!