For Valentines Day

For YOJ week 7 I decided to follow up on a doodle I had made a few months ago of a heart with a ribbon. It combines basketweave, beads, and herringbone weaving.

Technical details: Worked on a core of 20g sterling with 28g wrapping wire. The beads are 2mm sterling bead/crimps on the border and it is accented with three 4mm Indian Pink Swaroski bicones. On the next one of these I make, I'll get some 3mm bicones so I can taper the setting for a better flow. Because the heart is open, I couldn't do a hidden bail. I didn't want the bail to distract, so I didn't do a herringbone wrap on it as I often do. However, I did coil the bail wires so it didn't look like I just forgot to wrap the bail.

This was interesting to do because I had to work on two or three stages at the same time, coil on one core wire, wrap some beads on the other, coil a bit more, in order to make the architecture work properly and specifically to incorporate the end of the ribbon into the heart border. I was extremely pleased with the way that turned out. I was thinking that I could actually theme these to awareness ribbons if I thought about it a little bit. The Indian Pink would certainly work for breast cancer awareness. Of course, red would be nice for red, love, valentine. And AB crystal is always lovely. So I think there may be more of these.

And, in contrast to last week's (LATE) item, this was finished in the course of a single day, even with all the interruptions of daily life. Plus, I like it and would wear it, and could imagine selling it. Much better.

Comment and critique always welcome. Thanks for visiting, and come back soon.