Hot Copper Leaves

by Nancy Vaughan.
(San Diego, California, USA)

The leaves in this necklace were made for a specific design that just didn’t work. In fact I tried several ideas but the leaves were too large to work with any of them.

A few days ago I started playing around with the leaf shapes and decided the only way I could use them was to hang them. Big leaves need big spacers so I went hunting through the bead boxes and pulled out some large glass beads, wood beads and these seed pod like things.

I could tell right away that neither the wood beads nor the glass beads would work but the seed pod like things had possibilities. The pods already had about 2mm holes drilled through them so I knew I could hang them or string them.

I chose to string them on dark brown 1.5mm Greek leather. When I added the leaves I discovered that more than one jump ring would have to allow some movement. It took three jump rings to hang each leaf so they could move..

The leaves were cut from 24 gauge sheet copper, hammered on both sides to give a nice contour then flame treated with the torch. The spectacular colors that resulted were a happy accident. I still don’t have all that much control of the colors I get with the torch.

The darker photos were taken on a bust that was partially turned to help control the glaring highlights.

Nancy Vaughan
Wicked Wire Works