Button Frenzy!

To start things off, let's skip straight past the beads and wire and findings and talk about BUTTONS!

I love buttons. I always have. I used to play in my mother's button collection while she sewed. I could wander through the button aisle at the craft store for hours. But, until recently, I didn't know how to sew (my partner, M, is a quilter and costumer and is remedying that deficiency). Even now it's not a particular skill - I just follow the seams and do what M tells me. So what do I have to put buttons on?

Oh, wow, have I found a way to use buttons.

The bracelets I'm working on right now can use two-hole, four-hole OR shank buttons, so I'm not limited by style, AND I can incorporate beads! Only certain sizes work, but I'm thinking of trying some different techniques to make this style a bit more versatile (little delicate button bracelets? Big cufflike button bracelets? Yes please!).

Of course, there's always the option of threading a large jump ring through one hole of a button to make a dangle. I've seen whole chains of buttons made that way - my mother-in-law-to-be, S, has quite a long one in gold jump-ring chain with orange and purple plastic buttons. But I have this horror of doing something that's been done too often - an obsession, if you will, with being different (I've always been like that. Ask my mom). So I limit that to charm bracelets and bobbin necklaces.

I think I'll call what I'm doing "wire weaving." I'll post pictures once I find the dang camera.

I hope this isn't a technique everybody else already knows about and I'm getting excited. That would be embarrassing.

Hello, World!

Welcome to the blog of TangoPig Jewelry Creations!

Apparently, in this new world of technology, every artist has to have a blog, so this humble designer of jewelry is jumping on that bandwagon. Blogwagon. Thing.

I'll be posting irregularly to talk about jewelry: New lines I'm starting, techniques I discover, frustrations with jump rings, cool beads I find, new pieces I'm excited about, the vagaries of the jewelry business, et cetera. Expect a certain amount of navel gazing.

As for me: The whole jewelry thing started with a fundraiser in my junior year of college. I made and sold five-dollar stretch bracelets to support my friend's ballroom dancing club (I went to the same high school as Lacey Schwimmer of Dancing with the Stars fame; another bandwagon we all jumped on with great eagerness). Now I'm in college and trying to supplement my girlfriend's poverty-level teaching income and my measly wage as a part-time cold chef at a local gourmet pizza chef with my jewelry-making skills.

So please hang out for the beads, the stories and the occasional headpin crisis!