Ninja Ring

A secret ninja weapon you can wear on your finger!

OK, it's really just another Whirlybird with scales as outer edging.

I was playing with my new scales from B3, made a few flower looking thingy, very fun.  Then, I realized scales can be substituted for the outer edge of pretty much any weave.

Here's my first experiment in using scales in a Whirlybird. Just do a simple strip of 3-row European 4-in-1 with scales as the middle row; then connect end to end like a normal Whirlybird. I added an HP-like ridge on both side to tighten the whole thing, they also even out the scales so they spread like sun rays, or flower petals, whatever.

Finding an "app" for this bird took a while. From the first moment it was done, it screams "ninja secret weapon" to me; does it do that for you?  Any way, after a few tries, it settles as a finger ring.  Big, but still comfortable.  Definitely Not dainty:-)  Check out more pix here.

I wonder how a pair of them may look as earrings? Hum...

Scale Sakura

Scale maille sakura as hair stick ornament.

Based on the new scale flower design by TRL, with extra rings added on the outer edge out of necessity to stabilize the structure; my bronze rings must be slightly bigger than TRL's size.  This turned out to be very useful for attaching more rings, fringes, beads, etc.

Scales are very addictive, I must admit.  Before the whole scale flower thing, I hadn't thought about making anything with scales.  That was then, this is now.  Interesting how things take on their own paths...  Now I see scales are just like rings, bit flat, with off center, smallish holes compared to typical jump rings; sky's the limit, hahaha!

Specs:  Unanodized aluminum small scales, all 18 swg rings 1.2mm WD, in bright aluminum, anodized aluminum, bronze, and jeweler's brass.  Uh, that's about it; I can't remember the exact ring sizes, so many different sizes here; good way to use up leftover rings though.  Handmade double eye pins out of non-tarnish craft wire, also 1.2mm.  Size 5/0 triangle seed beads in silver-lined mauve.  Final sizes: flower 2" in diameter, full length of ornament 4" from the top connector ring to bottom of the longest fringe.

More pix here.

Steel Magnolia

I named this bracelet "Steel Magnolia", it got nothing to do with the movie (no, please don't tell me I can't use the name), just simply, big bold beautiful magnolia flowers made in steel.

As to the weave, it is called "Double Spiral Half Byzantine + 1". Hee hee, that's a long name, isn't it? But very accurate, just take a look: There's the double spiral, half of a Byzantine (is that aka. a unit of Box?), and + 1 holding onto the next half Byzantine. Or, I'll fess up, I just love everything with double rings:-)

I learned it from this tutorial by Onering on MWw. Mine is made with 1 mm x 1 mm square stainless steel rings from C&T Designs. These rings were originally sized for JPL5, but since I don't know JPL5 (not yet :-), I used it for this fun bracelet.

Would have been great if I had a different metal in same size to work with in this bracelet, maybe copper, kind of like the pictures in the tutorial. Maybe next time, I will. This is too much fun to make only one.