My Pet Dragon

My very own pet dragon! Isn't he the cutest?!  This is my first try at multi-weave, semi-free form chainmaille.  Multi-weave for the combination of Dragonback, Byzantine, Box, and Mobius; semi-free form for improvising the neck and adding the paws.  I followed the fantastic tutorial by Derailed on MAIL.  The step by step instructions are easy to follow, lots of pictures and arrows pointing at where to add rings, that's how I like to read tutorials :-)  BTW, this is Derailed's dragon that got me hooked, cute and ferocious!

The tutorial describes the main body with scales.  I added the paws, only because all the dragons that I grew up with (yes, I grew up with dragons, in movies, paintings, novels) always have paws.  They also have whiskers and antennas, but I don't know how to add those yet...  I'd imagine some wire work would do it, like the way Corvus does hers (check out her copper dragon here, specially the tongue!)

Oh, and my dragon also wears shoulder pads and hoop earrings.  Very fashionable:-)  Can you see the earrings?  Big old double hoops!  The shoulder pads/cape is a slight variation from the tutorial. I learned it from Derailed's other maille critters, check them out here, seriously awesome!

OK, back to my guy; he's flexible enough to curl up for nap.  The neck moves very well; the body section from neck to belly is kind of stiff compared to rest of the body, my guess is because I fussed so much over the shoulder pads that I added a few too many rings.  Anyhow, he'll curl up all right, even chase after his own tail:-)  Awww, the poor thing is pooped from all the jumping and posing all day; it's a lot of hard work to look so adorable:-)

Specs:

All rings are stainless steel, WD 1.2mm, 3/16" ID from C&T Designs, and 5/32" ID from Blue Buddha (F18 SSTL); scales are bright aluminum also from Blue Buddha.  I did have to use 2 larger rings (1/4" ID) to include the key ring into the box weave at his jaws.  That's it.  Not very ring hungry, but my hands were totally out of commission for a while (Advil helped:-)

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.