Monday 30 June 2014

My Shoddy Attempt at Molecular Jewelry

Yesterday I went to a molecular jewelry making workshop which basically means making jewelry in the shape of different molecular structures (have a look here to see how the professionals do it). 

I spent ages trying to find a decent image on my phone of the molecular structure of cider but I could only get results for cider vinegar and then I tried to find an image of Janus (from the insanely awesome Channel 4 drama, Utopia) before giving up and settling for something that vaguely resembled a hexagonal caterpillar.

 
Armed with this image, I set about trying to recreate it in wire format. Due to a false start after crushing my first little red bead due to being too heavy handed with the pliers I finally thought I was making some steady progress. My wire was straight, my corners were crisp and looked like they were well on the way to making perfect hexagons...and then I added the blue bead at the wrong corner, tried to rectify the situation and it all went horribly wrong from then on. I also tried to double back on myself to recreate the double lines but then attaching new bits of wire proved to be the biggest pain in the arse. On top of everything else I ran out of time so what was going to be my beautiful colourful molecular inspired caterpillar looks more like a mauled insect with half its head bitten off. Oh well! 


It looks like I need a lot more practice before I make molecular jewelry that looks semi decent. In the meantime I think I'll stick to making earrings out of drinks cans which you can find at the McPoodle Shop.