Project Headpin

Not beads but glassy prettiness just the same. Lampwork headpins.

I've been having lots of fun, experimenting and fiddling about making these. Glass headpins are great for embellishing jewellery designs. They look great at the bottom of earrings; wrapped as charms; in clusters; as dangles at clasps; wired onto jewellery. Basically, they have all the lovely looks of a glass bead without having to thread them onto a headpin because they ARE the the headpin.

All of the headpins pictured are made with copper wire but I also have stainless steel and brass wire too. I've settled on 0.8mm wire which is about 20 gauge and the headpin wires themselves are about 2.5 to 3 inches long. (Check me out muddling up my metric and imperial!)  To give you an idea of glass size, the glass ends of the black and white spotty ones are about 10mm diameter. I'll be making smaller ones and different coloured ones and different shapes and so on and so on ...

I started off with a very simple leaf shape because I have a bracelet idea in mind that requires glass leaves but I don't like the 'clunkiness' of glass leaves that have a glass loop or that are made on a bead. They just don't fit with what I need for my design so I figured that headpins were the way to go.

Having that heap of glass leaves sat on my desk all got too much for me and in the end I sat and wired them onto a copper chain to make this very simple but striking bracelet. It makes that lovely glassy rattle and it feels SO nice to wear. So yeah, that's one thing you can do with headpins. But what else?

This is where you come in.

How do you fancy being part of 'Project Headpin'?

I'd like to invite some of you to make something with some of my headpins. I will send you half a dozen or so headpins (for free - WOO!) and then you can make whatever you fancy with them. The headpins you receive might be like the ones pictured and they might be different; depends what I make over the weekend. The resulting piece/s will be yours to keep/sell/give to Auntie Edna for her upcoming birthday. All I'd ask for in return is a photograph of your finished piece/s so that I can post them here on my blog and Facebook so that others can see what can be done with my lampwork headpins. And of course, you'd also be able to provide me with valuable feedback regarding size, length of wire, blah blah blah etc.

How does that sound? I'm looking for about ten people to enrol in Project Headpin and if you're interested in doing so please email me at laura@beadsbylaura.co.uk with the subject 'Project Headpin'. I'll then be in touch to discuss the matter further.

EDIT: Thank you to all who have emailed about Project Heapin but I am now at maximum capacity and I have enough testers. Thanks!

Well, it's flipping miserable here today. It's all soggy-wet out there and the cat is not impressed. He's wrecking the joint, running about like a mad thing, all annoyed that it's raining outside. I really hope it's nice wherever you are.

Have a super duper Saturday!