My New Toy

I bought a new toy the other day with my A.C. Moore coupon. This is my anvil. Anvils provide a flat hard surface for hammering metal and wire for jewelry making. It also has horns on the side for shaping wire.

I'm in the process of wire wrapping some stones that I got in Key West, and I've been playing with some new techniques. Eventually I'd like to wrap some stones with flattened copper and sterling silver wire. Unfortunately, I have found that colored wire chips to the copper base when hammered.

What I was able to do with my new toy, however, was perfect my wire bird nests, at least at a smaller scale. The horn on the side is perfectly round and increases in diameter; while the bird nests are smaller in size, they are more uniform in shape. I made so many I'm trying to come up with ways to use them all!

The smaller size makes them less appropriate for a necklace pendant, but I found they are the perfect size to weave onto a wire crochet bracelet. Perhaps a pair of matching earrings will appear in my shop in the future.




The bracelet its self is two rows of double crocheted brown colored copper wire, Artistic Wire brand. I got a tip that Artistic Wire has less than 200 ppm of lead. After contacting someone in their customer service department, I got confirmation - its actually less than 6 ppm of lead!

The nests were made with matching wire of the same brand, just a smaller gauge, and of course my new anvil. A teal fresh water pearl is attached. The hook clasp is made with the same wire so that it matches completely. The nests and small teal beads were woven through the bracelet. The great thing about wire crochet is that you can manipulate the length a little. the bracelet in the picture is 6.5" long, but can be stretched out to about 7.25" long.


Like it? It's for sale here!