Spring is Here! And So is My Sakura Ring!

Today, I’m bringing you my latest project – a wire wrapped sakura ring! Hope you enjoy it!

Ring a Month Challenge

Last week, I mentioned that I had joined various Facebook groups for jewellers. Well, another one that I came across was the “Make a Ring a Month 2021” group. I discovered the group after listening to a Podcast about it on the Jewellers Academy. Incidentally, the Jewellers Academy Podcast is great – they have so much great information from different mediums and techniques, through to navigating the complexities of copyrighting and protecting your designs.

The “Make a Ring a Month 2021” group is pretty much what is says on the tin! Started at the end of 2018 by Jewellery School Scotland, the group sets a theme each month and challenges jewellers to make a ring to that theme. They then post photos of their rings to their Facebook or Instagram pages, using the hashtag “#ringamonth2021”, and use any medium or technique they want.

March’s theme was “spring” and I made up my mind pretty quickly what I wanted to make – a sakura themed ring. My family love Japan and pretty much all things Japanese – food, anime, clothing… My daughter has requested a sushi dinner for her birthday every year since she was 3 years old… always the same local restaurant! Like almost everyone in the world, we haven’t been able to travel much in the past year, which is why I decided to make a sakura ring.

Thinking About a Design

I thought about how best to make the ring and would have liked to do some silversmithing. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel quite ready yet! But, I am really loving wire wrapping, so I adapted some of the designs in the book I’ve been using (Wire Jewelry Masterclass by Abby Hook, in case you haven’t been keeping up with my previous posts!) and came up with this:

Again, it’s not perfect (I am my own biggest critic!). But I’ve learnt so much… including, by the end of this project, how to manage that pesky 0.3mm wire, so that I’m not constantly making kinks in it and snapping it. Check out my video if you want to see how that technique developed – I finally figured out the best technique for the wire when I was weaving the front 3D petal around 36:54! It’s not a tutorial as such, but you should be able to see what I was doing! I’m now posting a new project video every week, so don’t forget to subscribe to my channel!

Tools

• Round-Nose Pliers
• Chain-Nose Pliers
• Flat-Nose Pliers
• Nylon-Jaw Pliers
• Wire Cutters
• Ring Mandrel (or something round and the same size as the ring you’re making)

Materials

Flower

• Frame – 38cm of 1mm (18g) copper wire
• Small Petals (x2) – 50cm of 0.3mm (28g) copper wire
• Large Petal (x1) – 63.5cm of 0.3mm (28g) copper wire
• Side Petals (x2) – 76cm of 0.3mm (28g) copper wire and 2x 4mm beads (I used lilac dyed jade!)
• Front Petal (x1) – 15cm of 1mm (18g) copper wire, 1.02m of 0.3mm (28g) copper wire and 1x 4mm bead
• Ring Shank – 2x 15cm of 1mm (18g) copper wire, 76cm of 0.3mm (28g) copper wire

Description

1. Making the Flower

I adapted the design for the “Orchid 3D Brooch” project in the book “Wire Jewelry Masterclass” to make sakura shaped petals. I think sakura are some of the prettiest flowers around, and for me, they really symbolise spring! They have quite a distinct shape, too, with the small dip in the petal. I’m not the greatest at drawing, but you get the idea!

(Some of my sketches were for flowers fabricated out of a sheet of metal, but I decided against it this time! Maybe a project for the future?)

Trying to make the petals in the frame was pretty tricky – I’m still not sure how to get the dip in. I ended up using flat-nose pliers to try and make a right angle in the centre of the petal, and then pulled the tips upwards to try and sharpen them… if you’ve got a better idea, please let me know!

Once, I had the frame shape, I used the 28g wire to weave in the shapes and attach the beads (you’ll see better in the video). When I was done, I had a flower that looked like this one below.

So, it’s definitely not perfect. If I were to make it again, I’d make the petals wider and give it the more distinctive sakura shape. And the petals are not pointy enough for me. I’ve since practised on scrap wire to try and get these pointer, but I still can’t figure it out…

2. Making the Central Petal

For this part, I followed the instructions from the book exactly. I did want to make this petal in the same shape as the rest of my petals, but I could not figure out how to put the dip in (I’m also very conscious that sakura normally only had 5 petals, but hey, a girl can only do the best with what she knows, right?!).

After shaping the petal and weaving it in, I ended up with this:

I’m actually really pleased with this, as it was the first time I figured out how to weave the frame without kinking the wire. The technique, it turns out, is to push the wire in the frame at the point where it’s joined to the frame. You sort of make a little loop that you can hook your finger in and pull the rest of the wire the frame. Before this, I’d been trying to sew with the loose wire end and getting myself literally tied up in knots! So much wasted wire… thank goodness I’ve been using copper!

From here, I bent the petal around a jump ring mandrel (mainly because that’s what I had that was the right sort of size, but I imagine a pencil would do, too!)

This is the petal with the bead added in!

3. Making the Ring Shank

For the ring shank, I wove together two pieces of 15cm 1mm (18g) wire – very similar to the weaving that I did for the orbital pendant, but only to about 4.5cm. This will need adjusting for the size of the ring! I then shaped it around the ring mandrel and spent an hour trying to figure out how to attach the ring to the flower!

Let’s see if I can explain this (it’s quite fiddly!)…

Start with your 5-petal flower base and thread the two wires from the 3D petal through the two loops that in the centre (so the 3D petal is on the front). Take the open end of the ring shank, making sure the 4 wires cross over and lay it flat against the back of the ring. Fold the two wires from the 3D petal down and through the ring shank to hold it (loosely) in place.

Next comes the tricky bit (probably a bit of frustration on my part, too!). You need to take the two wires from the front petal and after bending over the rink shank, you need to thread them back through to the front of your design. It’s hard! But persevere – if I managed, you can!

You should end up with something like this! The two wires that you’ve just threaded through the front are secured off by trimming the down to 5mm. Then you loop them to make them look like stamen (yeah… creative licence here, I know sakura don’t have stamen as such!)

The last part was to use the remaining weave wire to secure the four wires from the ring shank to the flower frame. I didn’t really have a method, I just kept going until the ring shank didn’t feel like it was going to come off!

The final step was to trim the four long wires… and I’ll admit, I didn’t really know what to do with those. After pondering for a while, I went the easy route of trimming them shorter… I kind of wish I hadn’t done that. Every time I wear this ring, I wonder if the weaving will fall off or come undone. If I were to do it again, I’d turn those 4 wires into a loop of some kind and use it in the design (best laid plans and all that…)

And this is what it looks like on!

It’s probably bigger than something I’d normally wear, but I think it’s cute for a special occasion. I’ve tried wearing it on the school run and it’s driving me crazy! I can’t get anything in or our of my pocket without it catching on something!

Do let me know what you think in the comments! Until next time!