Fandom Snowflake Challenge: Day 5

[kerravonsen]

Day 5

Stretch yourself a little and try something new. Go play in a new fandom or with a new pairing. Try working in a new medium. Or consume different fanworks. Give that new fandom a go. Listen to a podfic or watch some vids if you haven’t before.

I pick "working in a new medium"... which is a continuation of newness from 2012. To wit, doing fannish craft.
To make this a proper "something new", today I started a new project with a new craft. Chain maille. I'm not sure how the final product will turn out, but my starting point is to do two chains (in box-chain, because that seems to suit the rings I have); one chain is green and silver, the other is gold and copper. Yep. Slytherin and Gryffindor. It will probably take forever to do, so I may just do the chains and call it a day. We shall see.

Anyway, that is something new.

Comments

[kerravonsen]

Are you planning to wear the finished chain as jewelery or do something else with them?

Making actual chain mail is far too advanced for a beginner like me. I'm doing the beginner stuff: making fancy chains. Which will be turned into jewellery, yes.

Do you have to make your own links when doing something like this?

Some people do, but it's far quicker and easier to buy them. The technical term for the links are "jump rings", and they're used in normal jewellery too, it's just that normal jewellery would use half-a-dozen jump rings at the very most, while chain maille uses hundreds(*). So it makes sense to buy from someone selling them for chain maille, because they sell them in suitably large lots. Also, they're of better quality, because it's more important for chain maille rings to join seamlessly.

(*) to give an example, my first box chain is so far about an inch long, and that used 20 rings.

[coprime]

Fascinating! It makes a lot of sense to buy the rings and buy them in bulk from someone specializing in chain maille. I've seen chain maille jewelry at cons, and it always looks so pretty to me. I hadn't realized quite how much work goes into a little bracelet.

[kerravonsen]

My experience so far has been that it's very fiddly, but the prettiness of the result keeps me motivated. 8-)