Spindle Necklaces

My Shapeways order came today!  It feels like Christmas every time I see that cute little white box at my door.  I made a series of spindle necklaces over the break and got a few printed as a beginning of the semester gift to myself.  Here is the first in the series (and my favorite).  Available for order at my Shapeways Shop here.

 I thought the textures and aesthetics of the SWF printing material and soft glass tubing went well together so I tried to design a necklace that combined the two into something cohesive.

 This is a close up of the pendant.  I designed two hollow balls, suspended in the center of the caged piece, with holes cut such that the tubing runs through them and holds them up against the top of their cages.

The 2.5mm soft glass tubing is available through Polymer Clay Express in a variety of colors and sizes.  I am in love with the stuff.  It is so durable and comfortable and you can purchase simple connectors that make lovely friction clasps.  I designed my own to go along with this piece as the only ones available are metal and don't reflect the aesthetics of the pendant.  They also are only for one strand and I wanted to use three.

This is the second necklace in the series, which is just a simplified version of the first spindle.  It only uses one strand of soft glass but I designed the connectors for this in the printed material as well.  I only printed these two pieces in the series to test out their success with the tubing.

This is a piece I designed a while ago.  It obviously inspired the caging for the spindle pieces and I edited the design and got it printed again because my original batch had an issue with one of the balls fusing to a cage bar.  Despite that, they sold out fairly quickly at the Metals Club winter sale so I'm pretty confident in the consumer appeal of the design.  The caging reduces the material cost so I can sell them fairly cheaply.

Getting these pieces printed made me see the beauty in the connectors designed to fit the tubing.  My next project is to investigate combining different connectors with the tubing to make a series of bracelets.  Fun fun!