Wire Mesh Ribbon Tubing.
I have to talk about wire mesh ribbon tubing. This stuff is just fun. It is constructed from metallic wire as the name suggests, but is it surprisingly soft and supple, making it a dream to shape and form to whatever your imagination can bring forth.
Wire mesh ribbon, while metal, is easy to cut with scissors, so you do not need any special tool to work with it. As the photo shows, the ribbon is actually a tube, which means that it can be filled with just about anything under the sun.
In this particular example, the tube can been pushed to its limits with pearls (which we all know is one of my favorite items with which to work). And after the ribbon tube was filled, pearls were then attached strategically to the exterior of the ribbon tubing with headpins, thus enhancing and detailing the treasures hidden inside.
For more photos of exactly how malleable and flexible wire mesh ribbon tubing can be, there is a website available with much more extensive photos of multiple ways to play with ribbon tubing.
Finally, this particular piece was finished with a crimp end finding. The ribbon tubing was tightened then crimped down by use of the finding itself to keep all the pearl treasures into where they belong. If you had concerns about the safety of keeping beads or the like inside the tube, you could always essentially “seal” the end of the tube by stringing a larger sized bead on the outside of the tubing (running the ribbon tubing through the bead hole) and then installing the clamp end. This larger bead would act as a stop sign for all the interior beads. However, knowing how clamp end findings work, I would have no problems sealing off this piece using just the finding alone.
I really like the combination of the wire, both using it as tubing and a ribbon - filling it and drawing it out as a single thread. This particular jewelry tool can be used to create really fantastic pieces. I haven’t seen a lot of other artists working with this yet, but I hope I see more as wire mesh ribbon tubing really does have a lot of potential.
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