Bead Table Wednesday--Found Objects and UFO's.

What's on the bead table today is a former UnFinished Object: a necklace from my muffin tray that I finally got around to finishing.  




I have a lot of found objects on the bead table too. Last weekend I went to Buchanan's Vintage/Antique Market in Lewisville.  Lewisville is smack up against Dallas, so much so that I can't tell when I leave Dallas and get into Lewisville.  I went with my friend Vanessa on Friday  and tried to help her set up her booth.  She kept shooing me away and telling me to go shop.  


These awesome big buttons came from Vanessa's booth.




I can't resist buttons.  I'm thinking of using these on bracelets or brooches. Vanessa is on Etsy at Salvage Nation.  Check out the cool letters she has. Some of them were originally made for interstate highway signs.  I also got some cool brass dog tags and other tags from her.







I spent a lot of time in a booth that had things I'd never seen for sale before. It's Mylissa's Garden from Arkansas City, Kansas. Alas, they are not online. 





First I found this...a crown?  No, a container.  




Inside I put something else I found:




Okay, maybe I'm weird but I think the doll eyeballs are the coolest thing, especially the big ones without lashes.  They don't open and close like the others but they do wiggle from side to side. 




More finds, vintage cards and scrabble letters.




The small letters are from license plates. The gears and machine parts were in a box labeled typewriter parts.  And I got a few odd pieces of jewelry and a couple of keys. 


I asked the owner how they cut up the plates and I found that they use a shear and Texas plates damaged their shear. Texas plates are made of steel unlike many other states that use aluminum.   I also decided after asking her how she cut the tags up that I'd rather she cut them up than me.  I did save my old Texas plate with the space shuttle on it and plan on using my jewelry saw to cut out the shuttle and put it in a piece of personal jewelry. I'm a space fanatic.  I blame Andre Norton, Gene Roddenberry,  Robert Heinlein and mostly my Dad, who is  a NASA fanatic.  


In another booth, the Red Barn, I found this beautiful blue suitcase (shown as the background in many of the photos), plus a couple of items for the studio.  The block will hold my stamps, and a chicken feeder (not shown) will hold my pliers.  I also got this wonderful 50 foot tape from a tape measure.  It came wrapped around the book.




Now that I'm amassing a collection of found objects I need to start creating with them. 


Take a look at what's on more bead tables:

Bead Table Wednesday--New Hammer

There isn't much on the bead table today. I do have this new Fretz hammer that I can't wait to use. It's the bigger one on the bottom.  It's exactly what I was looking for and is perfect--except for one thing.  The hammer head is a little loose.  I'm going to call the company I got it from and see if there's something I can do or if I should trade it in.  






I found out I needed this hammer when I was doing the foldforming. Remember this pod from a previous Bead Table Wednesday?  




In order to make the curve along the folded edged and thus the pod shape the hammer blows have to move the metal.  This requires a cross pein shaped hammer head.  The little hammer on top was the closest I had, and I have used it quite a bit for texturing the edges of pendants.  It does work for texturing folds, but it will not move the metal enough to form the pod shape. It's just too lightweight. I even tried using a lot of force and hit really hard.  Mostly this hurt my wrist.  I broke out the smaller Fretz hammer in the middle above.  It is a raising hammer and has faces like a cross pein, but several times wider.  It did move the metal.  It tends to smooth the metal at the same time so I didn't get as much texture as I'd hoped for.  I used this hammer to finish out the curve.  


The new Fretz hammer is the Michael Good cross pein and it has a nice weight.  I think it will move the metal without me using any great force.  That's pretty much what I want.  That's what tools are for--they allow us to do work without using a lot of force. 


In addition to Kim St. Jean's excellent DVD on "Metal Fold Forming" I have been studying Charles Lewton-Brain's book "Foldforming."  This is a fantastic book metal workers.  Charles Lewton-Brain is credited with inventing an entirely new form of metal work when he developed foldforming.  Next I want to study the info he has on his site.


I do still have the remaining items in my muffin tin that I didn't get finished for the challenge.  I spent four days at my parents over 4th of July weekend after my Dad had a little health scare (he's okay.) And Friday I'm going to Houston for a weekend business meeting for some volunteer work I do. I probably won't be able to touch the bead table until next week.


Check out the other bead tables at: