Silver wire wrapped spiral glass decal rings!

The Ridgewood Market is in less than two weeks and I've been working like crazy to make new pieces for the event. I'm particularly excited about my new line of fused dichroic glass decal rings:

I've made a couple of other glass rings, but they've been heavy and bulky, so I came up a design that's light and fun to wear. Basically, I took my decal pendants and condensed them into tiny ring-sized pieces. I then fired the smallest decals onto the glass. I recently purchased a sample set of dichroic solids, so I could use a variety of colors for background.

The other challenge was coming up with a ring that would work as a base. I adapted my spiral backing design into ring form; these rings are made of 18 gauge silver plated wire. I create the spiral, loop the band around a ring mandrel to size it and then kind of knot the band around the spiral to secure it in place. The flat spiral gives me a surface to glue when I attach the pieces together -- and voila! I have a ring.

You'll notice that I also have a few pearl-looking rings in the mix. I call those my Rainbow Swirl rings because they're made of clear prism glass. I got the rounded shape by fusing two squares at separate angles rather than placing them in the same direction. The bottom square was vertical and the top square was horizontal. When placed like that, the glass melts and fills out the space, and fuses into a round cabochon.

In the photos, that glass looks whitish, but you can see various colors when you hold it up to the light. Because it's transparent, the spiral backing shows right through and it looks like a swirl is running through the glass -- hence then name "Rainbow Swirl."

These aren't difficult to make, but are time consuming because I have to cut the glass and fire it, apply the decals and fire them, make the rings and then attach everything. The good news is that I can put several pieces into the kiln at once since they're so small. I really like these rings, though. I have a ring box that holds 36 pieces, so my goal is to fill it with rings of various sizes. I'm up to 24, so I'm getting there!

I never know what will sell at craft fairs. It's always a crap shoot. Still, I have a good feeling about these rings. They're so cute and colorful -- how could anyone resist? :-)

Check out the rest of my handmade jewelry at Naomi's Designs and MayaGirl Creations.

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