Nest Tutorial

I read somewhere that you should never apologise for not having blogged in an age. So I won't......I think I was feeling a little burned out after my manic November and December and needed a pause. Sometimes blogging feels more intensive than simply posting on Facebook - more satisfying (for me at least) but a little more hard work! 

Either way, here I am, back in this - my - little corner of the inter-web and it's good to be back! I thought I'd kick things off with a quick tutorial for the new year. Bird's nests have been popular imagery of recent months and I thought I'd share how I make mine. If you've got any questions, then leave a message in the comments, and as long as your email is turned on, I'll get right back to you!

For this nest I've used:

Large Robin's Eggs from The Curious Bead Shop

.8mm copper wire

(If I was working with the smaller Robin's Egg beads (6mm rather than 8mm) I would move down to .6mm copper wire. 

My plan is to oxidise this once I have a bunch of them made up. 

 1. Cut at least 1.5m (just under 2 yards) of copper wire. Slide on 3 beads about 10cm along and make a ring by pulling the long tail of the wire round the beads. You will need to have the beads a bit spaced out so that they will bend round in a ring.

 2. Wrap the long tail of the wire around the beads a few times. I've done it 5 times here. Then bring the wire over itself to secure the 'nest' you're building. 

 3. You can see more clearly here the path of the wire. 

 4. Repeat this, binding the nest in-between each pair of beads. Then continue to wrap the wire around in a circle, building the nest. I did this a couple of times. (There should still be a longish wire tail, you just can't see it in this pic! You need it for the base in step 6.)

 5. Tuck the short tail into the nest if you haven't already, to keep it neat and tidy. 

 6. Turn your nest over and curl/coil the wire back on itself to make a little base for the nest (so the eggs don't fall out ;-) ). You can wrap the coils into the sides of the nest if needs be. Once you are happy with the look of the nest, tuck the wire tail in. You want to try and bury it in the nest so that you don't end up getting spiked by the wire when you're wearing it!

7. Here you go - a couple of nests, ready for oxidising! Later this week, I'm going to show you how to attach them in a piece of jewellery. 

Hope you enjoyed this little tute! Would you like to see more of them during the year? I'm thinking of maybe trying to do them about once every fortnight or so. What would you like to learn about?