dragonfly

On the 26th of March I made a dragonfly out of some wire and paperclips and beads.

 

I had the triangle spiral part, which I made a long time ago. I picked it out of a box of beads and wire thingys and it looked like a good jumping off place. 

The important thing is the pliers. You can make wire sculptures with any kind of needle nose pliers, the wider flat nosed types are okay if you put tape over the grippy teeth, since the ridges will scratch up your wire. I started out with needle nose, but later (years ago) I got these pink jewelery ones. They make very wonderful loops and spirals. The best pliers are the smooth kind, with a cone shaped nose. I appreciate the spring-loaded return grip. It springs back open and your hands don't get as tired. I have made many many wire sculptures and it does make a little difference. Not huge. 

Otherwise when you are holding the pliers in your hand, wrap a finger around the top and one around the bottom of the handle part that you aren't holding with your thumb. That will help open the pliers. I'm not explaining myself well. The pliers have two handles. One handle is manipulated with the thumb. So the other handle should slip either between your pinky and ring finger, or between the ring and middle finger. This is the way I do it. But I can also tie shoes, and absolutely can't show my children how to tie. Most people don't just take my word for it. So experiment.

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  Paperclips are really good to work with, the smallish ones are a good size wire. The gigantic paperclips are sort of thick wire. I also have very thin wire. Medium. Whatever.  

I used a bead for the main part of the dragonfly body. The bead had a very wide hole so I put a thin wire through two times, once in each direction. This wire wrapped around the bottom of the body, and then through the bead.

After that I bent two small paperclips into wing shapes. Each wing managed to fit into the hole in the side of that center green bead. Each wing was wrapped in thin wire and this produced a fun pattern. I threaded the wing wires through the bead as well. 

Isn't the cardboard background nicer than the scarred up red tabletop? I'm totally going to sand that thing down this summer. 

 

So now, four ends are coming out of that green center bead, two from each side. One set is holding the wings on, one set is holding the bead on the body. The body-holding wires were threaded with tiny multi colored beads. I bent each beaded wire around to form the second set of smaller wings. I do realize the little dragonfly wings usually show up underneath the bigger wings. But I also don't care that much. These wires probably did not fit through the bead again. Most likely I wrapped them around the body. 

The eyes were made by finding some thicker wire, making some roughly eye shaped blobs, and then wrapping those blobs with the thinnest wire in a spiral pattern.

 

My kiddy/helper loved the wire parts. She is sure that every project is done specifically for her play and enjoyment. On Monday morning I was sewing up W's sweater, and someone else's jeans, so of course kiddy needed to help with that. I asked her what exactly it is about a hanging pointy sharp needle that says "Wild Rat Animal, please kill me" to her... she didn't have much to say on that subject. I didn't bring up the fact that each ball of yarn must be repeatedly killed and gnawed. I have learned to keep my mouth shut because talking about the yarn situation makes things worse. 

Legs were added by taking two lengths of wire, slipping them through the body at appropriate spots, then looping those back on themselves and twisting the ends up to make a leg. The loop feet are at the point where I bent the wire back on itself. Lengths of wire are sort of a guesstimate. If you cut too much, just loop it around to form another detail. Always fold your ends up and wrap them in upon themselves so nobody is ever poked by the wire edges. It is important to feel the wire ends to be sure you have looped and twisted them in. Generally they fit between another joint or inside the space of the sculpture itself. Another option is to curl ends into a spiral and then fold it down along an edge or into a corner.