This ring, as you can tell from the original tutorial I tried to work from, is supposed to be a beautiful beaded, spiral-wrapped stone ring. On the pictures included with the original tutorial, which dates back to 2012, the spirals with the tiny beads perfectly encircle the larger stone and draw attention to it. Their wire wrapping is flawless, they know what they are doing, and their hands always cooperate. My end product, as you can see from my pictures, is none of those things.
Now that it’s been a few weeks since I made it, though, I can say that my ring is still pretty.
Here’s the thing. I fell in love with this tutorial. I knew it would be challenging, but not impossible with my beginner level of skill. After all, we don’t get better at things without working at them. So, I sat down to start, excited to make something pretty and shiny.
There was only one problem. I didn’t have round beads, or at least not round beads in the delicate and beautiful size shown above. I had bead chips, and I had round beads the size of small planets. Think Pluto.
“No Problem!” said I, complete with the capital P. You could hear it in my voice. “I shall Improvise!”
Well, I improvised. And I’m still not so great at this wire wrapping thing to begin with, so it was much harder for me to adjust to the different shape of the chips. I finished the project, but I was almost in tears by the time I finished. My ring looked a mess, and it was all my fault. I put it on my Weird Little Hand stand, and turned away to try to forget about it.
Then my daughter came into the room. “Mom, can I have it? It looks just like a flower, see? You can see here is the middle and here are the petals!”
I don’t mind admitting my heart melted, just a little. She couldn’t have the ring, because it was sized for my giant-sized thumb, but I made her one of her own. And just like that, I couldn’t see the ring as a failure anymore. It might not be what I set out to make, but it was still beautiful.
