The Aon-Celtic Armour Page 2

Buddy Jim's forged copper armour

THE PROCESS...

"First make a double ring, so that you have a "band" to do your knot within. Start your braid by making a line inside the band that undulates from side to side, so that it goes from your outside ring to the inside ring and then to the outside ring again all around the circle, until it joins up with itself again. You may have to jimmy it around a bit to make it match up all nice, and to get the "waves" nice and even around the ring. Then you make another line go around the ring, but make this one touch the *inside* ring wherever the first one touched the *outside* ring, and vise versa, so that it undulates opposite to what your first one did. This one should join up nice and even to itself, like the first one did.

"Now you want to double up those lines you've just made, so that rather than being a *line* going around, you have a *strip* going around. Do this to each of your lines. You may find it easier to use two different colored pencils to make your first lines (one red, and one blue, or whatever), so that when you double them up you can use the appropriate color again and it doesn't end up looking like a bunch of wiggly lines everywhere! Now, everywhere you have your "blue" strip crossing a "red" strip, you'd erase it so it appeared as though one was passing over the other. This part is just like in the tutorials for the Basic knot, so you may want to look there for more details if you're having trouble. Following the same strand around the ring, erase appropriately so that the strand you have picked appears to go over and then under and then over any other strand it meets. Then you're done!

You can make other knot types (like leaf knots etc.) by doing a bit of freehand work. You would divide off the ring into however many knots you wanted (kinda like slicing a pie, only it's just a ring you're slicing up) You'll notice that the slices will be wider at the tops, of course, where they lay along the outer ring. In each slice, you would then plot out your leaf knot as though you were going to do a leaf knot border, all around the ring. You'd can make little dots in there if you find it easier (you'll have to guess where they go a bit), or you can just "guesstimate" where the walls would go and start making your criss-crosses like you normally would. You'll have to keep turning your paper around and around as you go, so your knot follows the curve of your ring all the way around. Finish up like you normally would, by adding elbows and then the over and unders to the knot. There is a bit more freehand involved doing knots around rings, but they can look really great when you get the hang of it. I find the key is to divide up the ring when you're doing complex stuff, and then you treat each little slice of pie as though you were just making a regular border knot, and then you don't get "lost" going around the ring."

So how did she get that wonderful "aged" look? Cari comments, "...I dunked it in Flemish Grey antiquing stuff, which turned it this wonderful steely grey, with these copper highlights on it and still a bit coppery in the parts I "engraved." I also found some lengths of this nice spiral chain, that I have made up to do a malachite necklace a while back. Both the same length, so I added a few extra plain links at the back to make them a hair longer, and added some lovely iridescent bead drops from the front. You can remove the extra links at the back if it hangs too low, but I wanted it big enough to fit over the heads so I had to guess. Everything is cleaned, and now sprayed with krylon crystal clear to keep them for tarnishing strangely."

"The Flemish Grey stuff is part of the JAX line of Chemical Death in a Jar line ... it's faux finishing stuff, like patinas etc. So there are various bases that you can paint on to a surface (even wood, plaster, other metal etc). This stuff contains real metal particles, so you are able to then use other noxious chemicals to then patina and age this first stuff. "


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