Wire Crochet Wall Art or in other words Scaling Up, YoolaMandalas
September 13, 2017
As you probably noticed I mostly design and make wire jewelry these days, but there is no escape from the truth that deep down I'm still a product designer and fashion isn't at the top of my priority list. This is also my priority when I design jewelry, I'm more interested in exploring the shapes, the materials, the colors than to follow coming and going fashion trends.
Thinking back about it, I started making jewelry mainly because of 2 reasons, the first was that this was my preferred scale of objects when I was doing industrial design, and because it's not just an art object being set up in a static place at home but you could wear it, and it can take part in the theater of life.
But lately I found myself wanting to make larger scale objects , and decided to make a few mandalas to decorate my walls, "jewelry for the home" , making them is not that different from making jewelry, only the scale is different and the body is replaced by a wall or a space.
I 3D printed larger ISK starter looms and got to experimenting, the preliminary thought was to use the ISK starters both as the wire crochet working base and also as the frame to hang the piece with on the wall.
I ordered 2 size of hoops, one 5.9" (15cm) and the second 7.9" (19cm), I wasn't sure how it will feel working in such large scales, if the frames will be strong enough, if it will be comfortable to reach all edges etc,
The interesting part was that I suddenly felt like I have a larger playground to play in, and started improvising, creating more than one layer of work, playing with different stitch size and a few more tricks.
In case you were wondering it goes without saying that I will of course publish these instructions for you to enjoy them too ... even if you dont fancy the looms.
There are few topics to consider, the first is weather to leave the work on the ISK starter and use it also as the hanging frame, on one hand I like thinking of my ISK starters as reusable, which will not be the case if I use them also as frames, my first instinct is that using one per work is not economic, but on the other hand if it functions also as the frame, maybe it does make sense after all.
Another topic is weather to place the mandala inside a picture frame or hang it as is on the wall which was my original idea, so although I didn't plan this up, I was lucky enough to find frames in IKEA that look as if they were designed exactly for my YoolaMandalas.
or AS IS , hanging on the loom
or left on the frame but behind glass inside an IKEA box frame
The wire shades I used for the warm colors YoolaMandala are :
A2 - Silver
A4 - Steel Gray
A6 - Black
C4 - chestnut
D2 - Copper
E4 - Spicy Orange
the wire shades I used for the green YoolaMandala are :
B1 - Pastel Green
B4 - Baby Blue
B5 - Navy Blue
B6 - Charcoal
The mandala looms are available directly via my 3d printing shop :
https://www.shapeways.com/shops/yoola
or right here on the supply section :
https://www.yooladesign.com/collections/crochet-with-wire-supply
I'm curious to hear what you think about this whole frame concept , lave it on , take it off ?
Yours
Yael aka Yoola
