Breaking your own rules Last week, you crossed into new territory with a technique you'd never tried. This week, the threshold moves closer to home. It isn't on your workbench this time. It's in your head. Every one of us has rules we follow without thinking about them. Center the stone. Keep it symmetrical. Same gauge, same weave, same finishing swirl. Nobody handed us these rules. We built them one piece at a time, because they worked. That's how a style forms. It's also how a style gets stuck. When the same decisions get made automatically, every new piece starts to look like a cousin of the last one. This week isn't about throwing out what works. It's about noticing which choices you're actually making, and which ones are just making themselves. The Challenge Find one unwritten rule you always follow in your wirework, then deliberately break it. You don't need to finish a full pendant. A sketch, a component, a scrap wire study, or a finished piece all count. We're here to question a habit and our natural ways of thinking, not to prove anything. A Few Rules Worth Breaking Composition: Always symmetrical? Go asymmetrical. Always centering the stone? Move the focal point. Always compact? Leave some open space. Technique: Always hiding your connections? Make them part of the design. Always reaching for your favorite weave? Build something without it. Always using the same gauge? Play with proportion. Process: Always sketching first? Build intuitively. Never sketch? Plan it out before you touch wire. Always starting with the stone? Start with the frame. Always adding more? Take something away. Rules for Breaking the Rules Know the rule before you break it. Look at your last few pieces. What do they all have in common? What do you do every time without deciding to? That's your rule. Break a creative rule, not a structural one. Secure settings, tucked ends, and solid construction still matter. We're challenging how your work looks and feels, not whether it holds together. The purpose is to try and see your current creative style, and then intentionally challenge it.

This weekly update is coming a little later than usual because Fiercely and I have spent almost the last week and a half preparing for, vending at, and recovering from Unison Festival in Aztec, New Mexico. This was a big one for us. We haven't vended at a music festival in about four years, so there was A LOT to prepare. We had to pull out our old booth setup, clean our 10x20 tent (from Burning Man 2018) rethink how we wanted CraftyFingas to be presented, prep jewelry, gather supplies, pack everything up, and somehow fit our little traveling jewelry store into our lives again. Not onlythat, but we shared space with our Best Friend Kaja (Infinite Light Within) who makes absolutely incredible Palo Santo jewelry and gorgeous earrings, so we had to consider how both of our work would be best displayed and maximize flow of people and conversation space. And, naturally, things DID NOT go according to plan. 😂 During packing, I managed to forget the couplings that connect our 10×20 steel tent together, arguably a fairly important part of a tent since it wont go up without them. We realized they were missing while we started to put up the tent poles, and I had quite the moment of "freak out" mode. The closest replacement 10×20 we could find was hours away in Albuquerque, NM, and we called every major store who carries them for 2-3 towns in ever direction. After a whole lot of scrambling, we found the only available option within a reasonable distance at Tractor Supply, changed plans, made do with what we had, and eventually got the booth standing. We got set up late and we were exhausted from the additional work we had to do after a 7 hour drive. There were definitely moments where I was kicking myself for mistakes I had made because we've done this soooo many times before. But we made it happen. And when it was finally finished, our booth looked absolutely beautiful! We ended up right along the main vendor row, a short distance from main stage. We could stand at the entrance to our booth and watch the performances, meet people as they moved through the festival, and then dance to our hearts content at any moment we wanted. So we feel very blessed fir our experience at Unison.

Make the same thing ten times. Grow every single time. This may seem boring, but you're already doing this anyways. Youre repeating the same motions, same components, same weaves, etc in your work already. Now we're highlighting the repetition because Mastery is achieved in repetition. And we arent repeating for the sake of doing. We are now repeating with the intentional focus of bettering something. Here's the trap: if you practice a technique ten times focused on speed, you'll get faster. That's it. You'll be doing the same quality of work, just quicker. Speed is a byproduct of skill, not a substitute for it. This challenge flips that. You're picking one element, a weave, a coil, a wrap, anything, and making it ten times in a row. But the rule isn't "do it ten times." The rule is: with each one you make, you make a conscious effort to make it better than the last one. How it works: Pick your element. One design, one weave, one coil style, one wrap technique. Something specific enough that you can judge quality on it clearly. Make it once. This first one is your baseline. Don't judge it yet, just get it done. Before you make it again, ask: what wasn't good enough? Tension? Spacing? Symmetry? Clean transitions? Pick one thing to improve. Make it again with that one improvement in mind. Repeat, nine more times. Every round, find the edge of your comfort and push that comfort's boundary. If round 6 feels as easy as round 3, you're coasting, not growing. Be concious of how you are wrapping and how it affects the end product. And if you really feel you've entered a level of mastery where youre components are flawless, I then challenge you to fully release your inner critic and give them permission to wreak havoc on your work. Because theyre typically our worst critic. And if that doesnt feel like its enough, try another element to work with. By round 10, compare it to round 1. That gap is the whole point of this challenge. Why quality first: When you chase speed, you're reinforcing whatever habits you already have, good or bad. When you chase quality, your hands naturally get faster too, because clean technique has less wasted motion than sloppy technique. You get the speed anyway. You just get it with the skill attached because that was the focus.

This challenge is deceptively simple: build a piece using only 6 to 10 wires. That's it. That's the whole rule. But here's where it gets good. When you're not allowed to reach for wire #11 just because you can, you're forced to ask a much harder question: what is this wire actually doing? Not "what's it doing right now," but everything it's capable of doing. As a regenerative landscaper who was certified in permaculture design in 2011, one principle really stuck with me and is literally now a part of my entire life. That principle is this: everything must serve multiple functions. The more functions it serves, the better that one thing is for the whole of the environment of the farm/ranch/or property I design. But now, I've translated this principle to wire wrapping and now each wire must serve multiple functions to be a part of the piece. Not always, of course, but its a general principle I carry through all of my work, and I believe quite strongly that this challenge will show everyone the importance of tying everything together. A wire that anchors a stone can also be the wire that adds structural rigidity. It can travel across the piece and become part of the aesthetic linework. It can wrap back and close a loop that ties two components together, or locks the component back to the frame. One wire, three or four jobs. That's the mindset shift this challenge is built around. Every single wire has to earn its place by pulling double, triple, even quadruple duty. This is also an invitation to push your edge in two directions: Go long. A single wire can travel further than you think. Try letting one looong wire span, connect, and anchor multiple points in a freeform build instead of introducing a new wire every time you need a new function. Go back and simplify. Take a piece you've already made, one that maybe used 15, 20, 25 wires, and ask yourself: could this exist in 6 to 10? What would you have to combine, extend, or rethink to get there? I built my Orbit design out of this exact constraint; six wires total, where every single one is holding multiple components together, adding strength, and carrying the visual rhythm of the piece all at once. That's the kind of intentionality this challenge is designed to unlock.

Hey everyone! I’m Raina and currently reside in WA state. I’ve been wrapping for a little over 5 years now. My love for the craft came from playing Minecraft with my husband and collecting minerals in the game, to wanting to do it in real life and of course I needed something to do with all of these rocks I suddenly had, so I picked up wire wrapping 😂 I’m most excited to relearn the fundamentals of wire wrapping because I really jumped around a lot in the beginning and didn’t “perfect” any of the basics so I feel like I need to start over and really get a feel for structure and how to properly design my pieces! My biggest struggle is genuinely just trying to design my own pieces and not having the basic elements down. Like, I can follow a tutorial perfectly fine, but when to comes designing and making my own jewelry, it never comes out how I intend and it gets really frustrating. I’m hoping by this time next year I’ll have a better time being able to do that and maybe even do a prong setting for once 😂😂😂 Thank you so much for this opportunity!