Japanese Polyhedron Nox Earrings - A Stargate-Inspired Chainmaille Creation

The other day, I was going through my long list of to-do's and one item sticks out again and again is "make more Japanese polyhedron earrings", with a big star marked right next to the note.  Hum....  right, I've always liked the architectural flair of this weave, can be elongated and soft, or very squarish and sturdy, it is fun and sprite-like, versatile and charismatic, shall we have a pair of these in shiny sterling?  With some colorful highlights, maybe?

These may look like the ones I made before, but this new design is a very tight and sturdy structure, each forming a bipyramid of sterling silver on the outer rim and natural titanium on the interior rim, held together closely with rainbow anodized niobium rings.

Oh yes, I made the niobium rings myself from raw wire, they're hand coiled, anodized with multiple colors, cut on my Ringinator, then tumbled to clean up the burs and residues from the cutting process.

I then painstakingly built the bipyramid shape with several different pliers, because the rings interaction was so tight, the sequence of weaving matters a lot.  A missed step often means a marred ring that had to be tossed and replaced :-(

But the results are very satisfying!!  My favorite is the way you can see through the polyhedron to take in the views and colors on the far side!  How neat is that?!

Oh and yes, the long, wing-like dangles are the result of an afternoon of moping around, thinking, sketching, testing, nearly giving up a few times, going back on the net surfing for ideas, heading out to the back yard watching hummingbirds zooming through my patio chasing one another..... then, a light bulb came on:-)

And I'm very happy with them!

These colorful and whimsical earrings are also available for purchase in my online studio.

~~~~~ So, why "Nox"? ~~~~~

Well, the fact that I made these on a Sunday afternoon may have something to do with it...  You see, I have a habit of catching the reruns of Stargate SG-1 on TV:-)  No, the Nox episode wasn't on any specific Sunday, but as I was watching the show and doing my "user testing" on these earrings, the way they swing, I see the shiny rings flicker on and off, echoing the little bling on the dangle, they all reminded me of the Nox.  Hence, the name!!