Episode #15: Wire Art Hobby: Building a Community, One Wire at a Time
Today, my special guest is Heather Boyd. Heather is a wire artist who creates and sells custom wire art and jewelry on Etsy. She, along with her husband, specializes in wire wedding cake toppers, tandem bikes, musicians and sports figures. Listen in as she talks about her hobby of wire art, how she got started and how you can dip your toes into wire art.
Mentioned In This Episode
Don't forget to join our wait list for the next HobbyScool online learning summit. Our summits are free to attend and you can be the first to know when the next summit launches by getting on the wait list here.
Follow Us On Social:
Keep Listening:
Pin this and save for later
Transcript:
00:00:02 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
And today, my special guest is Heather Boyd, and we're going to be talking about building a community one wire at a time. And Heather, thank you so much for joining me. I am super excited to chat with you all about wire art. Now before we get started and all the questions that I have for you can then you tell the audience a little bit more about you and how you got started in this fascinating hobby.
00:00:32 Heather Boyd (guest)
Yes. Well, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. I'm very happy to connect with your listeners and your viewers. And yeah, I started in wire art almost accidentally. I actually studied fine art and consumer studies at university and I was into graphic art and but I was living in Toronto, which is a very big city in Canada and didn't like the lifestyle and cost of living was very high. So I just quit my job and moved to Montreal and started selling.
00:01:02 Heather Boyd (guest)
Handmade items on the street. I was making hand painted buttons and things and and then I just happened to meet the man that would become my husband and he was making wire bicycles on the street and that's when I picked up the wire and I just went with it. That was 33 years ago.
00:01:20 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
So why are bicycles? What so is that is it like?
00:01:25 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
I don't know anything about this, so you'll have to excuse me. Is that like, um, stuff that you would build and, like put on a shelf as decoration or what? OK.
00:01:35 Heather Boyd (guest)
Absolutely. So he was making little 4 inch size bicycles and selling them on the street to tourists in Montreal.
00:01:45 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
Oh, I love that. I love that. So you also got into jewelry making, I think, yes. So tell us a little bit about that.
00:01:55 Heather Boyd (guest)
I was at the time making these hand painted buttons, but just before I met my husband I was experimenting with different materials. I'd go to the hardware store and pick up wire and very fundamental tools and I would take old crystal necklaces and take them apart and make new things with them. And so I was just starting to figure out jewelry making by myself. And then when I discovered the wire, I just went with that and I started creating more realistic things, like not so many.
00:02:25 Heather Boyd (guest)
Bicycles. But I would make little Kitty cats out of wire and musical notes and anything that people would ask me for, I would just make them out of wire.
00:02:34 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
So tell us a little bit more about wire art. For those of us like myself who don't know but very much about it, tell us a little bit about what it is, what kind of supplies do you need? And just, you know, how do you find your creativity to come up with all these new things?
00:02:52 Heather Boyd (guest)
Well, why are artists? It's been around for a very long time. The iconic artist that had a lot of influence on other wire artists is Alexander Calder, and he did these massive.
00:03:05 Heather Boyd (guest)
Mobiles made out of wire and metal that you are currently now in museums across the world. And he a lot of people don't know he actually made jewelry as well. And so I had a book about his jewelry and they had to show a retrospective of his work at the Montreal Museum. And so that was sort of my, I guess my first exposure to wire art was discovering his work. But so many people do wire art now and there's so many different styles when I started.
00:03:34 Heather Boyd (guest)
Not many people were doing it. You couldn't buy the materials you needed. It was very hard to get wire, and now you could buy all kinds of templates and kits and and things to make wire art there. People do anything from very simple basic wrapping to very intricate wire weaving. There's so many different kinds of wire art now.
00:03:58 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
Well, and tell us a little bit about, I know you do you, so you do the jewelry, you do the wire art. Do you have any other kind of art mediums that you kind of dip your, dip your toes into? You sound like you do. You're so creative.
00:04:11 Heather Boyd (guest)
Yes, yes, I am a I am what you call a serial artist. I am a lifelong creator. I love learning, so I love to paint. I actually teach watercolor painting. I was teaching last night at a local gallery. I love drawing. I do all kinds of drawing with them.
00:04:28 Heather Boyd (guest)
Pencils, pens and markers and anything crafty. I like to build different crafts. I've done sewing, you name it. I've practically done them all. Crochet so many things.
00:04:42 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
And you also have a wire makers club on Facebook. Tell us a little bit about that and how do you kind of help the folks in that club with creating wire?
00:04:53 Heather Boyd (guest)
Art, yes. So the wire and the wire Makers Club has evolved. I've had it for a few years. It started just by me wanting to give people an opportunity to share their work. And so originally it was called the wire art and Jewelry Makers Club. But then we had a lot of people posting things that were more beating.
00:05:12 Heather Boyd (guest)
And other kinds of jewelry and I really wanted to focus on wire and why a wire art and wire jewelry. So it's called the wire Makers Club now. It's started slowly, but as with any Facebook group, it builds momentum. So we have almost 13,000 members of that club now and people share their their work. So it can be work based on my tutorials, it can be their own work and it's just a really wonderful supportive community for anybody that wants to learn more about.
00:05:43 Heather Boyd (guest)
Wire art and wire jewelry.
00:05:45 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
I love that, you know, that people just come up with their own designs. I I just don't know that on that creative.
00:05:55 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
So you are an artist with of many colors. You have a lot of different things that you're, you know, you're working on and you're doing. Tell us a little bit about kind of what do you come up with next? Like would you know, let's just say you just want to try something new. What would you do to explore that, to explore that new hobbyist should say?
00:06:18 Heather Boyd (guest)
Well, I I've often take advantage of the things when something new comes up and I might want to try it.
00:06:24 Heather Boyd (guest)
I usually just kind of go with the flow. I see what comes my way. I have a friend, her name is Jackie. She has a YouTube channel called The Nerdy Crafters. So she does more like clay and and fun things like that. So she had to actually put out a kit with her, one of her designs to make this, you know, pottery sculpture type of thing. And I would have never ever done that on my own. But I thought, well this is fun, it's a kit, it's someone I know it's fun. So that's sort of one example of something that just.
00:06:54 Heather Boyd (guest)