Copper, steel, and aluminum... oh my!

My wonderful wife went to Pacific Recycling and picked out some nice copper wire for me to start my sculpture and it's perfect for what I need. Not too thick, not too thin, very sturdy, and easy to move. I've started bending the pieces to get them all straight so I could start working in the studio.

It's difficult, but I spotted some clamps in our studio that smash the wire into a straight line so I'm not too worried.

One thing I don't like about working with wire is the smell. My hands smelled like metal all day and it was only after much scrubbing and soap did the strong irony smell go away. But also I'm doing something with my hands for the first time in a long time, so I'm enjoying making nice shapes and 90 degree angles with the wire.

After multiple attempts with other types of material, I've started using hot glue for the corners and it holds together very nicely. These pictures aren't as good because I just took them with my iPhone vs. my DSLR, but you can see that it's coming together nicely.

Now for the "skin" I'm using cream-colored nylon stockings. I bought both white and cream-colored and the white is just way too white. Makes it look too fancy. The cream-color is perfect because it makes it look antique, especially accented by the wire copper. The stockings were perfect also because the wire shapes just slid right in. The copper didn't bend under the pressure of the stockings, which hold very tightly and let light though in some of the stretched areas.