A plethora of pretty things!

Shame 'plethora' is such an ugly sounding word or that title woulda worked better...

For all you jewellery lovers out there I have a tasty feast of eye candy today. Plus some stuff that I made :p

First off - I still haven't sanded & polished the weekend's lentil beads and realistically I can't see it happening before Friday now so here they are in their unfinished form.

First off - the best of the bunch





The beads I made out of the remainder of the red mix




Best of the blue/pink/silver



And the remainder



And these were made out of the scrappy leftovers from the previous 2 mixes (believe it or now, quite a lot of creamy gold went onto the red ones!)




Now... the Scheherazade necklace and earrings set - slightly better picture although blue goldstone is an absolute bitch to photograph. Its a little chunky for my personal taste.



And the first of the necklace connecters to go with the previously made red pendant (not yet finished)



And finally, these turned up today. I almost never use gemstones, partially because I sell Swarovski crystal for a living and so have lots of it lying around and partially because I'm not really an earth-tones kinda gel, however I've been looking for this stuff for ages - its titanium coated druzy (druzy is a generic name for the tiny little quartz crystals that sometimes form within rocks) and the titanium coating means it comes in a whole range of completely non-natural shades :p They're gorgeous. Far better than expected, I was absolutely blown away by this lot.













The druzy came from www.druzygems.com

Imperfection

It may surprise those of you who know me well enough to know that I'm totally anal and incredibly self critical, but I don't actually mind imperfection. I mind screwing up something I shouldn't - but I don't get mad at myself just because something isn't perfect. Everything's a learning curve and learning curves inevitably have fuckups - whats the point of trying things that you know you can do perfectly? where's the challenge? So... I can probably complete a 'perfect' necklace or bracelet using wrapped links and connecters. Because due to the nature of the day job, I do that a lot. I'd therefore get pretty peed off with myself if I screwed up all my wrapped links on a bracelet. But trying something new, half the fun is in seeing yourself improve. And being afraid of trying... well yes you could go through life doing everything perfectly because you never tried anything new but... your comfort zone would get boring very quickly.

Therefore this is an imperfect pendant, and up for rewiring. But the interesting thing about it was that as I was working my way down the weave, I could see the technique improving, and looking at it after completing it, I can see how to redo it so the mistakes start to be corrected. I don't know if it will be perfect on the second try. More likely, it will be closer to perfect on the third.

Pretty isn't perfect. Anyone can make pretty jewellery. There's very few people make perfect jewellery (and I don't count myself among them). One lady that does however, is Eni Oken and it was looking at one of her pendants that resulted in my trying this particular technique (I was orginally going to try crocheting). The pendant is here and check out her gallery as well - she's amazing - at the very top of her area. She also has a lot of tutorials. I've occasionally been tempted to buy the whole pack but I'm very much a figure-it-out brain and following tutorials seems like... cheating. Plus I'm spatially strong enough to be able to see how things are put together most of the time. Stupid, but it seems only a step away from all those jewellery people who only ever complete set projects and therefore never develop jewellery craft into jewellery art. Which is absolutely fine as a hobbyist - making magazine-published projects for yourself and presents for your family can be satisfying, but if you're going to aim to be a professional then originality is needed. Design and figuring out is important to me.

Imperfect Pendant



...two hours later...

OK second attempt. Still not even remotely approaching perfect - but significantly better than try #1

It was going reasonably well. So I added a bead. A reasonably adventurous choice of bead for the technique. Which screwed it up more than it otherwise would have been. Other than that, I changed from working with one really long piece of wire, to separate pieces for each 'row' (you can see the ends sticking out - I didn't tuck them in properly when I wrapped them around the beads as I expected to be undoing it again). And consciously remembered that wire loves curling. Its its natural state - no need to fight it.

For attempt three I'm going to take that slightly further I think and coil each piece around a pen to match the number of arcs in each row. Although later, because I'm getting tired.



...4 hours later... after a nap

OK - I'm actually reasonably happy with it now. There is still some slight problems but they should be fixable without restringing.



And perception of size works better on a bust - it's about 2 inches top to bottom. Yes that's my work bench, yes I'm messy. So sue me :p



The mesh size I used is quite a bit bigger than is usual for this technique which I think makes it harder to get perfect - each section has longer pieces to develop kinks! Its more usually seen as a cabochon bezel wrap with very tiny arcs/swags/whatever you call the graceful curves!

hmmmm artistic blank

I haven't been doing a whole lot of arty crafts stuff of late. Or rather I have but my entire time has been spent trying to master the drawing of realistic fur, which I've yet to accomplish. Jewellery making hasn't been happening at the minute simply because its too late to really get things hallmarked and on sale for Christmas so I've been concentrating on other things. I've also been weirdly obsessed with trying to get my house clean which I blame ENTIRELY on my sister. I ALWAYS get her pre-birth nesting instincts. Its so unfair.

Georgie did send my an amazon voucher for my birthday/christmas which I promptly spent on some artsy fairy books (and a terry brooks novel). Haven't arrived yet but amazon assure me they've been dispatched. And as I detailed in previous post I've been thinking LOTS about ways to develop the business in a way that will keep me interested. And I've done most of the geoff & older kids & family christmas shopping now. Only really my mother and some ancient relatives who need frames for their cam & finn school photos we had done to sort. Geoff will do cam & finns shopping.

I did finally get around to photographing my Vintage Lace necklace. Although it looks better 'in person'. I need to work on my necklace photography skills. Tiny things - no problem. Anything bigger than a bracelet and I start to struggle.

I can't remember if I already posted a picture but here it is.

Something is missing....?

I have a vague feeling that I've missed something I've finished recently when doing these photos. I KNOW I forgot to photo my Vintage Lace (or possibly Rhapsody in Lace) necklace - the cake part of my Coffee & Cake sets but I'm sure there's something else missing. No clue what though.

Either way. I don't usually make earrings as anything but an afterthought - I'll make them up to go with a necklace or bracelet, but this week I felt like making some relatively quick projects and opted for earrings in 9k gold (partially because I needed to make up the numbers for hallmarking - I only had a couple of pieces in gold and given that I have to pay for a minimum of 10 IIRC, I may as well send that many in for hallmarking)

Today however I have earrings to show you. And the Coffee part of my Coffee & Cake necklaces

Hoop earrings made with 9k gold wire, Swarovski bicones in Capri Blue and Swarovski crystal pearls in Gold Pearl.

More hoop earrings in 9k gold wire with assorted colour Swarovski bicones. Kind of dreamcatchery. Wish I had some little gold feathers to hang off the bottom.

Emeralds and golden shadow Swarovski crystal cluster earrings with 9k gold wire. The spirals at the bottom are a direct result of my being unable to get hold of headpins at a remotely sensible price in 9k. Mainly I just wanted to play with green and gold. I like the colour combination.

Long chain drop earrings in fire colour crystals and 9k gold. I adore these (and am halfway through making a matching bracelet - unfortunately I forgot that I'd sent the relevant 8mm Swarovski round faceted fire opal beads to my mums for counting).

Cute butterfly earrings. I wanted to see if I could do exact replicas/matches in bent wire so I did the wing shapes on these and added rose and 9k stardust beads and light rose Swarovski butterflies.

And the coffee part of my coffee and cake necklace and is called Autumn Cascade. This is - as my pal Andy would put it - an blatant exercise in fanwank. Not that I'd use such a crude term, but it WAS inspired by a very beautiful character for which the costume dept managed a perfect and meticulous detail to her jewellery at all times. Prize if you can guess the character :p. Hint - TV.

I have - finally - finished the cake section which is probably called Vintage Lace but potentially Rhapsody in Lace. Feel free to vote :p You can also vote for 'naming your jewellery is the most stupidly pretentious thing I've heard in a long time' if you must. Be nice about it though, I appear to be somewhat oversensitive at the moment.

hmmm

OK... as a jewellery maker, I don't do chunky, I don't do asymmetry, I don't do rectangles and I don't do wire wrapping. Which could be why this piece is confounding my usual philosphy of 'part of being good is knowing when you're not'. I don't know if I like this. I don't know if its any good. I think it stops just short of chaotic mess - but am not 100% certain.
I do like that its very tactile - its heavy and a mix of sterling wire, smooth glass beads and faceted Swarovski crystal beads and its also quite motion-y - there's slight movement in the wrapped beads and a tremulous jiggle to the beaded rings on the botttom (they look fine when its hung by the way - not so good flat which is how the photos were taken).

So am posting it here. Not that anyone reads this journal other than my OH who is quite capable of commenting when I wave it under his nose (anyone else is more than welcome to comment - but most of you who are likely to see this ain't going to have any interest!). I've done it on two separate chains. And again, am not sure which I prefer. I'm leaning towards the crystal linked chain.


So... Attempt Number 1 at a framed wire wrap type pendant. My wire wrapping experience before this was limited to wigjig components and wrapped loops so there's plenty of scope for improvement!

Sadly neglected

I do try not to completely ignore this space... but looking at the dates it seems I erm... did. Financial meltdown and pneumonia (in August. I mean really.... who gets pneumonia in August?) means that I've been desperately trying to keep enough money coming in to live on. Not helped by the tax credits office being total incompetant idiots.

Anyhoo... I promised pictures and pictures there will be. Nothing very inspiring but the studio (yes, i did give it a pretentious name!) is looking much more studio-ish - in my own, chaotic fashion. No longer a child infested bombsite anyway. More a bead-infested bombsite.

Plus opal. Not that rough opal is particularly inspiring in photo (its actually very inspiring if you're sitting handling it. But maybe I'm just odd). But I've amassed quite a collection of Stuff to Play With, I just need a shiny expensive machine with which to play. True I could go buy something to do the job for considerably less than my shiny toy but I'll just get frustrated I think and want to upgrade. So I might as well do it properly the first time.

In the meantime I took some normal work deliveries that I've been playing with. I'm in love with gold filled findings and I think its high time the UK craft making population realised their value. So its my current mission to make them do so, along with pushing gold foil beads. And being a seller of such treasures I do of course need to demonstrate their application. So I've been making some shiny things.

These were made with gold fill chain, beads and gold foil beads.










Soooo pretty! Must get round to selling them. And because my core market is sterling silver, I've added some more sterling jewellery to my designs, made with a combination of Swarovski crystal and glass beads (coz I've just added glass beads to my shop). Must get around to doing my ebay designs gallery.





And finally... Christmas is coming! And a little logical thought says that kids jewellery is the perfect line. Quick, easy, pretty and the little horrors get more money spent on them than any other section of society. So I've been knocking together a range of kids jewellery using little ceramic beads, sterling silver and Swarovski crystal - couple of example pieces below.





So I haven't been completely unproductive whilst ignoring my blog. Just concentrating on things that will make me immediate cash!