Liquid Sunshine

Otherwise known as rain here in the northwest United States.

This bracelet took its inspiration from the sun totem bead in the center (from Happy Mango).



I was dying to use some of the sesame jasper buttons I found locally--I was surprised they had so much pale blue-green in them. I thought they would look cool with one of the pewter totem beads I got from Happy Mango, which are apparently inspired by northwest Native American totems. It would have made more sense to use the orca one, or a salmon one (what with the watery blue greens and grays I wanted to use), but I really wanted to use a round one, which meant the sun one. But wait! This made sense. Northwest, sun, gray, vague blue-green...that IS sun in the northwest!! Very, very diffused sunshine. Like diffused by thick layers of clouds. So, it's like a joke. (Ironically the sun is shining here and it's 46 degrees. Might have to leave the house.)

They're Back

Yes, you were devastated when they sold. I wasn't so much devastated as shocked. What would you ever find to wear now? But no worries, I made more.

Rockslide Earrings in Gray


Turquoise Czech Picasso Glass with Sterling Silver


Sugar Plum Czech Pressed Glass


If only someone would invent self-replicating earrings.

I Guess More People Should Tell Me What To Do

Gosh, I wish I had thought up this design all by myself. I'm really pleased with it. I didn't think up the palette, the customer did, but I DID suggest the donut, and I did figure out myself how to stick it all together. Although I admit the customer sent me a photo of something she liked for inspiration and I sort of riffed off it a little--with the double strand and adding smaller beads in between the larger beads to give it an airier feel. But other than that it was all me. She sent me some gorgeous onyx beads to use, and the little white howlite beads, and a strand of charmingly rustic silver heishi made in India. I hunter-gathered the rest.



Might have to get another donut like that and do it again! Loving snowflake jasper too. I tried it on to make sure the two strands were the right length and I wanted to keep it. I guess that's a good sign. I have developed a fondness for round beads, used to hate em. I was into squares for a while, now not so much. I bought some triangles, hoping to learn to love them (got suckered by the colors), but what to do with triangles...I hate mixing pointy geometric shapes with non-pointy geometric shapes. Squares and circles--aiyeeeeeee! can't do it!!! I could maybe do triangles and squares, since a triangle is just half a square. Triangles and circles are too much like Jack in the Box. Bad memories.

Well, now I'm exhausted from giving birth to this necklace. Maybe I'll go to the gym.

Spiraling out of Control

OK, this is my third and last spiral pendant. For now. Had to practice after I watched Sharilyn Miller's "Ethnic Style" DVD (did you know you can hammer the crap out of worthless foreign coins and make your own dangly things?)--made a pile of spirals in copper (trying to make two identical ones for earrings, took me about six tries) and one in silver (how nice, it only took about SIX FEET of 16 gauge wire.) Finally got to use my itty bitty slate pearls, and had an excuse to buy the 4-foot strand of silver pearls at the bead store. You're probably going to be seeing a lot things with silver pearls now on this blog. For a couple of years. ("Oh look, a silver pearl trivet. And a keychain. And a belt buckle. Is that a tiara?") There are two more little sterling silver spirals joining the strung portion of the necklace to the hand-forged sterling silver chain. I got lucky with those--I'm shocked I got them the same size.

I attempted a square spiral and a trapezoidal spiral (I was going for a teardrop and couldn't execute) in brass. Mmm. Not so much. Maybe I will make them into key chains for the recycling guy and his girlfriend. I did these funky impressions of a split leaf philodendron in brass too, and oxidized them to dark brown. I might have to do the obvious and use them on a strand of chocolate brown pearls. With smoky quartz. (I'm in the grips of Monochrome right now. Time to head back to the Color Palette Generator. Hard not to pop a Sahara Desert photo in there. "Oh, look at all those lovely shades of Sand Beige!!!" Or Sahara Desert at Night. "Oh, look! Black.").

I will make earrings based on this same design, if I can produce two more little spirals that are the same size. Wish me luck.

A Trickle of Creativity

Well, I am slowly trickling out new pieces. They are from the 24-item list I made a couple weeks ago in my efforts to increase my focus. As I write this, at this very moment I am realizing that "24-item list" and "focus" may be conceptually incompatible. Perhaps that is why I have only completed three items on the list in two weeks. Of course part of the reason for that is because of my 25-year high school reunion that took place over the weekend--I would have made at least one more thing over the weekend if I hadn't been out goofing off with people I haven't seen in 20+ years. Then it would have been a ratio of 4 items completed:24 items contemplated. (Still not real good). I did do prep work--oxidized a bunch of brass wire with ammonia fumes to a lovely brown color, and antiqued a bunch of sterling wire to a nice gunmetal color. I am all about the ammonia fumes method for brass--it happens slow so it's easy to control the degree of oxidation, you can get anything from a nicely mellowed brass to a sable to a deep brown to black (depending on how long you forget to take the items out of the container), and the finish doesn't come off!! You can brighten it up again some with steel wool, but unlike using some of the Midas solutions, the finish doesn't just wash off in water. It's really durable. If you want a slightly greener oxidation on your brass, Liver of Sulphur works better.

Here is the first item on my list, that I started at the lake at our camp spot, and then finished in the car last week. I'm calling it Sea Bubbles.



The large smooth slightly irregular sea green stones are aqua agate--just love the stuff. (Golden agate is lovely too, a mellow golden yellow like the inside of a peach). The teardrops and rounds are new jade, and the three mint green discs on either side are matte, opalescent glass discs from Happy Mango. The chain is handforged and all the sterling wire is lightly antiqued with Liver of Sulphur. Oh, and there are soft green freshwater pearls. I'm just surrounded by water all summer, being down at the lake, and as it's glacier-fed, it tends to be green--I keep making these aqua green things and I have more in the pipeline. (Just got some tiny, deep green aventurine rectangles that I'm dying to use).

I completed this piece two weeks ago at the lake--I'd been carting this cherry quartz around for months, trying to decide what to do with it. The watermelon association is obvious, and I had to maintain iron discipline not to fold up and do something literal and cheesy with blackstone roundels or little black coins. So I used garnets instead. I took the photo under our awning at the camp spot in my lap with the item in the lid of a copy paper box. No tripod. Like I said, steady as a friggin' rock. And that was even after a night of heavy drinking. Should have been a neurosurgeon.



I did this the other night--I cheated and just riffed off one of the necklaces I already did. I have had a devil of a time photographing this, and the necklace and earrings that are made from the same stuff. The silver coin pearls and sterling silver are pretty remarkable in person, but they just don't look very impressive in photographs (so unimpressive in fact that it only got one measly view on Etsy overnight). Pearls are weirdly hard to photograph. They almost look blurry to me sometimes (like after said night of heavy drinking). Going to try photographing this item again later but for the moment this is all I got.