Use What You Have Pt III/Fun With Earwires

I was musing in the car the other day about my strands and strands of tiny top-drilled gemstone teardrops which I have so far found mostly useless. I wondered if THIS might work:

Tangerine Dream

I played with it in the car, and I almost had it. Fiddled with it some more at home, and eventually figured out how to wrap it so it would stay put and look good. (Hopefully I'll remember how I did it later...) Tumbled this pair for hours and the design was solid.

These are carnelian teardrops with faceted red/black agate rounds.

I also did up a pair in amethyst:

Purpophilia extremesis

It was a bit of a challenge finding drops that were roughly the same size, but it's kind of a rustic design anyway so there's some leeway.

I have lots of glass drops too that are more uniform--looking forward to giving those a try too!

I love the immediate gratification of earrings.

Memories of Places I've Never Been

I've thought so hard, so many times, about how cool it would be to go to Italy that I can damn near remember being there. And I sigh nostalgically for all those lovely mental trips. Tuscany was my favorite. The necklace below sort of morphed itself into a Tuscan palette (or what I think of as such) when I was forcing myself a couple weeks ago to NOT do a monochromatic piece. I had just gotten a pile of little gemstone rounds from the crazy people at BeadBabe.com who can't stop having these 50% off sales (seriously, check them out, they're having some sort of August sizzler sale, even their sterling silver is 50% off), and sort of threw them on the table with some of my other stuff and picked some out. For one frightening moment I thought they looked like Mardi Gras (which scares me, also Carmen Miranda scares me, but I do like fruit) but then I was able to talk myself into the Tuscany thing and all was well. (I'm traumatized by bright colors--too many early encounters with clowns). I used brass wire that I had left steeping in the ammonia fumes until it had turned a rich sable brown. The photo below doesn't show it very well, but the wire retained its luster. The stones are golden agate, olive ice flake quartz, plum jade, honey jade, lemon agate (the lime green ones), and freshwater pearls in olive green, gold and coppery plum.




And in conformance with my personal philosophy of conservation of mental energy, I went ahead and made two bracelets from the same design (if something is working for you, milk it until it's trite and irritating; unrelenting originality is exhausting).



This last bracelet is more in a charm style--I dangled the stones from some chain I had made from brass wire (again oxidized to a sable brown--you can see the nice sheen on it a little better in this picture) based on some industrial chain I saw at the hardware store. Sort of twisted S-links. For more information, or to purchase, click HERE.



I'm pretty proud of myself because the necklace and the first bracelet are already spoken for by a good customer in Ohio who just bought a bunch of stuff. Thanks Ruchi! I hope she has lots of friends who like jewelry too.

Okay, enough of that. Today is the last day of my Staycation (I'm exhausted) and I still have loads of stuff to do. Take more pictures of new stuff, retake pictures of old stuff, make more stuff, do another blog post, work up some interesting backgrounds with tissue paper and Mod Podge (not really working out yet, looks like elephant skin without the hair), figure out unit cost for all the crap I didn't need that I bought yesterday because it was 25% off (BFD), take a shower (maybe), eat (maybe), etc. I need a vacation.

Well I've never been to Spain but I kinda like the music

I bought this stone donut a couple weeks ago with a vague idea what I would do with it. I nearly drooled in the store over the creepy black veining in it--makes me think of the black moss that hangs from the conifers up here. It is so not my usual style, but I was determined to try something different (I think the market for casual jewelry is probably a little bigger than the market for royal interview/Academy Awards/ballroom jewelry.) I was nervous about making the bail though (I mean, my God, 16 gauge wire is, like TWENTY THREE CENTS an inch--that's like, a quarter. Seven more and I could do one small load of laundry.) I wanted to make something kind of almost noir, maybe sort of Old World, maybe it would turn out kind of Mad Maxx. Or Anne Rice. Or sort of industrial. My only goal was that it not be frou frou. I collect shiny things and hide them and then make jewelry out of them that tries gamely to be casual but doesn't quite make it. Too much flash. Things start out as Just a Simple Pendant and end up as a Coronation Neckpiece.

Well, this one didn't quite make it to Mad Maxx. Little too dressy probably for Aunty Entity. Stopped just shy of casual. It's more like, maybe, something the wife of the Mayor of Barcelona would wear. But I think it's a step in a good direction that it looks more like Spain than Beverly Hills. I think that's partly because of the focal piece--it doesn't glitter or anything. Just trying to diversify. My current inspiration is an artist named Lorelei Eurto. Here is one of my favorites of hers:



(CLEARLY I HAVE A REALLY LONG WAY TO GO). This kind of design doesn't come naturally to me (being, apparently, a disturbing human-magpie hybrid, all the supplies I have are really shiny), and I'm trying to be disciplined to use what I have before buying more. But I did buy four bottles of highly caustic substances for oxidizing metal in an effort to increase my inventory of "casual" (non-shiny) jewelry--if you never hear from me again you'll know that I used it in a poorly ventilated area.