Some Earrings

I decided the weekend would be for earrings. I made five pair, and one more pair is half done.

This pair features little orange-red seed beads from my Bead Soup from Donna Millard, tiny green turquoise heishi, large blue magnesite discs, pewter heart charms, and ruffly sterling silver beadcaps. The magnesite and heart charms are from Happy Mango Beads.

This pair is based around some "oil slick" lampwork beads from BeadAbundant (Etsy). They have such a lovely antiqued brass shimmer, I had to combine them with brass. I added garnets and pale purple seed beads to bring out the plum tones.

I started with Karen Totten's ceramic leaf charms for this pair, and added some verdigris patina discs from Shannon LeVart, pewter birch leaf charms, and little seed beads in periwinkle. Sterling silver earwires. Birch  leaf charms from Happy Mango Beads.

This pair is a little plain, but I really love these beads. The olive green is sort of glassy and rich. I like how the ivory base has some buttery golden patches, like a perfectly toasted marshmallow.

This pair below is my favorite new design. I wanted to try them first with just a smooth copper cap, but I think I would prefer them to be textured. They remind me of a fuchsia blossom--that's what I was going for with the little "stamens" dangling from the bottom. This pair sports a pair of lampwork beads from BeingBeads. I have another pair half done with green aventurine roundels and little Czech glass stamens in prairie green.

Biting the Bullet

Goodness, I'm spastic tonight. Disregard any indecipherable blurb you might have just seen. Not sure what I did.

Anyway, the necklace below came about because I made myself do it. More and more I find myself not wanting to make anything. I enjoy cutting out metal and pounding it and turning it into things, but the process of incorporating it into an actual piece of jewelry seems more and more tiring. I suppose it's a combination of getting older, day job burnout, and letting my physical fitness slide. And vegetating doesn't make me particularly happy so I should probably just suck it up and and put something together. It's not like I don't have a list.

This was one of the flower clasps I made a couple months ago, this one with a double flower.

I knew I wanted to do something in blue with this clasp, and started out with some cornflower blue recycled glass from Happy Mango Beads. It just wasn't working for me so I dug around in the "Blue Gemstones" bucket and re-found this denim blue sponge coral. I was originally going to use some silk ribbon from Color Kissed Silk in "Ocean Pearl" (kind of pale denim and a sandy, pale yellow) but I eventually decided I didn't like that, although I wanted to keep the denim blue and butter scheme. I dug around in my lampwork stash for beads the same size as the coral and found these large lampwork roundels in kind of a toasted marshmallow color. They're by Pat at Being Beads. They're all knotted onto light denim blue Irish waxed linen cord from White Clover Kiln. In lieu of the ribbon, I decided to use some of my new copper ball chain from Chain Gallery, with the very handy little ball chain connectors they sell. Very excited to find that the holes in the connectors are big enough for a decently sturdy gauge of wire. I think I got some 18 gauge through there.

I have a whole bag of finished charms, focals and clasps that I want to turn into finished jewelry but it seems I prefer to lie around. Working fewer hours at my day job might help, but then I'd probably just lie around more. I need a personal jewelry trainer. A Jillian Michaels to come yell at me when I start to nod off on the couch. Speaking of which, time for bed!

P.S. I made these other things too:

Antique copper cocoons (based on a design by Kharisma Ryantori of Popnicute) and clear AB finish Czech glass teardrops:

Hearts and Flowers

I haven't made bracelets in a long time. Here are a couple I made yesterday and today. The one above features one my flower clasps, with pearls, turquoise lampwork spacers by Meital, and some kind of mystery stone I can't remember the name of. I'm guessing it's a jasper (if anybody recognizes it, let me know! It has a lot of turquoise veining in it, along with the brick red and cream.)

For the one below, I started out with my double-sided heart charm and stared at it for a long time. Slept on it (not literally). And this is what I had decided when I woke up.

A little handful of ceramic beads by Gaea Cannady (that I have of course been hoarding forever), a couple of Czech glass beads in lilac, and a smaller copper-plated pewter heart lock charm. I love the combination of matte and shiny finish beads in Gaea's bundles, I love to put them together. I used one of my hook and eye clasps (kind of experimenting there) for it, and a bunch of my tiny beadcaps.

Here's the other side of the charm:

I'm in love with rivets. Functional AND decorative!

I'm pretty excited that it's only Saturday. Hopefully the rest of the weekend will be productive. Really hoping that the day job will slow down like I think it will and I can take a few days here and there to add some things to the shop. I've been so focused on trying to figure out how to make things from metal that I'm out of practice actually putting a whole piece of jewelry together.

An Experiment

I just finished a necklace for a customer who previously bought a pendant--she wanted a shorter necklace in the same materials she could wear layered with the longer pendant. She asked if there could perhaps be a detachable pendant on it so she could also wear it alone. Here is the original pendant she bought:

I looked through my stash of stuff and just didn't have a commercial pendant that was going to work. I really wanted to do another flower, because the original pendant had a flower. I thought the flower should be in copper though. So I fished out my jeweler's saw and cut out my first flower shape. This had been on my to-do list--in fact, I had already drawn some flowers on my copper sheet, intending to (one day) cut them out and do something with them. I wanted to pin a bunch of them in different sizes to one of my metal bases like I've been doing. But instead my first one became a little pendant.


Here's what I eventually came up with:

I hung a little copper flower charm along with the pendant, just for fun. I LOVE these little flower charms (got them from Magpie Gemstones) but they were too small to use alone. I antiqued it a little and tumbled it to make it match the rest of the copper. For the pendant portion, after I cut out my flower shape and cleaned up the edges with my Dremel and some fine sandpaper, I marked the striations with a sharp wood chisel. After antiquing and tumbling it, I domed it a little and then bent the petals back a little. I had previously flattened out some commercial beadcaps (in a previous spontaneous experiment--"Hmm, I wonder if..."), so I pinned one to the center of my pendant. I attached the whole thing with a ball headpin to a snake-shaped copper base that had a loop at the top. The flower spins freely. I attached the pendant and the charm via a couple little jump rings to one of my toggle bars, so it could be attached to the center of the three connector rings and removed at will. I added some copper chain to the pearl portions so it would be weighted evenly. Et voila!

I think I'm over my trepidation about cutting out flowers. I cut circles around them first as close as I could with a pair of left curve metal shears and that saved a lot of work. (If you're left-handed you can do it with right curve metal shears--they come both ways). I also prefer the shears for plain circles, rather than sawing. I have to clean up the edges with a Dremel, but I'd rather Dremel than saw. It's a power tool thing. But I've not used the shears on anything heavier than 20 gauge sheet--probably wouldn't work very well on 18 gauge.

So that's what I did this weekend. I've been dragging myself around for the past month, sick as a dog, and finally got some antibiotics. I think I'm getting better, so back to the grindstone.

Coupla New Things and a SALE!!

I made these earrings over the weekend.

Glazed ceramic hearts in speckled turquoise with copper.

Kyanite flowers with antiqued copper.

I finished my "Color Challenge" pieces based on the paint chips Erin Prais-Hintz sent me, but I can't share them with you until December 3. Bah. I've done two, I'm trying to find a way to make myself love the third paint chip. Haven't found it yet but I'm determined.

Lastly, my entire shop will be on sale at 20% off from midnight November 24 through 11:00 p.m. November 29 for Black Friday/Cyber Monday. Come take advantage of me!!! I'll be out of town for the holiday, though, from November 24 until Sunday, November 28, and I'll probably be completely fried from driving 9 hours (in a mostly straight line, without ever leaving the state; how 'bout that?) so I won't get any sale items in the mail until probably Monday or Tuesday.

My Name is Keirsten and I'm a Tutaholic

It all started, I think, with Barb Lewis' "Painting with Fire" tutorial. The instant gratification (I wish ALL online purchases could be emailed), the new (largely theoretical) vistas opening up...After that it was Shannon LeVart's "Color Drenched Metal" and "Hand Formed Links." And that softened me up pretty good for the next email I got from Eni Oken Jewelry Lessons--by now I had an unquenchable thirst for tutorials, even if I wasn't even going to do them (indeed, I have no immediate plans to do enamel, I just wanted the tut)--and I stumbled headlong into the Jewelry Lessons site like a broke drunk who just found a fiver on the sidewalk stumbles into a liquor store and started snapping up whatever I could find that seemed remotely do-able.

Well, that's maybe an overstatement, I bought two. I bought one on making wire-wrapped briolette flowers, because I was so inspired by Melissa Meman's gorgeous flower earrings but couldn't figure out how to do it (I don't have the engineering gene), and one on how to make little calla lily-shaped beadcaps out of thin metal sheet. (And then of course I had to buy the metal sheet). And somewhere in there I also acquired a tut on making kidney earwires from Natalie Girard, a Canadian jewelry artist on AtrFire. I've wanted to do those too but didn't have the patience to figure it out on my own. Sometimes I just like to be spoon-fed. Especially about measuring things.

So this was my fourth (or fifth?) attempt at the briolette flower. (I was a little alarmed with attempt no. 3 because I seemed to be getting WORSE with practice, but I stopped and thought about where I was going wrong and kept trying). I've had these kyanite spears FOREVER, they were one of the first things I bought when I started making jewelry but they didn't fit into my initial designs and I didn't know what to do with them after that.

This one below is also using the briolette wrapping technique (mine is still kind of messy, can't figure out how Melissa gets hers so perfect! Have to keep experimenting. I got a little wild with the one below and forgot where I was at with the over and under). Little sea opal drops and rounds, with copper rollo chain, and some great tiny ladder chain in antiqued copper. I can't remember where I got either chain--it was either Ornamentea or Lima Beads.

I'm pretty excited, this means I will have a way to use all those top drilled teardrop beads I keep buying but don't know what to do with. I have PILES of such beads so you will be seeing lots and lots of flowers. I may open a second shop called "All Flowers, Every Day, All Day Long."

This last thing didn't require any new tuts at all, just knots. A casually-shaped cube of boro lampwork glass by Bebesglassbeads on Etsy in "Ocean and Sand" hangs from cold-forged copper rings and a strand of knotted matte denim glass beads, with a few amber glass beads thrown in to tie into the lampwork. Front closure toggle clasp with hand-forged toggle bar.

Well, that's all I got. I got through about half my to-do list this weekend. And oh, gee, it looks like I didn't get to the icky stuff. Golly darnit anyhow.

Somebody Spank Me

Because I've been a very knotty girl. Twice.



Brown knotted waxed linen with glass, wood, assorted gemstones, pewter and silver plated accents. Hand-formed sterling silver hook and eye clasp. I got carried away again so it's a little longer (8.5"), just right for a 7" wrist or larger.

I just kept going since all the beads were out and lying around already. I didn't feel like putting them away. Especially since I hurt my back.



Lead-free pewter Ashanti style cross pendant. A little shorter than 19" long. Also knotted brown waxed linen. I didn't really feel like choosing a color scheme so I just used them all.

I was going to knot this last one, but the holes in the tourmaline were so small I would have had to use very fine silk, and I figured the copper heishi would slip right over the knots, so I strung it instead. So I'm knotty AND strung out. Just like Lindsay Lohan except with more to show for it. Handmade Tibetan copper and brass coin pendant (made by those Tibetan refugees living in Nepal), little tourmaline rounds, and some larger moss agate rounds near the pendant. Brass and copper heishi. It's about 17" long.



That's all I had in me today, a mental health day off from work. Actually I did the bracelet last week. So it was a two-pendant day. I was moving a little slower because I hurt my back this morning bending over to pick up a bead pole dancing. That's right, Monday morning pole dancing. That's where I get my coffee money for the week.