Grape Jelly and Autumn Splendor: A Natural Pairing

Ashanti cross in pewter with garnets and Crazy Horse Stone.

I can't help it, those garnets make me think of grape jelly. And the Crazy Horse Stone make me think of plum glaze. I've combined them above with Hill Tribes sterling silver spacers, each intricately stamped with a tiny design, some other sterling silver spacer beads, and a pewter Ashanti-style cross from Happy Mango Beads. Hand-forged sterling silver S-clasp and rings. I love these two stones together.

I couldn't resist doing this monochrome number below--I've been obsessively churning out these heavy wrapped copper rings, and after they came out of the tumbler all darkly glowing I pawed through my pearl stash to find something to pair them with and these teardrop and potato pearls in dark copper said PICK ME. I love the varying colors of the freshwater pearls--from dark gold to bronze to copper to almost cranberry. The teardrop pearls look like molten metal to me--very irregular and organic looking. Wish I could remember where I got them. (Jewelry Supply?)

Copper and freshwater pearls.

Hand-formed spirals, oval link chain, toggle bar and ball headpins.

In other news, I can say that I have mastered (as far as I know) the art of sawing jump rings, and getting my saw blade strung nice and taut. My project for my upcoming staycation is to saw metal sheet with it, and do some etched and stamped pendants and charms. I have some sketches done of what I am hoping will be easy designs. I don't have the patience right now for the iron transfer technique so I will attempt to freehand them with my limited drawing ability. I figure if they look too kindergarten-y I can just hammer the crap out of them and turn them into beadcaps.

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.