Archive for the ‘year of jewelry’ Category

I tell ya’… I just can’t stop making earrings with these rhinestones! Too fun!

Remember these? Well they were super light. Always a good thing in earrings… but not good for french hook earring findings! I knew I should swap them out for lever backs but I didn’t get around to it and of course… one got lost when I took my coat off at a restaurant. Deciding the glass was half full (’tis the season right?!) I decided to carefully take them apart and rework them into another pair from the one that I had left. I think that I love them just as much as the first pair! I can’t stop making these seed bead bezels so watch for more pics.

Okay… I love, love, LOVE these earrings! Can you tell I just want to use a peyote stitch bezel on everything? These earrings drop almost 2 inches and weigh nothing! You know what that means? Four inch earrings are on their way. Woohoo!

Ummm… maybe you already knew how cool these rivoli beads are?! But I just found them and I’m in love! Okay, really I love all Swarovski beads, components, elements, rhinestones… you name it and I pretty much like it! But now that I’m bezel setting these rivoli’s with seed beads I’m certainly smitten with this design! I just love all the colors!

My youngest had a great teacher this year and this was his gift… He had asked about getting a bracelet earlier in the year for his wife so I felt it was safe to give him jewelry even if it wasn’t for him.

I’m taking a little break. I’m not sure when my next update will be but if you are on my mailing list you’ll be in the know! So sign up! Oh, and of course the Mart is still open if you wanna shop. Today I’m just sharing some super fun Lucite earrings that I made. They definitely make a statement…

I just added some new items to the Mart. I am so addicted to bronzclay and I am finally turning out goodies to share. Yeah! There is definitely a learning curve but I’m getting the hang of it! I’m really enjoying playing around with something new. Anyway, hopefully some of the pieces will pique your interest. I know lots of you buy my beads to make your own jewelry but I thought as Christmas draws close maybe you’d like your own gift?! Anyway… I plan on having a few beads next week along with some more jewelry. Maybe even some rings… who knows. Okay, gotta go grab some dinner and get started on a night of chillin’ with the girlies.

So I think I finally have mastered the bronzclay. It certainly is satisfying when you can make things and they more or less turn out as you had expected. Trust me… I’ve made a few that went awry. I’ve also figured out the plating. I was having a minor issue that was giving me spotty results. Sometimes it worked great… and others, well, not so great. But hooray! Now it always seems to work which is also satsifying. Above is a photo of the names right out of the kiln. Okay, I might have polished them up because they seem rather shiny… and below is a photo of a few with a fine overlay of silver and then antiqued to bring out the texture. In person they are a bit more silver than they appear in the photo…

Anyway, I think I might offer to make names in the Mart. It is quite fun and everyone seems to enjoy wearing them…

Got a request to make a necklace using one of the leaf pendants. This is a great design (if I do say so myself) that will go with anything! It was hard to let it go… I might need to make one for myself!

I’m on a roll. I made the top of this ring from bronzclay, soldered on the shank, and then silver plated the piece. I really love the textures that you can get with the clay but I didn’t want a green finger… hence the addition of silver. Okay, and DH and I really wanted to try silver plating. Although the video that came with our tools was a little scary. Apparently some types of gold plating involve cyanide which needs lots of special care. Don’t think I’ll be doing that any time soon. I’m usually a “Let’s just try it!” kinda gal but with the plating I’ve been very methodical and followed all the directions carefully. Happily it has worked out pretty well.

Okay, off to the Coast for one last hoorah before school so no clay this weekend…