Week 6 - Year Of Jewelry Project 2001 - Amore

I'm not quite sure of this pendant, to be honest. It started from an old pendant tutorial by Magda B. however I chose to wrap it differently in the end to match the theme of week 6, which is amore, or love. I call this piece Love Bound Heart. It features a green pillow prehnite bead (I think anyway) and a red Swarovski crystal which has a really deep red color. Finally it has a few different sizes of silver beads as adornment. I think I'll keep this piece for myself as I am not quite happy with the final result.

Week 5 - Year Of Jewelry Project 2001 - Down and Dirty

This is for week 5 at the YOJP 2011. I initially thought that the bead is a carnelian but it turns out it's a fire agate. Regardless, I quite like this stone. It's a rather big one with some gorgeous patterns on it. I chose to give it a rather simple border wrap and just a tad of eccentricity with an extra side pony tail :) I will add this piece to my shop soon.

Week 2 - Year Of Jewelry Project 2001 - Eclipse

Here is the belated upload for week two of Year of Jewelry Project 2011. A bit delayed due to some onion chopping (say finger tip chopping) accident the other day...Anyway here it is, using a beautiful handmade lampwork bead and silver wire and beads.

Joined The Year Of Jewelry Project 2011 - New Beginnings

After watching from the sidelines for the last couple of years, I've decided to actually join in the fun at the Year of Jewelry Project 2011. My goal is to improve greatly my wire wrapping skills once I've finished the year. I just hope I can keep up with a project a week until then :)

The first week's theme is called New Beginnings, and I created this pendant with 2 new beginnings in mind. For one, I've actually used for the first time balled up wire for the pendant frame. Until now I only used it for silver headpins. Click here if you want to learn how to create your headpins using a simple gas stove technique.

Also for the first time I actually designed this pendant from scratch. I did a few designs on paper, then I created something in brass wire, measured it, created it again for about 2 times, and when I was satisfied that it was a workable idea, I've created it in sterling silver. So this is definitely something new for me. It's fun to go through the creative process and come up with something other than simply following some tutorials and apply your own twist to them.

The pendant is using chrysoprase as the focal briolette gem, silver stardust and some tiny green crystals which I'm not quite sure what they are. The are translucent when hold against the light. The entire silver pendant length is about 2 inches, around 4.5 cm long including the bail.

Holidays work - 2 silver pendants

During the last few days I've worked on two new pendants, as I wanted to learn a few new techniques. Lots of places for improvement, I can see that, but as a first attempt, I could have done worse. The first pendant is using goldstone as focal bead and the second one has dyed purple freshwater pearls. Both pieces have been oxidized.

From tomorrow is regular work again, however I do intend to work more on wire wrapping this year. I'll try to do one new jewelry piece every weekend if I can get the time. I see that every time I leave jewelry making for a while, I always have to start from the basics as I get rusty.

Healing Pendant

I mentioned in my previous post about the Yellow Amphora that I worked on two similar pendants both in the shape of an amphora. Here is the second one. The picture is not high quality, unfortunately just as I didn't have time these days to be busy with jewelry, I also didn't have time to learn photography and editing (one of the things I will include in my New Year's resolution), but the pendant is really great.

I used a quartz crystal in the middle - also called a healing point, or a crystal point. I love these crystal points as they promote healing and channel the positive energy to the wearer. I have actually a large crystal on my work desk in my office.

The Yellow Amphora

I'm back after a few months of absense from wire wrapping. Sadly this is how is going to be for the next year or so. First of December I've celebrated one year since I stopped working for a boss, and started a venture on my own. Here is a blog where I'm keeping track of what I am up to since I fired my boss if you care to read :)
Until I have my earnings on auto-pilot, I need to focus most of my time on building up my business, so I don't really have much time just yet for making jewelry. But as time passes and my income increases, I will be devoting again more and more time to wrapping wire.

I've spent this weekend creating two pendant, both similar in structure however a bit different in execution. In this post I present the first one. It takes its inspiration from the Greek amphora.

The materials used are yellow jade and sterling silver. As usual the pictures are not so great...

Purple Tulip, aka started wire wrapping again - SOLD

After a few months of abstinence from wire wrapping, here my next piece. My fingers were itching to do something, so I came up with this pendant. It's really beautiful, I couldn't capture it with the camera properly. I guess it's time to get myself a new camera as well...

Gorgeous amethyst briolette hanging from a sterling silver pendant. Size is ~ 3.5x3.5cm (~1.5 inch). Comes with the silver chain in the picture, and of course, free shipping all around.

Bracelets, pendants

I've been busy over the last few days and the weekend making all sorts of jewelry. I took a few of Eni Oken's older tutorials to brushen up some of my techniques, also purchased the wrapping tutorial by Earringsbyerin (available on Etsy) and finally on Saturday I made two bracelets in Sharlyn Miller style with a heavily oxidized look.

Tooth of the Wild

When I purchased this tooth style carnelian bead, I had no idea what I will do with it. However once I went  over some older Eni Oken tutorials, I found my inspiration, and this is the result.

Length is about 6 cm, and it comes on a sterling silver chain, with free shipping, as usual, for all my pieces.

28 Euros

Pink Jade Pendant

This is a gorgeous pink jade briolette focal bead that I purchased on Etsy a while ago. I again used one of Eni's tutorials to wrap it around, embellishing it with a round of sterling silver beads. Pendant is 3x4 cm long.

28 Euros

Carnelian Fish pendant

I love this gorgeous carnelian bead and I think I found a nice way to wrap it, in a net surrounded by sterling silver beads. I call it The Fish :)Dimensions are 6.5x3.5 cm and it's of an average weight.

28 Euros

Autumn Agate wrapped bracelet

My  inspiration for this and the next bracelets is the work of Stacie Florer at Nomadic Creations. She is working in the style of Sharlyn Miller and Connie Fox, and she inspired me to dab in this work a bit as well. I especially enjoyed oxidizing the pieces :D

Wrapped in various techniques, the center is made in herringbone wrapping using heavier gauge silver wire. 29.5 cm long, it can be slightly extended upon request to up to 1 cm.

29 Euros

Blue wrapped bracelet

Yeah, very creative name, what can I say :p

It has a gorgeous lampwork bead by an Etsy artist, some pink quartz beads and I'm not sure about the turquoise color beads. Could be Czech Glass beads, not sure. Clasp handmade, coiled and hammered. Also 29.5 cm long, and it can be extended about up to a cm or so. Plenty of wrapping techniques embedded, among others the famous herringbone wrapping technique.

29 Euros

Hematite Border wrapped cab

I bought a while ago a few cabs from Szarka and didn't know how to wrap them. Then I bought just a bit of square silver from Monsterslayer in the US (shipping nearly killed me, boy I'm glad to be still alive, lol), so last night I made this cab based on an online tute. This is the result.
Hematite stone with sterling silver.

28 Euros

What's new?

I've been a bit quiet lately on my blog, however I did a few more things that I added to my shop.
A small sterling silver pendant with purple freshwater pearls, done in freeform wire wrapping style. It's reall too cute :)
Modified version of the original Vita pendant with adding some gorgeous freshwater pearls around the frame, I feel it fills the whole pendant quite nicely now.
Listed a double spiral turquoise chainmail bracelet I made a while ago and never got to list until now. Sterling silver, as usual.
And if you are making greeting cards with stamps, I have a whole bunch of unmounted stamps that I need to destash. Haven't made greeting cards in at least 5 years, so I'm afraid I won't be returning to parchment and to stamping anymore, I'm too much wrapped in making jewelry :)
So you can get the whole batch for only 25 Euros here. I might list some other cardmaking supplies later on, once these stamps are gone.

Jens Pind bracelet with rhodonite

Jens Pind is the name of the latest weave I've learned today. It took me yesterday close to 2 hours of frustration after which I gave up, but today I started with full force and it 'clicked' almost instantly. Must have been very tired last night for my mind to blank out so much.
I made this bracelet within the hour (of course, not counting the time it took me to coil, cut and tumble polish the rings).

Two new silver pendants

Here is the pendant matching the set below. Took me quite a while to finish all the set, filing away all the burs and sharp edges, then oxidizing all the pieces, taking off the excess with the very fine steel wool and finally tumble polising them all for over 2 hours. But I'm quite pleased as how it all came together.
Here is also the whole set in one pic. Not so easy to photograph, specially when it's all about sterling silver...










Also another pendant I started last night and finished working on it today. I call it Spring Leaf. All sterling silver and 4mm Swarovski crystals.
I wanted to make something in honour of winter (finally) leaving us behind and to welcome spring. Thus the colour progression on the leaf of the swaros. The shape came nicely together as well.