Mixed-Media Bracelets?

So lately I've been thinking (and the thought won't leave my mind) -- I rarely wear bracelets anymore (except for my awesome geisha charm bracelet that I traded to a customer for some item descriptions), because I spend my day writing and typing and digging in the dirt and it's a very rare bracelet that doesn't impede my work. However, I love the look of a big, rattly, gorgeous bracelet (not a cuff, a bracelet-bracelet).

I also have a whole lot of single-strand bracelets that I've made to sell from a bowl at shows ... and have never sold a single one in person.


Lots of 5 at a great low price available here.

Since those are adjustable bracelets made with nice beads, here's my plan: I'll add one to three strands to the original (parallel, wrapped, or braided), then secure a cluster of unbreakable/break-resistant charms, buttons, and beads to the lobster clasp so that both sides (strands and clasp) can serve as a focal element.

Some methods I'd like to try:

1. Braiding some of my massive overstock of vintage pendant chain to make up a strand (this may be too stiff; we'll see).
2. Strips of cloth/lace/ribbon secured to a base cord with a wrapping of fine wire, as shown in winter's Belle Armoire Jewelry.
3. Leather cord -- which I've never done a thing with, ever, and feel a vague responsibility to try.
4. A wirework element making up one strand.
5. Interactive elements, like sliding beads and similar worry stones.
6. Handmade wire chain (another Belle Armoire project I've been itching to try).
7. A chain made of two-hole buttons (which shouldn't be too fragile if it's not especially load-bearing).

New sales! Hooray!

I have just sold fifteen pairs of earrings, nine of them custom designs.  Today is a good day.  Pictures to come.


Now available exclusively from McAuley's in Anderson, SC, unless you are lucky enough to be the tasteful Etsy shopper who got the first pair.

Longtime readers will recall that the last time I worked with a brick-and-mortar, they were pricing my 120-dollar Swarovski piece at $24 -- and it came back completely crushed, and I'm still trying to figure out a way to salvage the piece as a mixed-media exercise for less than the price of the materials.  But I have much higher hopes for this!

It's my birthday and I'll talk about buttons if I want to

Yes, in fact it is.  My age is a palindrome for the first time in eleven years!  And until midnight M and I are only 8 years apart!

The buttons from the necklace I posted last week came from the single best deal I've ever gotten on vintage buttons.  Here's another made from buttons from the same lot:

 
Available here.

It was at a yard sale, and the guy selling them had sorted them into jars by color and clearly knew they were of value, but some jars had a horrifically foul-smelling mold in them, so he gave me a price cut on all of them if I was willing to clean them myself.  It turned out that only one jar had the mold, and the smell in the others was merely the natural consequence of putting lots and lots of Lucite in an airtight glass jar for a couple of months (Lucite stinks a little; it contains some kind of acid whose name escapes me at the moment).  I scrubbed them all with toothbrushes and buried them all in coffee grounds, and only ended up losing the one jar; the rest smell just fine, and there wasn't a single junk button.  All primo vintage stock.

Consequently, I can afford to do a special offer on stuff from that lot.  So here it is.  Buy two items, at least one containing buttons (look here), and get 20% off on the lower-priced item when you check out with the code "Lucite always kinda smells if you seal it in a glass jar for a month."  Spelling doesn't count.  Add the code to the Note to Seller when you buy and I'll give you the discount within 24 hours through PayPal.  Offer lasts until11:59 PM on September 30.

Instant Vintage

Available here.

What is it about this color combination that screams "vintage"?

I mean, naturally the color of the large plastic/resin buttons is very vintage -- I generally refer to that shade as "60's peachy pink," though from a quick consultation of that ever-handy resource, Wikipedia's list of colors by shade, I suppose technically it's coral.  (Random side note -- I'm that weird genetic anomaly, a colorblind female, so I can't actually distinguish a strong orange from a true red.  I have to ask M for a judgment of harmony if I'm designing in reds or greens, and it's made putting together the Mixed Media Packs for Ballet Llama something of an adventure.)

Anyway.  It's not the muted coral hue I'm referring to, but the combination of it with black.  Pink with black always looks either vintage awesome or modern tweeny "rock star" bleh to me, but this is a particular combination that M and some of my coworkers reacted to in the same manner.  Maybe it's the blue-black jet hue of the blacks that's doing it; that's also a very vintage-feeling color.

This, incidentally, is also one where I bit the bullet and included a photo on black, which may or may not have actually been a good idea:


But it looked too bizarre with black at the edges and white in the middle, and this gives a truer idea of the variation among the buttons, so this was the only way to make the contrast work.

In general, these aren't great photos. I'll need to rework the cropping, I think, and try for a deeper focus.

But hey, check out those great 1960s flapper-style rose beads!

A necklace I wanted to talk a little more about

Available here.

I named this necklace Arc of Ages, which is supposed to be a cleverish allusion to Rock of Ages (still a'rollin, rock of ages ...).  We got the vintage (I date it to the 1970s based on style) necklace base from Grandma's Antiques and Things, a fantastic little store run out of a garage in Pendleton which has become my primary steampunkerie supplier (the octogenarian proprietor is really having trouble figuring out what those nice girls are doing with all that weird hardware).

What I wanted to point out, because my blog, not my item descriptions, is the place for annoying self-congratulation, is the rather coherent symbolism that forms in the strange combination of materials here.  (Note that M deserves the majority of the credit for this.)  The large watch face, of course, aligns it with the sf-clockwork look.  The rectangular shield has an odd, delightful filigree pattern reminiscent of a somewhat mechanized paisley -- and of course, nothing is more neo-historical than shamelessly appropriating the motifs of other cultures (see here.)  The arrangement of the subtle gears (really, they're barely visible in person, the light picking them up for an instant before they vanish for a moment in the harmonized chaos of the design) arcs gracefully around the watch face like an event horizon.  Also suggesting the passage of time and the "message of ancient days," as the sole quote I know from Cicero pontificates, is the centerpiece of the watch face: an antiqued silvertone pewter connector in the shape of a Celtic knot, representing infinity.

Multicultural, neo-Victorian, time-traveller-esque -- I think I found steampunk, honey!  Two different thicknesses of triple-link cable chain (vintage) complete the necklace in a statement-goddess-waterfall shape.

I'm also proud of the rather slick wirework on the piece.  See the back:

Business Chatter

Business-minded readers may wish to check out a recent Bullish column here: Doing Business with Friends and Still Having Friends (and a Business), by Jen Dziura.  You can find me "joining the discussion" (i.e., rambling to the faceless 'Net; that site doesn't have much comment activity and I was excessively lengthy) at the bottom of the article.

And check out some of the new jewelry items in the Steampunk Assemblage section of the shop.  Shown are a pendant, a necklace, and a brooch, ranging from clean utopian styles to gritty post-apocalyptic assemblages:

Two Musings

Available here.

1.) Somewhere, there is an earring civilization.  Venerable sterling elders with French hooks advise plastic clip-ons on how to raise their feather-and-kidney-wire young to be good and productive earring citizens.  Their mythology always seems to center around the quest to find one's soulmate, becoming a perfectly matched pair -- er, couple.

2.) I was reading an out-of-date travel magazine the other day while I waited for the laundry quarters to be spent, and there was an article about the memory triggers of smell.  This is something I often tell students about their papers -- scent is the single strongest memory trigger, you can tell me about how Grandma's house at Christmas looked for three pages, but if you add three lines at strategic intervals about how it smelled, you've doubled the narrative's force.  It's inspiring in that maddening way -- if only you could make jewelry of a smell.

I'll never forget the first time I stepped out of the airport in Charlotte.  The smell of the South is like nothing else, and describing it is as hard as putting into words that waxy, fleshy sheen of a salad-plate-sized magnolia blossom, or finding the perfect metaphor for the sound a cicada makes.  Think of clean water, freshly cut grass, and an assortment of fine cigars pristine, fragrant and unsmoked in their cedar box.

Yeah.  Like that.

The garden in mid-June: Coleus, native asters, thrift and liatris and rue.

A glut of history lately? Now, necklaces!

I expect the two weeks of Oh Hai Super Intellectual are probably wearing on everyone by now, so a light post of pretty stuff today!

Observe the evolution of the steampunk button necklaces.  From this:


Available here, and okay, it's not actually steampunk.

To this:


Sold!

To this:


Available here.

I need to work on getting back to the relatively simple, found-object assemblage style in the middle of the process -- while I like the multi-buttons, especially with the very unified rope-and-flower motifs, I think the cleaner lines and simpler contrasts were a different look and got better reactions.

The glory that was Rome

A necklace heavily inspired by Gradiva, the novella by Wilhelm Jensen based on a Roman bas-relief; the artwork and book jointly inspired some of Freud's ideas about fetish and a Dali painting.

Here's my interpretation:

Available here.

The cameo is a vintage glazed ceramic piece I've had for donkey's years, worked into one of my nest-type bezels.  When I'm making those I'm always convinced they're not working, but they almost always do ...  The wirework on the chain is not just decorative, but secures the connections between the chain and the beading in a graceful, textural manner.

Cameos are an old art form.  In the pre-industrial age, cameos were not the molded-resin pretties we are familiar with today, but were hand-carved from ivory, shell or stones.  There is some (possibly apocryphal) record of Alexander the Great presenting his Persian lover, Bagoas, with a ring containing a portrait cameo of himself carved in chalcedony.  You can still find some natural-material cameos, like these black lip shell examples, but hand-carved ones are rarer than ever.
More on cameos, plus multiculturalism in Victorian accessories, on Monday!

A photo discovery

M and I have been having some mild friction lately over item photos in the Ballet Llama shop. See, some of the items we've been listing? Hyper-mini:

And unfortunately, at a large size, the details that are exquisite in person (seriously; her tiny fairy doors are out of this world) become a little blobby and odd.  The ones with parallel or concentric details are worst for it, but the photo layout on Etsy requires them to be blown up to about five times actual size, unless I take a mediocre distance shot, and every crumb of clay is blindingly obvious.  Furthermore, the photos, if cropped to squares, fill the entire screen and can't be seen simultaneously with the text.  (Have I mentioned I miss the narrower, older layout?)

In this listing, you can see where I've been doing some experimenting, and at last I think I've found the key.  In Picasa, I crop to 170x135 pixels, then export in full quality at 570 pixels.  The last photo in the bracelet linked above shows the result.

It's still mildly problematic in terms of the item photo being seen at a size you'd need Super Magnifiable Vision to see in person, but the cropping can center and emphasize the item without making it quite such a large percentage of the image area.

So, success!  Now back to trying to work out a good way to freeze bolting cilantro.

Jewelry Sets and Busy-ness

I've become a lot bolder about listing coordinating items separately of late.  My bridal jewelry all links to the rest of the collection in the listing, since those are intended to be sort of infinitely mix-and-match.  Lately, I also listed this set:



Available here and here. Sold!

That ... is a weird piece.  I have to say it.  It's really odd.  Even more disparate materials than I usually combine, which, with me, is saying something.  It would be awesome to layer with a longer piece, though, a pendant on a very long cord maybe?  I haven't done a lot of A.) chokers or B.) multistrand before, though I've done a good few of the latter lately.

And I'm fond of the earring photo; I think I managed the depth of field and dimensionality, what with turning the pot that the earrings hang in toward the light and away from the camera, which makes them a little more interesting.  Not sure it's visible at the teaser size, though.  Hmm.

Also, since I originally wrote this post, the set has sold.  Obviously I'm not the only one who likes it!

I always consider jewelry sets to be an excellent gift -- coordinating necklace-earrings, bracelet-pendant, pendant-earrings-bracelet or what-have-you vastly increases the perceived value.  However, I'm getting more confident about breaking up jewelry sets listing-wise because I often sell them that way in person, with someone wanting just the necklace but not having pierced ears, preferring studs, or not caring for the pendant but liking the color combination and so purchasing the matching bracelet alone.  Things like that.  It's only twenty cents more for me, and it takes my customers to the Priority-shipping upgrade faster, so I think this is actually better.  Thoughts from the reader pool?

On another note, we've just finished out the semester at the tech college, and in the sudden glut of free time and M-is-home time I've had a couple of stupidly productive days.  We're still decorating the house, the garden flourishes, and I made hamburgers with homegrown spinach on them last night.  The Japanese maple looks like the Japanese maple.  The English primrose and daisies are not terribly happy, which is not unexpected, but my Oscar milkweed, liatris, and (shockingly) trout lilies are all remarkably happy.  The Jack-in-the-pulpit died but it's been the only thing to croak out of season so far.  More topically, I've made approximately a thousand charm bracelets, two with bits of miniature tea set and three with buttons, including my weird but somehow trademark combination of plastic buttons with pearls. We're discussing having all our work friends over for traditional British tea and jewelry-showing sometime next month. 

For those interested, I'm selling off much of my collection of vintage hematite in the Ballet Llama storefront.  There are also some nice hard-to-find charms there.  Get 'em while the getting's good!

It's hot, but life is nice right now.

"Asian Inspired" and its moral implications, or, Why Orientalism is Bad, Kids

So I just realized that my setup in this photo makes it look like the charms are sliding over a cliff to their certain doom.



That's okay; it sold last November.  Anyhow.

It occasionally troubles me to create Asian-inspired designs.  However, the following things always and without fail suggest Asia to me:

• peonies/ranunculus/large floral patterns
• cloisonne
• fish
• jade
• strong black/red, blue/red, or black/green color palettes

The problem?  Anthropological training has made me a little overly sensitive to cultural appropriation.  Mind you, this doesn't trouble me nearly as much as "tribal."  And yet ... who decides that something looks Asian?  Is it okay for me to use the term "Asian-inspired" when I in fact mean, "This, to me, resembles Western culture's idea of the motifs of Asia"?




The thing is -- I took Art History with a global emphasis and Artists in Traditional China in school -- the latter in seminar under Cheng-chi Hsü, one of the world's foremost experts on Chinese painters and their relationships with art connoisseurs.  I spent that class reading the UCR library's entire extensive section about Yangzhou courtesans so I could roleplay a courtesan novelist for the final project.  And this was after I abandoned, as beyond me without the ability to read Chinese script, a paper about the transgressive gender presentation of the painter-poet.  I am as educated on the matter of Asian art as most amateurs can claim to be.  Why do I always have this guilty feeling when I'm as qualified as most Westerners to identify Asian motifs?

 But that requires me to think of myself as a Westerner, which is a problem in and of itself, and it goes back to that old linguistic problem of the Orient and the Occident.


Available here.

Basically, the word "Oriental" means "from somewhere else."  It means, basically, "Them."  "Those people."  "The others."  To refer to someone as an Oriental is literally to say "the person who is deeply unlike me."  (This is why, in the Age of Steam, North Africans and Gypsies were called "orientals," though the term is usually specific to the continent of Asia today).

To call oneself a Westerner or Occidental assumes a geographical position; it says, "Of course this is the West and that the East.  Anyone who matters is standing right here, where it's true."


So true, Mr. Munroe.  So true.

So for the moment, I continue to soothe my conscience by using the terms "Asian" and "tribal," but being specific in descriptions ("motifs taken from Chinese scrolls," "suggested by the shapes of West African hunting trophies") and tagging with "asian inspired" and "tribal inspired."  The butterfly necklace up above is called "Papillon Orientaliste" -- the Orientalist butterfly, not the Oriental -- because I am trying to suggest an item created with elements that construct a reflection of a worldview of "the exotic" (there's an unwieldy construction), not that there actually is an Other to refer to by this term.

Possibly this is still morally corrupt, but it keeps me feeling honest, and I still think that's important.

Tutorial: Wire-Wrapped Earrings

I figured I might as well do a free jewelry tutorial at some point, so why not the wire-wrapped bridal earrings from February?  They're a lovely simple, graceful, infinitely customizable design that can be made more or less casual.  And maybe I can get the photo onto Craftgawker (unlikely; they like their straight-on hero shots at Craftgawker, though it's much easier to be vetted in now, either because I've improved more than I realize or because they're no longer permitting Etsy post photos so there's drastically less competition).

Anyhow.

Free Handmade Jewelry Tutorial: How to Make Hand-Brushed Wire-Wrapped Earrings
suitable for bridal, formal or casual wear, with a subtle 14k brushed gold finish.

You will need:
- 8 inches (or so) 21g 14k gold-filled wire, dead soft
- 2 round 10mm beads
- 2 contrasting round 6mm beads
- 1 pair gold-filled earwires

- flush cutters
- round-nose pliers
- chain-nose pliers
- sanding block
-nylon-jawed pliers

The sanding block can be acquired inexpensively at your local hardware store.  As for the rest, get the good stuff.  Instructions after the jump.

The Chopping Block

Every so often I find it necessary to pull something from the shop for one reason or another.  The vast majority of things that disappear from the listings are still in my inventory, I've just let them lapse because their photos are subpar or they weren't drawing traffic in or I was tired of editing the listings.

Occasionally, though, "test driving" or a more appraising eye reveals that I actually need to remove something:


This weird updated-1960s-tribal-safari-ethnic-thing necklace, an experimental piece where each bead is rosary-linked to a charm -- arguably an earlier step in the evolution that led to the found-object button necklaces -- works fine and looks awesome if you're willing to take the time to make sure the rosary-linked chain is hanging straight ... but it turns out that all your care will then be undone, because by some accident of physics if the toggle is sitting where it's supposed to, it slips right open.  The pewter elephant ones are usually secure, it's just a strangeness of physics.

Speaking of a strangeness of physics: It takes about three point five to four inches for seven-strand stainless steel jewelry wire to equalize its own tension sufficiently to lie flat.  Shorter bracelets will almost always have a slight curve.  Aren't you glad you know this now?

Mixed media materials

A couple of fun things I picked up last month at Two Gather Beads, our awesome local place:

The long spirally ovals are hand-painted leather rolls from Peru. The dark red and purple one will be joining some vintage buttons, a textured copper chain, and those hemp-wrapped rings behind it to become a big crazy mixed-media bracelet. The light green one -- I'm not quite sure. It kinda wants to be on one side of a multistrand necklace with the beaded strands all pulled through it.  I'm not sure I have the patience for this, though.  At any rate, the dark red-brown stripe look surprisingly good with leftover Swarovski Bordeaux crystal pearls. 

At the back: Navy Czech glass with this interesting AB effect that appears to have been applied through mesh.  It could go elegant or very industrial.  It will probably end up being part of something for M's next steampunk dress, one of the ones for Octavia: a pale blue velvety bustle gown with a darker blue polonaise, 1870s, with optional leather work apron.  In that capacity it will be joining another awesome find: mixed goldstone, which I found at the Artist's Market and Bead Store in the French Quarter.  The store, with its great selection and awesome proprietor, highly and thoroughly recommended; and some of the things I found there (including the mixed goldstone, which has exquisite desert streaks of dark gold and midnight blue with that stunning goldstone sparkle) I've never seen anywhere else before or since.

Odd lighting in that photo, no?  It was getting late and I ended up using the flash, which one really ought not; it oversaturates the colors and gives a slight film-grain effect.  On anything shiny, you get a line of bright white -- and just as you can lighten a dark photo but not darken a bright one, there's no making flash-flare on beads go away.  Ever.  You can see it on the leather even though it's satin at best.  And the leaves lying around were pinched off my flowering kale when they went crispy.  What would I do without fallen plant bits to stage photos?  Answer: not stage them.  But staging is such fun, even when it's a just a look-what-I-got photo.

I dream in black and burgundy

My customer's wedding was at the end of February, so time to show off the jewelry I made for her party!

Her earrings, wire-wrapped 14k gold fill with a hand-brushed finish.  I'd never actually done a brushed finish, so I allowed myself an hour or two to devote to learning the technique on inexpensive wire, and purchased a nice fine wire brush and file set.  I soon discovered that: (a.) it's really easy, and (b.) five minutes and a sanding block works better and looks better.  We live and learn.



I'm contemplating making up a tutorial for those.  Look for it at the beginning of April!

The bracelets were three-strand Bordeaux Swarovski pearl and black onyx with pewter toggle clasps and silver-plated charms made of crystal pearls with bead caps.
Lessons learned here:
(a.) Get the wrist measurements before ordering the supplies -- I think this customer may have gone handmade partly because she couldn't find anything ready-made to fit her very small bridesmaids.  I have a bunch of extra pearls.  But this is okay because I also learned:
(b.) Allow "wiggle room" in your pricing for stuff to sell out two minutes before you place your order.  That is not the originally planned clasp.  And I had to get the 6mm pearls much more expensively from Beadaholique when Fire Mountain Gems sold out of them since they were having a sale.
The clasp: an adventure.  I highly recommend this shop and this one for supplies; neither of them were selling multiples of the clasp, but they were both very prompt in telling me so!

I couldn't resist doing "vintage" styled shots of the jewelry.  This is the "winter" version, styled with browned leaves of flowering kale -- I desaturated, soft-focused and upped the dynamic color range for a sense of time and nostalgia:



And here's the "warmer" version, half-sepia-filtered, graduated-tinted, and soft-focused after styled with a litter of the deadheads from my apricot violas, for a sense of nostalgia, the warm blush of the beautiful and impermanent:


Pruning makes for great props. Also, I definitely want to do some more sanding of metal for the nice matte finish. 

The total of the jewelry was five bracelets and a pair of earrings: all in all, a good-sized commission, though if I hadn't been custom-sizing each one and thus redesigning a little, I'd have naturally gone stark raving mad on bracelet four.  But as it was, getting the same design with varying wrist sizes was an interesting challenge.  Much fun!

Meditation upon Chandeliers

Surely someone must wear chandelier earrings these days.  Right?

Chandelier earrings have seemed since I started my Etsy shop to just be not worth the effort.  They consistently get lower views than similarly tagged earrings in other styles, I've never sold a pair, and they are actually harder and more repetitive to make than even many-tiered drops.


Available here.

The wholesaler I use is having a sale on a bunch of Swarovski stuff and I ordered some of their silver-plated pewter findings, but found myself hesitating over the chandelier findings.  "Chelsea," I said to myself, "these are the best deal they have.  Chandelier plus post plus clutch.  If you're trying to get the most for your money this is what you should be doing."

Then I said to myself, "But it's foolish to throw good money after bad getting things that won't sell.  And the likelihood of someone requesting a pair of chandelier earrings, let alone a single pair in the specific color you're getting, is apparently slim."

Then I said to myself, "I need to stop talking to myself.  It alarms Megan if I do it too often or earnestly."

So really, which is worse?  Passing up a pretty good opportunity to get discount supplies -- or getting supplies that I know are slow sellers?

The pair above was for the wedding collection, mind you, and wedding jewelry sort of across the board seems to be largely the same stuff so I felt obligated to have some "classic" boring pieces.  I don't think they're especially boring, though, and I'm really proud of the photo, where the slightly darker clay sets off the rainbow effect of the AB crystal quite well for this neat sort of carnival effect.  Still, they were meant as a complement, not a showpiece.  This pair was more intended for actual, y'know, coolness, sort of a Steampunk Atlantean feel:



Available here.

Possibly the slow selling is because people are highly aware that anonymous chandelier earrings are a staple of the cheap import fashion jewelry market and the look can be gotten for a lot less -- for which I can't blame people at all.  It's a little ludicrous to try to compete with dollar-a-pair outfits at their own game, and the look has to be significantly different for jewelry to not be a futile market.  The look has to be different (unexpected bead and finding choices); the quality has to be higher (I wire-wrap the elements together, because that's a whole lot of a small, fine-gauge jump rings to put so much trust in and wire-wrapping is much more secure).

I did take the trouble to list another set this week, because I've had these forty-year-old curtain rings in my hardware box for ages, then found that it is remarkable how much grey transparent glass will take on the tones of the metal it's nearest:

Available here.

Still, ones like the second photo seem like they ought to be going better than they do ... which leads me back to my original question.  Is it just that I'm the only one who wears chandelier earrings anymore?

The "creative spirit" and the right to be moody

Every few days, I realize again what a small and colorless thing my life was in those three months devoid of both beading and Megan.

I tend to be slightly annoyed with myself upon this realization (once I get done being pathetically grateful to the people who made it possible for that period to be only one quarter year long) because it bothers me when people talk loftily about how creation makes their soul take wing and they only know peace when making things.  I am not that sort of person.  As an illustration, I spent the last few days teaching myself to use GIMP for absolutely no utility by making a set of classic emo-kid Lord of the Rings Livejournal icons with Abney Park lyrics -- in, naturally, an ironic and self-aware manner.  For those hours of fighting with the text-layer editor, I knew creative peace, and there was absolutely nothing lofty or meaningful about it.

(Conclusion: Among free programs, Picasa really is your best bet for the basics of organizing and screwing around with the highlights.  Also for adding text on non-busy backgrounds, but don't think you're getting drop shadows or anything special.  Strictly business.  GIMP is great fun but better for arty noodling around than businesslike photography.  Though it made great banners and icons ... more on this later.)

Anyhow.

The problem with that whole Creative Spirit attitude is that it eliminates the right to be in a bad mood.  You're left feeling guilty about your work: "I shouldn't bead!  I'm angry!  Hypnotically soothing as it is to slip the wire through the little holes again and again and again, I mustn't, because all the people who look and sound like Artists say that the best work comes when you are in a spiritually nurtured, well-organized physical and mental space."

Maybe I'd be a more successful designer if I could talk myself into the colorfully Inspired mood, but I can't.  I don't.  I am a person who screws around on the Internet for hours on end and beads when I'm depressed, except when I can't, and loves demotivational posters to distraction.  Sometimes it's not a matter of Being An Art Jewelry Designer.  Sometimes it's a matter of picking some stuff that looks nice together and beading until you're relaxed -- and maybe if you've got a pretty good eye for stuff that goes together the resulting stuff is pretty and saleable stuff.

Coming soon: a collection of my favorite wincingly bad story-jewelry sayings.

Have an unrelated picture of a memory bracelet!

Available here.

Sketching, for a given value of sketching

Still in a haze of trying to get the business going again, so a quick post today.  But here are the "sketches" for my current custom order, a pair of earrings and some bridesmaid-and-flower girl bracelets for a vintage-Hollywood-glamour-style wedding where the colors are black and burgundy and the bride will be wearing this lovely gown in silver and pale gold:

The designs will probably be in silver-plated pewter with black onyx and Bordeaux Swarovski crystal pearls.

And yes, this is how I "sketch" for almost all my custom orders.  I'm a pretty fair artist, as long as I don't try to draw feet, but I find it easier for both the client and I to see what I'm trying to show them given clear differentiation and being able to type into the sketch.

Bridal Collections 4: Opalesce

I am totally in love with sea opal.  I tend to like manmade stones in general -- witness my abiding love for sunstone/brown goldstone.  This is a treated glass which is absolutely freaking amazing in sunlight.  So naturally, I did an entire collection with it.


The name comes from the verb "to opalesce," meaning "to shine or glow like an opal."  I almost called it "Faience" but I figured there was even less chance of me or anyone else ever spelling it correctly.


Available here.

This is probably the most "usual," classic beaded collection.  I like how some of the pieces are very sleek and modern and some are more feminine and ornamented.  It sort of begs for mix and match.  I actually think it would be really cool for a carnival-themed wedding, with all the colors it picks up like carnival glass, but it would suit a beach wedding or a cocktail-hour sort of affair too.  And of course, there will be a sale with great discounts on this fascinating modern wedding jewelry:

Through October 21, purchase any piece from the Opalesce bridal collection and get free shipping (in the U.S.) or a shipping discount based on location (everywhere else) if you mention this post.

Discounts are given through PayPal.

Happy shopping!