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!

Finding Changes

I like to delude myself that I make these posts so that when I'm rich and famous, my slavish scholarly fans will be able to date my work.  Also, I figure you customer types like to know I actually think about this stuff.

In the past, with some variations, I've used flat headpins and fishhook earwires, as such:


However, especially with doing all the bridal designs, I've occasionally ended up using ball headpins and French wires, as such:


Images courtesy Fire Mountain Gems.

I've just finally made the investment to switch over more or less entirely to the second option.  I prefer the look of ballpins, which give the effect of a tiny additional bead rather than a "stopper" -- and they mimic the look of hand-fired ones better.  Also, while I never believed all the people who told me this, the coiled fishhook wires genuinely don't balance quite as well.  Admittedly, I don't have problems with them -- and I send all my heavier earrings with rubber stoppers to solve any problems others with less beefy earlobes have -- but the ball-end ones give a touch of confidence.  And they're rarer, so I think they look more professional.

So I'll work through my former stock -- especially since there are some design types that the coiled wires suit beautifully, I just don't do them that often.  But overall, I've decided that it's going to be mostly ball-type findings from here on out.

With exceptions to be made, of course, for cool headpins like the enameled ones in these earrings:


Available here.

But ball earwires, anyway.  Although wrapping a colored wire over the coils might be cool ... I'm off to experiment.

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:

Turning the evil eye, or, Multicultural beads! Yay!

My favorite big-box wholesaler recently (and by "recently" I of course mean "four or five months ago") put up an interesting article which is a brief discussion of the history of "eye" beads in multiple cultures, including African and Arabian ones. Great resource for those doing multicultural steampunk, as I find that steampunk designs are often at their best when their cultural affiliation and their salvaged nature, if any, are subtle and harmonious parts of the design. After reading it, I'm thinking of working some agate eyes into one of my "steamsonae."

I've gotten some excellent evil-eye pendants in the recent past from Lorienna on Etsy. The items come from Ankara, but I've found her remarkably speedy, and the evil-eye glass items are handmade in Turkey:


And a weird pair of earrings for your pleasure:

Available here.

Mixed media, Fiber jewelry, Strawberries, M

Image copyright Fanciful Devices.

These are awesome and cool and make me want to do a lot more fiber.

They initially appealed because M loves strawberry stuff, but I'm not sufficiently ironic and hip to not cringe at the little Indian (the artist is Uruguayan, and doesn't have my guilt issues on the subject).  Then I became enchanted by the use of the appliques.  Maybe they could be ironed onto fabric and cut out?

By the way, I bought some awesome enameled bells for M from this seller; impressively swift shipping!  I got some chihuahua bells and some strawberry ones, which were sold with this lovely lovely style shot:

The transition there was strawberries.  Yeah.  Now hold onto your powdered wigs, ladies and gents, I'm making a sharp U-turn back to fiber.

I have some cabochons which are clear acrylic and magnify what's underneath, and I'm considering going through M's and my (mostly her) quilting fabric stash for small patterns that would look nice under a fisheye magnification.  I think this might be a nice, easy, lower-priced assembly project, maybe with a little beading -- I really am starting to work at a level I need to charge higher prices for, so it would be good to have a lower-end point-of-sale or niece-gift product which doesn't scream, "I'm reselling pot metal shaped by small children in Malaysia or Hong Kong!"  (Actually, Hong Kong is supposed to be tightening up regulations, last I heard.  Snaps for Hong Kong if this is the case.)

Fiber.  Strawberries.

I used hemp and polyester ribbon in this one:

Available here.

TERRIBLE light.  Dear God, I need to retake those.
Yeah, this post is not remotely topical.

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.

The Buttons of Arizona

On the drive home, we stopped for gas in Quartzsite, Arizona -- a bizarre little town where you can't see the town, only the business loop where evidently the owners of the shops and gas stations sleep under the counters -- and in a strange little Quonset-hut store, we bought a bunch of cool vintage buttons.

Some of them are here.  A few seem to have been (rather ineptly) made into jewelry components at one point; many will suit very well for those vaguely-steampunk found object necklaces I've been doing lately.

The big hibiscus flower in the middle is a good example of why I try to avoid metallized plastic, but the wear and tear on the button has given it an awesome weird patina -- the orange is under the silver -- I'm tempted to do a tongue-in-cheek vintage-Aloha-shirt bracelet with it.  It's quite large; for scale, that orange enamel waffle-weave button on the lower left is a bit bigger than a nickel.  The one on the far right appears to be hemp fiber or burlap in a metal frame, which would be cool for a softer mixed-media piece.

The items focused on in the top photo are some little things purchased from the same weird, shivery shop: elderly bolts, it seems, which may have been buried or left in water.  They have a nice pale, grainy bone look, which I expect will be awesome for a steampunk assemblage piece; I'm hoping I can ream the longer ones to restore the holes through the center, but the Phillip's-head still has a clear hole and is a sure bet for being awesome in ... something!

This also functioned as an experiment; that's the same place I'll be taking my shop photos from now on, though on the jersey knit rather than right on our little glass-topped table.  The lighting is a touch cold, but warming photos isn't hard.  We've actually discussed painting a water-colored Tiffany streak on the underside of the glass to go with our aqua pots and green and purple flowers, which could conceivably make a superb stage for style shots, but ... we'll see!

Awesome Aluminum

Or, for our British friends: Awesome Aluminium.  I've always loved alliterative stuff and I blame Bill Nye the Science Guy for this.  Anyhow.



Available hither, thither, and yon.

Above are three pieces -- my Clockwork Orchid necklace, my Ocean Bijoux Empress necklace, and some of the bracelets I'm offering with the stocking-stuffer deals this year -- where I've used aluminum chain.

I was a little surprised, when I started paying attention to my materials, by how much I like aluminum.  It's got a lot of advantages.  It's very lightweight -- while I like the nice weighty feel of, say, glass or stone, that's good when you're working with a lot of heavy materials and fantastic for earrings.  It's easy to cut -- I've ruined a lot of pairs of flush cutters on silver-plated steel chain -- yet it's very very strong.  To my knowledge it never tarnishes.  It's also hypoallergenic.

People react badly to this on occasion.  Aluminum doesn't count as a jewelry metal to them, and it sounds cheap.  But honestly, it's such a phenomenal material that it's a pity people don't value it more.

And on the list of random trivia: Aluminum oxidizes to sapphire.  Sapphire is crystallized, oxidized aluminum.  Therefore, your soda can, your deck chair, and the chain of those bracelets?  Metal coated in sapphire.

Culture Shock: some things about the South

• People really and honestly are ... surprisingly friendly.  It's not that there aren't lovely chatty clerks with senses of humor, and neighbors who want to hear all about how you're doing now you moved in, in California -- but here it's almost everybody.
• The weather is much nicer than I was expecting.  When we flew back to house-hunt, I thought it was miserable beyond belief.  But it turns out I was not admitting to myself that I was really, really sick so it seemed worse than it was.  Also, it was in the middle of a heat wave.
• The hurricanes that hit the coast in North Carolina cause even nicer weather to happen in upstate SC -- we get nice cool dry breezes.  I feel vaguely guilty about this.
• I sort of expected to go through ethnic-food deprivation, especially because the girl at one of the visitor's centers said that we'd just have to get used to fried-and-barbecued everything all the time.  But they've got a lot of stuff.  Everything I'm accustomed to eating and much, much more.  They have Asian food brands at our local Ingles I've never seen before -- including some culinary soup broths I can't wait to experiment with.
• Nobody sells 4x6 recipe cards anymore.  Admittedly this is not really a thing about the South but a thing about everywhere, but what is up with that?
• It was worth moving just for Hobby Lobby.  They carry everything.  Jewelry supplies I usually have to special-order, at great prices.  And then there's a leathercrafting aisle and a doll house aisle, which always makes me salivate over the charm potential.  Relatedly, apparently M has always wanted a dollhouse.  I think one day I'll get her one of these.  Anyway:  Hobby Lobby.  Awesome.
• Cracker Barrel's idea of vegetables pleases me.
• Geraniums seem to do well here, judging by other people's balconies.  The landscaping up by our loan office/community center heavily features impatiens and lavender.  We have full northern exposure on our deck, but I have been researching native woodland species that won't mind.  Next spring, when I'm here for good and the frost (they have this thing called frost here) is mostly past, I intend to plant Jack-in-the-pulpit and wood anemones and probably some fennel.  I wanted a Passiflora but they're invasive in Georgia and we're all of twenty minutes from Georgia.  I am passionflowerless.  This is a source of sorrow.
• Our milk has a slightly stronger flavor.  It's not just one brand, either, it's pretty much all of it.  It's tasty, just different.
• In and near Anderson County, you can easily get hand-gathered eggs, giant jars of dark rich honey from bees kept by a dad and his two daughters, blue cheese made in Clemson University's dairy thirty minutes away by slow truck, and more local preserves than you can shake a slice of bread at.  Squee.
• Oh, God the bugs.  They're everywhere.
• They refer to cockroaches as "water bugs" in the South.  I could have gone my whole life without knowing that.
• Life just generally happens a little slower.  It's nice.
• My upstairs neighbors are generally quiet, but today they're either autumn-cleaning or moving furniture.
• Beadless and shoeless and chairless and at loose ends as I find myself, I am so, so glad to be here.

Supply squee!

So I got a package from my grandpa the other day.

Grandpa has become a big crafter of late. He used to make birdhouses and boats, but his sight has been suffering in the past few years and now he has adopted woodburning, along with everything his late mother-in-law did -- notably plastic canvas needlework. I've started giving him yarn for Christmas presents. One of the things he's inherited is some jewelry supply. I didn't think there was much of it -- but apparently there was enough that he decided to pack everything into the Christmas light boxes and send it to me.

... wow.

The shell pendants alone are incredible -- abalone and MOP birds and leaves. Then there's cabs and bails and Lucite and all kinds of lovely things -- much of it vintage.

M and I agreed to keep half and sell half, along with a lot of the fabric and trim and decoupage stuff we have stored, in hopes it will fund a tank of gas for the moving van. So I get all this and more in addition to a bunch of supply listings:

Available here, there, hither, thither, and yon.

We're also having an online moving sale thingy of some of the clothes that M can't wear in a more conservative part of the country, and some of our china and vintage goodies we won't want to store -- so if anyone is interested in fine china, cute plus-size clothes, and awesome vintage stuff check out our eBay listings for a bunch of like-new awesomeness we won't have space for.

Things I never thought I'd be excited by

My jewelry design has given me a previously-unknown passing interest in Fashion Week. I was a little chagrined to discover this, but not altogether surprised, since I already scan the covers of trashy magazines to see what kind of sparkly things are on their cover models and, when my coworkers and I were streaming Project Runway after work, I was sketching accessories to match the outfits instead of following the drama.

Then I got distracted by the Olympics, specifically the gorgeous, occasionally exquisitely pagan opening ceremony theatrics, and the awesome music choices in pairs figure skating -- Queen's "Who Wants to Live Forever" and the overture to Man of La Mancha, both out of the People's Republic of China. If neither of those couples won I'd have thrown things.

But now I have something new to be excited about -- Swarovski has come out with their Innovations for spring and summer 2010. We're getting two new colors in crystal beads (fern green and Provence lavender) and a new Lavender crystal pearl. A bevy of new shapes, too, of course -- the ones that interest me most are the couture Lotus pendant, which reminds me of a sand dollar and will definitely have to make an appearance in my beach-wedding line, and their new baroque pearls. I think I would still use a genuine pearl by choice if I was going to have an organic look -- for one thing, freshwater cultured pearls are actually cheaper -- but I've seen skeins of Swarovski pearls in person and their shimmer is amazing. You can see the whole spring-summer line here.

So that's exciting. Hmm, I was supposed to be working, wasn't I.

Wire and Bat-Squid and Rings, oh my!

A busy weekend for us! M has no fewer than three squid commissions going (Ron Weasley, Batman and Harley Quinn) so she sewed all yesterday. Batman is adorable. He's made of black fleece and deep grey suedecloth, and has a dark grey mask behind his eyes and a yellow fleece toolbelt (pockets and all) around his head. His heart/mouth (she always puts a heart patch between the tentacles, so it's both mouth and heart at once) is the Bat-signal. Tonight we have to get a fabric marker, because I'm going to draw a chess knight on Ron's heart.

We also organized a lot of my beads, pendants and findings. Since M is obsessive-compulsive on a wonderful, wonderful level, she organized them all by color last Christmas when I was struck down with the demon mononucleosis -- and we hadn't done it in a while. God, the number of beads I have.

Finally, I photographed a whole lot of inventory, which means two things:

a.) New items are being posted at last, and
b.) I get to give a blog preview of the new wire-wrapped rings!

This one is in Christmas colors and distressed copper/black wire. It has a nice layered look.

Available here.

This is a pendant-ring set. Unfortunately, I think the bead arrangement on the ring is a little too broad for comfortable wear.

Available soon!

And this one uses a nugget of rich, chocolatey agate and some brass beads that match the ring base. I think this is where I best pulled off the balance of metal tones.

Available soon!

I'm still playing with the technique (combination of wire gauges=yes, nylon-jawed pliers to flatten the wire=no), but those are the three I like best.

Joy oh joy!

I have a new laptop! Another HP Pavilion, because I've been impressed with their repair speed (M's Fujitsu once took three months to get a repair). This one is black and silver with a fun bubble pattern. More importantly, it has 4GB of memory and a 12-cell battery.

I'm going to have to replace a lot of item photos, but I'm happy to have a computer again.

... and now to try to get my Sims 2 neighborhood to transfer to a new computer. :p

But on a much more relevant note, M and I were yard-saling over the weekend and we dropped in on a lovely lesbian couple who were selling some fun stuff we could repaint for our hand-altered Halloween village. And also, a big five-dollar bag of fun-looking shiny stuff.

Eeeeheeheehee.

Have a look at some of it:



You're seeing:

-over 50 silver-plated pendant-style cab mounts
-8 traditional coral-and-white plastic portrait cameos
-more than a dozen vintage cab-mount link bracelets in various styles
-5 of same in their original packaging
-a few other, larger cameos; roses and cupids and courting couples
-two painted porcelain half-inch cabs
-fourteen gold-plated giraffe brooches with snap-in cameo mounts
-sixteen goldtone teddy bear brooches with prong-style cab mounts
-various-size pinbacks
-two hinged cab-mount bracelets
-various other bits and pieces in various conditions

You're not seeing:

-about fifty owl brooches with glue-in mounts
-fourteen silvertone butterfly brooches with prong mounts
-some very odd cab-mount hardware (bottle openers and gag tie clips)
-over one hundred vintage screw-back clip-on earring findings
-and a load of other stuff

What a find! Five dollars for all this. I can't say this enough times. Five dollars. I've never worked much with cabochons, but what an excuse to start! I have so many wonderful ideas -- how about buttons in one of the link bracelets, embellished with the polymer and metal flowers you see on the upper right of the tray? -- and can't wait to get paid in November so I can order the other supplies.

Fimo is our friend

M and I spent most of the day playing with fimo clays. M made a fairy door with yellow roses on the frame, a gorgeous thing. I made several pendants, some of which worked, some of which cracked through. Many of these will be showing up on Etsy in the next few weeks.

I quickly discovered that simple tools work very well for this task. A deck of playing cards and an old rolling pin work as a slab roller, and my jewelry-making charms work just as well as texture sheets to give the clay surface designs. Great fun, and after some finishing with acrylic paint, the resulting pendant are absolutely beautiful.

New vintage beads!

I've been given some great new vintage plastic beads - top-drilled discs in purple, white and red. They're begging to become stretch bracelets.

Word on the laptop: It seems that I'll be able to get it repaired, since HP extends special warranties for the motherboard and fan, and someone my dad works with can rescue my jewelry photos. Listings will still be slow for a while, though - probably until after the conference at least. Fortunately I can use M's computer and I have hard copy of the paper I'm using to write my lecture.

Since my plan of posting more charm bracelets has gone out the window, I'm extending that special offer indefinitely (i.e., until I can post photos of the ones I've made). Keep an eye out for the vegetable garden and bromeliad charm bracelets in the next couple of weeks!

Laptop woes

My laptop has, to put it simply, bitten it. M thinks it's the motherboard. So that's off for repairs ... at the worst possible time, since I was supposed to apply for a job today. Hence the hours I just spent retyping samples from hard copy. Palm, meet face.

So, um ... all jewelry sales for the next unspecified period of time will go toward hard drive rescue.

But! On a much happier note! I found a cool cameo at a local antique store! It's a beautiful shade of medium gray with a classic ivory-colored portrait layer, in a gold setting, pin back, beautifully cared for. The jewelry on the subject of the portrait is very detailed -- part of me wants to try to replicate the necklace the woman in the cameo is wearing with the cameo as the centerpiece. This way lies madness. Someone tell M to stop me.

There was a second cameo, too, this one just the white profile portrait, no background, a bit more discolored. It'll need mounting or wrapping. This one is of a woman who appears to have an octopus in her hair, so, um ... that may become part of my personal collection.

Might as well face it: you're addicted to charms

My partner just returned from a trip to Berkeley, and she happened to go through a bead store. She tells me it was ridiculously overpriced. There are these lovely blown glass beads we've seen at the local craft store, about $4.99 for three to five of them with coordinating plain glass spacers. And at this Berkeley bead store? Five dollars a pop. Yup.

Anyway. She stayed away from the expensive beads, but what they did have was charms. Discount charms. Eight or ten nice pewter charms in a little plastic packet for $2.75.

I spent over an hour sorting them, and resorting them, and matching them, and giggling evilly. I'm so addicted.

There are Hawaiian shirt charms in pewter and gold - nine of each. Little red enameled mouths that beg to become a Marilyn Monroe charm bracelet. About a million corkscrews in gold and silver. Yellow enameled bananas. About fifteen tiny, anatomically correct copies of Michelangelo's David (!). And a pack of wine barrels and grape bunches in antique gold with one horse's head included. I'm assuming that was an accident, but I would like to credit someone else with that kind of a sense of humor - The Godfather Charm Set, I suppose?

Spent today trying to fend off that nestless feeling by making our garden work. My partner, M, has an incredibly stupid flat-coated retriever who is convinced that something is living in the drainage system under her grandmother's gravel patch. He may be right, but considering the twelve-inch pavers in the way, he'll never find out. Unfortunately, he's destroyed our little tomato garden in the process. We jury-rigged a solution involving half a futon frame, three lengths of rope, two bricks and a crowbar. The garden is now quite a respectable little corner patch, and has morning glories. This gives me joy.