Polka Dots

Initially, this piece started out as a bracelet for the"Stained Glass" set, but the frame was a little too large for what I intended. Since I had a "polka dot" design in mind anyway, here is what I turned it into... The Polka Dot bracelet.

The story of the necklace: while making the chain for the Stained Glass necklace (which I felt was taking me forever), I've decided that my next netted necklace will have to be a a collar, in order to avoid the pain of making a handmade chain (forming a bunch of tiny S-s and linking them together is frustratingly repetitive). Here's the result. One half is a tiny bit smaller than the other, so lucky me, I'm keeping it to myself :)

Earrings for the set (might need to remake these, I don't like how I arranged the dots on one of the earrings):

Stained Glass

These remind me of stained glass windows in a Gothic cathedral, they have a bit of a medieval feel to them...

It's a style I plan on developing further.

Here is the first pair of earrings with necklace to match.

Amethyst, Garnet, Labradorite, Peridot and Smokey Quartz in LOS oxidized copper.

 

Endless Road Necklace

I just couldn't resist the temptation of making a necklace to match the "Endless Road" bracelet and earrings...

This necklace is in a way a sketch for a dragonfly/butterfly pendant that is still in the designing stage... I'm trying to figure out (for myself, not copy other designers' ideas) if it's better to go for a single wire construction or wrapping two or three elements together....

Anyway the dragonfly is still in the works, so for now, here's the Endless Road  necklace:

Endless Road

I've been designing lots of bracelets in the past few weeks, as some of you might have noticed. I wasn't really into bracelets before, never really wore any, but now that might change, just as my adversity to wearing long earrings changed after starting designing my own jewelry.

For my latest bracelet I got inspired by an abundance of spiral themed designs by some of my flickr friends (weirdlywired, kelpticfest). I've never made multiple spirals from a single piece of wire before, and it took me several unsuccessful trials to finally get it (reasonably) right... A pile of unfinished spirals is a painful reminder that I need to practice more before mastering the spiral technique perfectly...

For now, this is the best I could do: a pretty nice bracelet and earrings to match it. Love the design, I'm happy with the execution, too (just don't forget to practice more).

Somehow these flowing spirals remind me of a labyrinth, or an endless road that keeps returning into itself...

Leaf Earrings for the Amazonite Bracelet

This is my new thing: matching large earrings with bracelets, not with pendants or necklaces. As much as I disliked large earrings in the past, before I started designing jewelry, I prefer them now to smaller earrings, probably because I find it easier to design large pieces, my creativity flows more freely when I have a larger surface to work on. Unfortunately large earrings don't go very well with necklaces, so in the future whenever the central piece of a design is a larger pair of earrings, I'll match it with a bracelet (or maybe a ring), and design necklaces separately (with or without earrings).

So here are the earrings I made for the Amazonite Leaf Bracelet.

And here is the complete set. Again, I'm absolutely in love with its rustic feel: