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:

Leaf Bracelet 3, with amazonite

And here's the third variation for the Leaf bracelet... I don't have a matching pair of earrings and/or a pendant for it, though I did make something similar, with Peridots a long time ago.

For this bracelet I used some very nice AA 4 mm faceted round Amazonite beads... though sadly they reacted with the LOS (or the copper, I don't know) and they've lost their beautiful blue color, and acquired a hint of grey: this might be some kind of an illusion though, next to the copper they might appear less bright than by themselves. The bracelet looks beautiful, nonetheless, it has a rustic elegance that I seem to like a lot lately.

Leaf Bracelet 2, with White Freshwater Pearls

Here's the second installment in the "Leaf" bracelet series...

I think it turned out beautifully...

It was made to match the so called "White Swan" set made last year, one of my favorite designs. I think I'll have to adjust the oxidation a bit, the bracelet has a lighter patina. But maybe I'll just wait a little, time might come to the rescue and the bracelet will eventually acquire that nice dark patina naturally.

Leaf Bracelet

A bracelet idea I got the other day, after making the bracelet for the Peridot earrings. It's the most basic, most simple design, I can't believe nobody thought of it before. And I already have two or three more variations in my head, I'm gonna post them here when I'll have a little time to make them.

For now, here's the basic design:

It looks great with the copper leaves set I made sometime last year:

Peridot "Snakes"

I ordered some AA 3 mm Peridot rondelles a while ago from Beadsonsale.com, but they've sent me some (probably) A+ grade 4 mm faceted rounds instead. It wasn't worth the trouble of sending them back, so I've put them away - they've been lying around in my drawer for months now, never knew what to do with them. 4mm is the worst possible size in beads for me, I'm always having trouble finding a use for them. I tend to use either smaller or larger beads in my designs. Then I remembered the "Christmas Tree" earrings I made last December....

...and going through my sketches I found a variation I planned of doing, but completely forgot about. And the 4 mm Peridots seemed just the perfect size for it. The earrings turned out a little on the large side (and there seems to be a larger demand for earrings than earring and pendant sets, anyway), so I've decided not to make a pendant/necklace to match...

...instead I made a bracelet. It is light, delicate, with an understated elegance, and it looks great on the wrist.

Click on the images for larger pics.

My First Collection

I've been a little neglectful lately, but I had a good reason for it: I had to put aside jewelry making for a while, my fingers needed a break after a few Nautilus pieces made one after the other.

I didn't actually set out to make this many "Caramel Swirls", although I like this design very much... It was simply another case of insufficient planning on my part, resulting in a failed bracelet that needed rescuing: the original piece was re-purposed into two separate pieces, and in the process new ideas popped up, all based on the initial design.

This is how my very first real collection is being born. It's still in the making, but it already has a pendant/earring set and a collar necklace (blogged about them recently), plus two bracelets, a shawl pin and an upper arm bracelet (also a first for me).

And it all started, or maybe continued (as the pendant set and the necklace were already made) with an idea I had for a bracelet: two double spirals linked together like a clam. Unfortunately, I made the spirals two big, and despite a nagging feeling that something was wrong, I kept on wrapping them. And I ended up with two extra large double spirals (Nautiluses) that looked really out of balance when linked together into a single bracelet... So I had to come up with some other use for the finished pieces, otherwise all that work would have been wasted (though one could say it was still useful as a learning experience).

One of the pieces ended up as a new, different kind of bracelet:

The other as a shawl pin:

While wrapping the bracelet, I realized maybe I should have used a single Nautilus as a centerpiece for the bracelet, for a more balanced design... So I made one just to see if that was the case:

And it didn't end here... Why not make an adjustable bracelet, I thought. No, I've made plenty of bracelets for now, let's try an upper arm band instead:

Another piece, an open front collar necklace is to follow... when I find the time and my fingers are well rested.

Peridot Hoops

I'm out of small coral beads, and couldn't wait for another order to arrive. I just had to see how a pair of "double helix" hoop earrings would look like. So I made them (two more days of wrapping) with another one of my favorite gemstones: Peridot. I realize now that I've made only two pairs of hoop earrings over the past two and a half years, since I've started making jewelry.

These hoops were painstakingly woven with 28 Ga over 20 Ga copper wire. When the frames were ready I added those really tiny Peridot beads I was sure I couldn't do anything with (they're about 1.3 mm in diameter), twisted them in a double helix, formed the hoops then oxidized and carefully hand polished them.

Garnet Chandeliers

A few months back, I made a pair of delicate Victorian-style garnet earrings that I liked very much. But my sister liked them too, maybe even more than I did, so we "struck a bargain" at Christmas: I kept the carnelian DNA-earrings I originally made for her (they were just a little bit too large on her), and she got to keep the Victoria earrings instead.

But then, after I got back from Transylvania in January, I would often find myself rummaging through the jewelry drawer for something red with silver... I had made many coral pieces with copper over the past two years, but garnet was what I was really looking for.

So I've finally decided to make a similar pair of earrings for myself...

Now I find myself looking for an occasion just to wear them, or an outfit to pair them with...

My sister's earrings, smaller and more delicate:

And mine, a bit larger and bulkier, but still quite elegant:

Caramel Swirls

Some weeks ago, while walking on Mandell Street to the Rice Gym for a swim, I got an idea for an asymmetrical spiral pendant... and I'm struggling with the execution ever since.

I haven't been able to come up with a solution to this problem: I can't seem to make the little spirals "off-kilter" enough, they always end up near the center, making the asymmetry look accidental, when I'm aiming for a more deliberate asymmetrical look.

Fortunately though, while trying to figure out this problem, I "happened upon"  two really nice designs (named both of them "Caramel Swirl").
 
The first is a basic, almost classic Nautilus, while the second design evolved almost naturally from the first: two double nautiluses linked together to form the centerpiece of a choker necklace. This is my new absolute favorite piece! I liked it so much I even used it for my blog's banner. And I think it's going to be my online shop's banner, too, whenever I 'll have one.

Double Helix Bracelet

Finally, I got around to making a Double Helix bracelet...

These larger, DNA-inspired pieces are so very time-consuming to make, I just kept putting off  starting a new project, after I made two necklaces last month. But the idea never stopped bugging me... and this last weekend a backache prevented me from doing anything useful around the house, so I finally cuddled up comfortably in the armchair and started weaving, and for two days I just kept on weaving (with breaks, of course), until yesterday late in the afternoon the bracelet was at last finished.

Originally, this was going to be a matching bracelet for the copper/peridot DNA-earrings (featured in a previous post)... but the peridot beads I had on hand turned out to be either too small, or much too large for this project (Note to self: the 2 mm round peridots on Firemountain are waaay too small for anything). I had to choose between garnets and some juicy red corals, and naturally I went with the corals -  I love how they look with tarnished copper (now, I used them all up, so I'll have to buy some more if I want to make earrings too).

Here's the result:

Coiled

A couple of years ago, when I was still experimenting with different types of jewelry making techniques, trying to find the one that would suit me best, I made several coiled earrings and earring/pendant sets, as a way of perfecting my wire wrapping skills.

I'm posting the designs here, as I'm thinking of revisiting the technique sometime in the future, and I want to have the old ones at hand, for comparison.

Here's a montage of my coiled designs, all shapes and forms:

Teardrops

Two entries back I started grouping my older designs based on basic forms, shapes and design elements.

After spirals, leaves, flowers and branches I'll continue with teardrops - a very popular and quite versatile form, which lends itself to a variety of design possibilities.

I've created all kinds of teardrop shaped earrings and pendants in the past two years, but my favorites are the ones that include some woven element...

Here are my best pieces:

Inspired by Nature

Nature is an endless source of inspiration: I've made branches, leaves, flowers, tree of life pendants and even DNA-themed earrings and necklaces.

For the latter, my favorite design, I got the original idea from a pair of earrings my friend, Aniko Sandor made a number of years back,   I took from her the idea of twisting a long rectangular frame into a double-helix, but I used different techniques to fill out the frame, with visually very distinctive  results.

"Double Helix" Earrings:

"Double Helix" Necklaces:

Branches. My fingers hurt so badly after days of weaving this set, I don't think I'll ever venture to make anything similar to it. And I like the result so much, I might never be able to part with it.
 

Woven Leaves:

And flowers:

Spirals

I was thinking of a way of "showcasing" my older designs here...

And what's a better way to displaying them than grouping the designs by theme...

So let's start with one of the basic design element: the spiral - sometimes as the central element of the design, sometimes as a smaller motif incorporated in the design.

Rays

In my previous entry I mentioned the "sunray" theme, and I felt I needed to elaborate a little on it.
 
This is a design element where a series of rays start out from a row of beads, ending on a (semi)circle, resembling to some degree the sun in children's drawings. Although the rays restrict the design possibilities a little bit, they also have an effect of low-keyed elegance. That doesn't mean you can't play with the color scheme, the shape of the frames, and use of metals, maybe even mixing them.
 
Here are a few creations in this style:

Flame

Lightly oxidized copper and carnelian... it might seem like an obvious choice, but I think the more elaborate designs don't allow for too much experimentation with color.

Sun-drenched, sunburned, sun-kissed... I'm happy to have found a new interpretation for the "sunray" theme.

The bright copper beads are a nice contrast to the more earthy tone of the antiqued copper.