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.