New shop item: pink briolette earrings

Today's new shop addition is the "Lourdes" earrings, named after my grandmother and my aunt (not the same person!). She features three sparkly, luminous pink briolettes each, wire wrapped and dangling from sterling earwires.

More details and pictures of Lourdes are available at the shop!

In very exciting news, I sold five items today!!! A buyer bought three items, the Pamela bracelet, the Claire necklace, and the Ahila earrings. The Ahila earrings seem a popular item (I've sold two now) so it looks like I'll be stocking the shop with more of this item.

Also, my friend Mandy bought the Meridith earrings and matching necklace as a birthday gift for her mom. I feel so touched and privileged at having one of my designs picked for this special occasion.

Thank you so much to both customers!

New shop item: turquoise bracelet

This new bracelet is "Marnie," made of pretty blue turquoise and a silver toggle clasp. She's named after my writer friend from college, who was originally a pair of turquoise earrings but I changed that name to "Meridith" to match the accompanying necklace (named after another college friend who, and I'm not making this up, had Michelle Pfeiffer sitting in her office the other day. I was jealous).

So Marnie gets a new namesake. More details and pictures are available at the shop!

On the train today I was sitting next to a mom and her toddler daughter. I overheard the mom ask the kid, "What did you eat today?" And the kid replied at the top of her lungs, "Ass! Ass! ASSSSSS!"

I thought to myself, "That couldn't have been very appetizing."

It turned out she was trying to say "eggs."

Toddlers are funny.

P.S. on comments

My sister suggested that instead of moderating comments to avoid spam, I should use the word verification feature instead. This does seem like a much better idea, so as Captain Picard says, "Make it so."

A new item

I managed to get this photo loaded so you can get a quick preview of this necklace in spite of our internet problems.

This one is "Kate," and she's made up of a white bone butterfly pendant measuring around 1.5" x 2", and blue howlite beads on sterling silver wire. This was the first time I've worked with howlite and I love the way it turned out.

I also really love the sharp color contrast between the beads and the pendant.

As usual, the sun hid behind a cloud and stayed there for the rest of the day when I took this picture so it's not as bright as I would like. I may have to re-take some shots tomorrow.

In the meantime, I'll try working on posting the rest of the pictures.

Ribbons and things

I popped over to the craft store in the afternoon, where I was only going to "quickly" pick up a "couple" of things. Yeah, right. Many, many hours and $40 later, I came away with some really awesome goodies. My favorites are these vintage-looking keys and buttons pictured at the top. I was thinking of incorporating them as pendants with maybe some Swarovski crystals.

I am also going to start experimenting with using ribbons in my designs, so I picked up a few spools in different colors. I'm a little anxious to see how this turns out. I couldn't resist getting the pink and green polka dot ribbons, though at this point I'm not sure how or what I'm going to use them for.

Additionally, I decided that I'm finally ready to use a jig to make more complicated wire designs, so I got me one of those, too, but I need to practice first before I turn out results that are good enough to be put in necklaces.

As a side note, I was so thirsty after all that craft shopping that I decided to go to the grocery store in search of a cold drink. Nothing really appealed to me except that Vitamin Water stuff that comes in different flavors (everything else in the cold cases were carbonated drinks, which I wasn't in the mood for). So I reluctantly bought a Vitamin Water. I say reluctantly because ever since Jennifer Aniston became their spokeswhore, I vowed to boycott this product. She is #2 on my list of people whom I completely loathe and anything she endorses is fair game for a boycott. (Mr. HD calls this my "irrational hatred" of her, but I swear I've never been more coldly rational about anything in my life.)

However, I'm sorry to say that the Vitamin Water actually wasn't half bad, and so if I ever get stuck in the desert by myself with no signs of civilization or even an oasis for miles around, maybe I'll consider getting this product again. But only then.

Turquoise and citrine

Do you remember those earrings I made a while back, made up of the turquoise stones that I've been saving for something special and fun? Well, the pendant I originally had in mind to pair them with didn't quite work out, so I had to go back to the drawing board.

I decided to try something a little different, and here is the result. The main bead is a lemon yellow citrine, coupled with a handmade sterling silver wire "sculpture". My jewelry teacher once taught me a technique where you hammer a wire sculpture much like this, flattening the wire. The results give a very polished, finished look to the sculpture. However, I don't have a chaser hammer or a bench block in my arsenal yet (those are totally next on my shopping list), so I used a regular old hammer and it didn't really work very well. Also, this is 22-gauge sterling silver wire, and the hammering technique works better if you use a different type of wire.

Still, I think it looks really fresh and different, and the wire sculpture turned out well even without the hammering technique.

What do you think?

Waiting...

So there I was, toiling away in the middle of a project, when I abruptly ran out of sterling silver wire - leaving me with a necklace only half a strand completed.

It's a very frustrating feeling when you're on a productive roll and then have to come to a screeching halt because of lack of both foresight and planning on your part! So I'm impatiently waiting for my fresh supply of wire...I hope it gets here soon.

The necklace I'm working on right now has an adorable dragonfly bone pendant. Pictures will be up as soon as it's finished!