Choices, choices.

It's been a long time since I posted anything jewellery related, mainly because it's been a long time since I did anything jewellery related. Except buy it - I've done plenty of that!

Part of the problem is, I think, choice paralysis. I've got so many bits and pieces around the place now that I either can't decide what to do with them. Or if I can, I can't decide which of the things to do out of the many on my list. I've got projects to experiment with, plus I promised my mum a bracelet, and my BF another wraparound bracelet (and to mend the first one since he wore it to death).

I'm thinking start with something simple. In honour of the coming winter I want to make a charm bracelet, covered with snowflakes and each one of them different. I've got an idea for "floating" snowflake earrings too. Whether I actually do them or they go on the To Do list remains to be seen.

In the meantime, here's a picture of something I bought a while ago, from Ksurdnasjournals on Etsy.

Brief update

Lots of bead buying lately, not much actual jewellery making, apart from mending a car boot sale find, as I've been busy with other things. That's not for lack of beads though, there's an envelope from Etsy in front of me waiting to be opened.

One thing I have done is set up a Twitter account for my jewellery, since I didn't want it getting muddled up with the writing. So now my jewellery work can be found at https://twitter.com/#!/xanthalanariUK.

Feeling Like a Massive Fraud?

Have you ever come across a blog or shop where the contents are just so beautiful you wonder why you bother? Well I did, on Friday.

Courtesy of Twitter, I stumbled across http://wirewrapped.eu/, where there are delights such as this:

Seriously, go and have a look, it's well worth it.

My first reaction was a massive dent in my confidence - nothing I make looks anything like this, I've only got as far as bead-stringing and linking. But you know what? I've chosen to see it as something to aspire to. I'll get to wire wrapping eventually, as well as all the other things on my to-try list. When I do, maybe I can come up with things as beautiful as this.

Wraparound Bracelets

Last month in Making Jewellery there was a feature by Clair Wolfe on wrap bracelets. Since I'm, for reasons previously mentioned, trying to move away from metal a bit more it was a really interesting technique to learn.


The premise is simple - a doubled-over leather cord, tied off to make a clasp, with beads strung between the two lengths. Here's what I've come up with in the last couple of weeks.

 

This is the first one I made, with 6mm wooden beads in two colours, imitation turquoise, and some blue-dyed freshwater pearls. The button clasp comes from an old coat.

After this I made three destash bracelets.

The first has a selection of random beads in wood and acrylic (purple, blue, imitation haematite and silver). They're quite chunky, and the bracelet wraps twice although it's too big to fit around my wrist.

For the second, I had some faceted blue acrylic beads, and decided to pair them with dark blue glass, and green semi-precious stones, to try and convey the feeling of light on water. The stones are flourite, I think, from an old elasticated bracelet. I used pale beige thread to keep it light.

This one wraps around three times and uses the rest of the 6mm wooden beads, as well as some wooden cubes and rondelles from a dismantled bracelet.








And then I made one for my boyfriend, because he complained I never make him anything, using 1cm beads in imitation turquoise, tiger's eye nuggets, glass cubes, and some leftover black and copper glass beads.

Things in Bronze

Since my sulk-sabbatical, I seem to have recovered my passion for making jewellery. I've gone mad for wraparound bracelets lately but I haven't taken any pictures of those so I'll post about the things I made with bronze findings instead.

Last weekend I sat down with a pile of my bronze bits and pieces and decided to make an effort to use some of them. As well as the usual findings there were also bronze charms, pendants, and bronze-coloured acrylic beads.

The first thing I made was a matching necklace and earring set, with a simple design of an acrylic heart and some red beads. It occured to me while I was making them that I'm lucky I didn't rediscover my problem with metals while I was wearing earrings. That could have been unpleasant.

Then I sat down with a big pile of beads I'd planned to make myself a bracelet with, and made a longline necklace buy stinging selections onto eyepins and linking them with short lengths of figaro chain.

Then I made a pair of matching earrings, as I like to make sets.

Apologies for thequality of that last picture. Blogger wouldn't upload it, so I've linked directly from Etsy.

lThere are still loads of bronze things left to use, and plenty of brass too. Lots to do in future!

Copper and Bronze and Brass, Oh My.

It's been a couple of months since I posted, and I have to admit it's because I've been sulking.

See, back in my early teens my brother gave me a rather fetching copper ring with a kind of ivy pattern engraved around it. I loved it, but unfortunately the thick green band it left on my finger was also how I discovered I don't react well to copper. Over the years I've avoided copper jewellery, even though I love the colour. I don't even think about it any more.

I don't think about it to the extent that I spent six months enthusiastically buying cute charms and chain in bronze and brass. 'Cos they'd be fine, y'know?

Um, no.

This is a piece I affectionately named The Clockwork Owl's Nesting Place, although I'm not sure if owls actually nest. It's one of the first watch plate pendants I made. The owl and the leaf are antique bronze, with a matching chain.

After wearing it for about a week solid, I started getting really itchy around the back of my neck. When I took the necklace off I noticed that around the clasp the chain had gone a lovely copper colour. So I looked in the mirror and saw an attractive green streak along the back of my neck. And then I remembered that bronze and brass are alloys of copper.

And that's when I had a sulk. I'd got all those charms and things with plans to make myself some new jewellery. The Etsy shop was really only an excuse to make more of the stuff than I could ever actually wear, but now it's going to be an outlet for all the creations I want to wear but can't. Some of my designs I'm trying to rework in silver, but a lot of what I've got will have to go.

Expect to see a lot of bronze and brass in my shop in the near future, and lots of posts where I try to figure out alternatives to chain and metal charms.

I Love Lucite

I've never been much of a one for flowers, but recently I discovered lucite flowers and now I'm hooked.

There were two sizes available on Beads Direct last time they had a sale - and since the medium ones are an inch across I'd hate to see the size of large ones!

The first thing I made was a bookmark form Mothers Day. I attached a length of chain to the top of the hook, with a leaf at the end and three blue flowers randomly clustered for a naturalistic look.

I also spent some time this weekend making jewellery. There were only two of the medium flowers in white, and they looked really good with small black flower centres, so I paired them up and made a set of earrings. Because the hole runs through the middle the flowers tend to hang straight down, so I added a length of chain to the eye pin loops at the front and back to keep them facing forward.

Also at the weekend, I picked up an elasticated bracelet covered with butterflies. It was horrible, because all the beads were silver and it looked really monochrome. Personally I'd have gone with silver butterflies and brightly-coloured beads. But I already had an idea for the butterflies: to hang one asymmetrically on a necklace, so it formed a part of the chain, then add a dangle of some flowers. So I dismantled the bracelet and did that instead. Then with some smaller lucite flowers, and small butterflies from the same bracelet, made a pair of matching earrings.

 

I quite like making sets, I'm thinking about doing something similar in blue to wear myself.