The worst time to be without a camera

While I was on vacation in Barcelona just a couple of weeks ago, the string holding my camera suddenly tore and the camera dropped to the floor. Unlucky for me - the screen broke. This of course was very upsetting as I love to take lots and lot's of pictures when I'm traveling. So we ended up buying a small not too expensive camera to use for the rest of the trip and came home with many beautiful pictures of Barcelona which I promise to share in one of my next posts.

However, this was not the end of the story. The broken camera is the same camera I use to photograph my jewelry. It is one I picked after careful examination and found to be best for my needs. Needless to say the the new camera could not replace this one for my business purposes. So I took the camera to a lab to fix and am now waiting for a part to arrive which will take about a month!!!

Of course this is the worst time in the world for me to be without a camera, with the holidays just around the corner and many new items just waiting to be photographed and listed in my store. Lucky for me I have some great friends that came to the rescue and lent me their camera to use until mine is fixed. So these are some of the picture I took with it:

 1. Sterling silver hoop earrings with an oxidized black rose

 2. Spiral wings pendant in sterling silver and an Opal stone

3. Square post earrings with a flower and green briolettes

Post earrings

As I said in a previous post I wrote, earrings are my favorite piece of jewelry.  You will probably never find me without a pair of earrings on.

One of the wonderful things about earrings is that there are so many different kinds of them and everyone can find something they like. There are hoops, chandeliers, dangling earrings and there are post earrings (or stud earrings).

There are many reasons people like stud earrings. Some people don't like to see the ear wire of the earrings and feel the design is more complete if it starts directly from the ear. Others just want to hide their ear lobe. And others might be sensitive to long or dangling earrings and simply prefer a very small stud earring that sits on the ear and doesn't move and bother them.

So basically stud earrings can be a tiny small dot or a large fancy piece. The possibilities are endless.

I have been experimenting with different styles of stud earrings and I really like the results so far. Here are just a few samples of what I've got so far. More designs will be developed and listed in the near future.

   

My jewelry washing machine!

Ever wonder how jewelry gets it's beautiful shine?

Friends who visit me in the studio are often surprised to see how my jewelry look like before they are finised.

I make most of my jewelry from scratch. This means I take raw material like silver wires or silver sheets and work with them to create my design. I cut, drill, bend, solder etc, as needed to create the design I have in mind. When I am done, the metal has the shape and form that I intended for them to have but not the color and shine of silver jewelry as you know it. Not yet.

To make them shine and sparkle they need to be cleaned and polished.

For the final step I enter my jewelry into a thumbler. There are many different kinds of thumblers, mine is a rotary thumbler. Basically it works like a washing machine - for jewelry.

I put in my jewelry with a spcial soap, set the timer and press start. The machine then starts turning and thumbling and when it's done - my jewelry comes out clean and sparkling!

I love taking the items out of the thumbler and seeing how beautiful and shiny they look. Don't you?

Thin stackable bangles

My latest favorite jewelry items are thin stackable bangles. The idea to start making them came to me when I was making an order for a thin stackable ring. I started thinking this would look nice as a bracelet as well. So I made a few and listed them in my store.

I have made some colorful ones with various gemstones and some others with silver elements like a butterfly, teardrop, leaf etc.

Usually I am not a bracelet fan. As I once mentioned, I am more of an earrings person. But these bangles are really fun. You can hardly feel you are wearing them and they look so cool and chic. I suddenly find myself enjoying wearing bracelets!

You can wear these alone or stack a few together if you like a chunkier look. I will be developing more variations and designs to expand this line of bangles. So if you like them, be sure to check back soon for some new stuff!

Not all all that glitters is gold!!!

Most of my jewelry is sterling silver as this is my personal favorite color and material. Even in the rare cases when I wear gold, I prefer white gold. However, there are many people who love the color of gold or prefer gold jewelry because they are sensitive to other materials. For these people I have started developing my goldfilled line of jewelry.

What is goldfilled? Gold may be a desired metal but it is also a rather expensive one. Several alternatives were developed for those who want gold but prefer their jewelry in a more affordable price level. Gold coating is one option. A thin layer of gold coats another less expensive metal. Because the coating is thin this eventually wears out. So this is not a good solution if you are allergic or if you want a jewelry that will last for long. Sometimes you can send the item to be re-coated.

Gold filled is another alternative. It is made of a solid gold layer bonded to another base material . Goldfilled has about 100 times more gold than in gold plating. It is more durable and with normal use will probably last forever. No need to worry about allergies, if you can wear gold, you can wear goldfilled. For these reasons it is my preferred option for gold jewelry. You get almost the same look and feel as gold at a fraction of the price.

So here are some of my new goldfilled designs. I will be listing many more in the coming days so be sure to check my store for more stuff. Enjoy.

The colors of winter - Garnets

For the past few days it has been raining heavily. It looks like winter has arrived. I must admit that I am not much of a winter person. I prefer clear blue skies to these dark cloudy skies. But since it's here whether I like it or nor, I might as well enjoy the good things about winter, like the colors it brings.

Winter is the time of the darker colors. Brown, black, dark blue and my personal favorite - deep red. This is the season for Garnets with their deep dark wine red color. I have been working on some new designs using Garnet gemstones. Some are brand new others I'm remaking for this winter season. I love the color of Garnets. It's so deep, warm and gorgeous.

I will be writting about other winter colors in threads to come. What's your favorite winter color?

What a small upgrade can do

Some time ago I made a pair of filigree earring. Had the idea for it sketched in my notebook and it turned out exactly as planned. But for some reason, something was not working. I felt there was something missing. I was not happy with how the earring looked but just couldn't figure out what to change. Anything I tried didn't seem to make a difference.

Finally I put these earrings aside and continued to other designs. Last week I picked the earrings up and suddenly - inspiration!! I knew what to do to change them from nice to gorgeous. And it was so simple, just one small dangling gemstone that completely changed the look of the earrings.

Now that I was happy with them, I listed them in my Dawanda store, and before I even had the chance to list them on Etsy as well, they sold!! That's what I call a successful make over don't you? (Not to worry, they are now listed in both stores again).

Here are the earrings before the change:

And here they are after:

I guess some designs just need a little more time to develop.

Wire crochet jewelry

I learned to crochet when I was a teenager. A few years later I found myself mixing this technique with traditional metalsmithing and creating my line of wire crochet jewelry. This was one of my favorite lines. When I opened my b&m store people seemed to share my love for this collection and many of the jewelry items from this collection were best sellers.

For some reason I stopped making these crocheted designs. Maybe I got a bit tired and needed to explore a few other techniques for a while. Anyway, enough time has passed and I am now resuming this beautiful technique and making some new jewelry for my stores.

Here are a few examples: