Monday, May 31, 2010

Leaf earings

Time for a new post!

I have a huge backlog of jewelry pieces i've made, finally photographed, and now ready to be blogged and posted. Not to be a tease, but i'd rather show them bit by bit, one at a time :).

Next little piece i made.... last fall :S. I had made one pair for a lovely friend of mine, but I had the materials on hand so i made a second pair as well! Here's a photo of the lovely 'Leaf' earings I made last fall.

All components used here were picked up here in Seoul, South Korea. This picture was taken on the pretty rooftop garden on my old appartement.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Thorny Rose

Looking at my blog here, it looks like I haven't been doing much at all! Really though, i've been keeping pretty regular with my jewelry making, just hadn't been taking any pictures. The camera was slowly dying, so we decided to get a new one.





Much better...

I'll be honest... I made this cuff months ago, back in March. However, the pictures have now finally been taken, propperly cropped and photoshopped, and it's time to start showing things here on my blog again!

This piece was made using Stephanie Lee's book, Semiprecious Salvage. This was the first jewelry book i ever made, and i am slowly but surely working my way through every project in the book. I'm about halfway through, as i have a bunch of other books i am interspersing the projects with. This is the project for her wire-wrapped bangle.

The focal here is a paper rose, held in with tabs, discussed in Suzan Lenart Kazmer's Cold Connections book. Techniques from both Kazmer and Lee blended into one piece... wow do they play well together :).

Other things happening: I got my first jewelry saw last week. So far, just practicing how to make straight lines, curved lines, and turn corners. No blades snapped... (yet!). Found an excellent tutorial on the Lapidary Journal Jewelry Artist site. I have been enjoying their newsletters so much that i just subscribed to the magazine today... hoping to love it as much as the tutorials on the site! Def worth checking them out, for both the tutorial and the rest of the site as well.