Bead soup blog party numero deux!!!

It's time for the second bead soup blog party! I had a lovely time swapping beads with my lovely partener, Karyn, of Releases by Rufydoof.


Karyn sent me a completely lovely set of glass beads she made herself, including a lovely pendant. This one was a stretch for me, as there were no holes in the bead! Time to figure out what to do with a hole-less bead... why not glue it like a cabochon to a nice piece of copper?

Here are the results of what I came up with.

Ingredients from Karyn: Beautiful raku black and swirled pendant, Black angular beads, Brown and tan bead, Silver closure

Ingredients from myself: Hand cut, filed, forged, and polished copper rectangle, Copper chain, Copper wire (one piece with bead drawn on both ends), green fabric, amber colored beads.

To do this, I first prepared the copper pendant from a sheet of copper. I then crazy-glued the raku and small amber-color beads. The attachment of the pendant to the mail necklace is a hammered copper circle, wrapped around a wire-formed and fabric wrapped ending. The wire shaping is an idea of Lorelei's I gave a try for myself I created my own 'beads' by using Deryn Mentock's wrapped fabric link technique (thanks again Deryn!)

So, again, i'd like to thank my inspirationLorelei's and Deryn Mentock, my swap partener Karyn, and Lori for hosting this. Why not click on the link to Lori's blog and check out some other bead soup chefs?

star ring

Last post, i put up the copper cuff i made. Here is a mostly picture post of the ring i made to match it. I call it my star ring :)

Ingredients: Glued together stack of scrapbooking paper, ring blank, washer, small star, WIRE RIVET!!! (i was pleased with how this rivet turned out. I'm getting better!)


Tomorrow is my day for the reveal of the bead soup party necklace i made... tune in tomorrow!

Copper Cuff

This is a piece i had a lot of fun making. It was a lot of work but I will be making more of these type of copper cuffs.

I was reading Suzan Lenart Kazmer's book, looking through the chapter about hinges. I decided it was time to make a small bezel, with a hinged lid on top. Why not make this into a cuff? So very fun!
After cutting, filing, and soldering the bezel, it was time for the lid. I decided to use metal with a special kind of patina. After searching through my stash, i found a scrap that had once been part of an old broken doorknob.

The doorknob was cheap for about a dollar at a local scrap place! After MUCH fighting with it, i managed to tear it apart and flatten piece by piece of the pretty pretty metal it was from. It was quite 'damaged' (ie beautiful texture!) by the time i was done... not sure i'd reccomend this to another as it was a lot of work for little gain. Still, this was one of the pieces i'd gained here, and i do enjoy the texture and patina it lends to the piece.

After hinging the lid to the bezel, it was time to form the cuff. First i textured the copper by banging on it with the round end of a hammer, leaving it with almost a rough polka dot pattern i enjoyed. After forming it around my wrist (wow a wrist manderel would be nice... that was a hard job) I curled the two ends under.

Soldering time again! I soldered the bezel to the cuff... but the solder went everywhere! I think i heated it too long so the solder spread past the flux. Unfortunate, but i do still love it.

The closure on the back is a piece of brass, hinged again with a hinge from Kazmer's book Cold Connections. Very very fun, instructive book!

Finally, time to fill the bezel. A pretty little star and some resin, and it's finished! The resin did sadly spill out from the bezel as it clumsily got bumped and
knocked over while curing. I got most of it off, but there are some oddly shiny spots left still. Still... part of the charm?

Hope you enjoy my runthrough of what i did to create this favorite piece of mine... trials and errors included :)

Puffy Clouds

I have been seriously thinking of setting up my own etsy shop. I love the idea of my pieces going all around the world, and it would give a reason for the existance of all these earrings I make, since I myself lack pierced ears. (I know I know. I am a jewelry lover who does not have pierced ears. I guess i just never got around to it.) Also, the money would come in handy for buying new supplies online, as I usually hold off since shipping to south korea can be so expensive.

This is a piece I would have liked to sell online, but the fabric is not holding up to snuff. It has now even further deteriorated and strung apart than in the picture. I will have to repeat these, perhaps using crinolin instead.

Puffy Clouds

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.

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.

Things I saw today

So, I was surfing my blogs, and Michael DeMeng mentioned that his fab book was being sold with Jenny Doh (previous editor of the Summerset Studios magazines). I thought, 'Hey, i haven't seen anything with her recently', so i went off to check out how her new website of her own, 'Crescendoh' is comming along. I was a bit confused, but generally impressed, with what i saw.

I liked a lot of the little links they had on the front page. It seemed they were putting up daily links to 'things they like on the internet'. Some of the links were to their own stuff in the store, but others were to things outside their site.

I liked the cones that they have happening there. They're pretty materials. While i don't find i need the kit, and would prefer to find my own materials, the inspiration is so lovely! I do so enjoy the idea.... It would be great to have a nice string of these in my 'studio'. They could be neat storage for odd objects. A cone full of all the short dowels i've accumulated (more than you think), a cone for pliars, a cone for.... whatever small, strange objects i have many of that need a home. I could definately go for this.

I also really liked the link they put up to the book, shown on flickr (click picture to see). I love the idea of this. The simple nature appeals to me... it's like an outdoor studio, but you could even work through the rain. Beautiful. As a cold-winter saskatchewan girl, i'm not sure how practical, but they are beautiful.

Still figuring out exactly how the site works, and what their layout is, but i like the inspiration links for sure. I think i'll be comming back time to time to see those.