A Busy Weekend With Lots of Sales!!!

Wheeeee, finally a great Saturday at the market for everyone, which is so gratifying. I sold several brand new items including a couple that I didn't get a chance to photograph. The blue picasso bracelet with the pewter bird, turtle, horse and feather (I call it the "Four Corners") sold right away, right out of the gate. Lady came by, picked it up, examined it... "Uh, where's the clasp?" "It rolls on." Sold.

Definitely must make more of these.

I also sold the aqua terra and crab agate necklace on the right (the necklace on the left sold quite a while ago) yesterday, matched perfectly with sterling, turquoise and sponge coral earrings. They accompanied my customer and her brand new dress to a girls' night out Beatles tribute show last night.

I went to an estate sale this morning and here are a few of my treasures. We're doing a Nostalgia show at the fairgrounds on September 13th, I think it is, so I'm buying with that in mind. Some pieces will go to our booth at the Antique Mall (Booth 800/847 if you're planning a trip our way).

Aaaaand it's jam-making season. The first strawberries are starting to come in from the fields. There were mountains of them at the market yesterday. For some reason the local grocery store has decided not to carry my favourite low-sugar no-cook gelling powder this year, so my pal George brought me 20 packages from the big city on Tuesday, which I swap for jam. 

What's the name of that Pinterest site? Pinterest Fails -- or similar, anyway. Here's my latest entry in the Pinterest Fail... well, it was a success but SO SLOW! Give me my paring knife any day.

My handy-dandy strawberry hulling setup. The mosquitoes arrived shortly after and settled in to feast on me. 

Putting the straw in strawberries...

Poke the straw through from the bottom...

Pull the core out of the straw...

And you have a neat little hole to fill with chocolate...

This doesn't show how full the bowl was, but it was ten 250ml jars' worth of strawberries mounded up.

Unfortunately, the monsoon rains we had early in the week made this batch of strawberries awfully watery, but a titch extra sugar and lots and lots of lemon juice brings out the flavour nicely. Peaches will be coming along soon. I can hardly wait. There's a type of early peach that is soooooo good as jam. Summer in a jar, especially in the dead of winter.

Thanks for looking!

1951 British Penny Farthing Coin Bracelet...

Swapped this broken bracelet two weeks ago for a stringing job done for Liane, the Vintage Lady at the market, back in the winter. Liane had shown me the bracelet the week before, but I wasn't particularly interested as this type of vintage jewellery doesn't appeal. I did like the birds -- Jenny Wrens as I discovered today online. However, once I saw earrings made with the same coins a few days later on Pinterest...

...the penny dropped (sorry, couldn't resist) and I knew I had to have this bracelet. I was sweating bullets waiting for Saturday, hoping it hadn't sold.

I'm taking it apart so I can make earrings and pendants out of it. Not too sure if the soldered bails will hold if the coins are used as pendants, but so far they seem pretty strong. It was links on the outer chain that had come apart.

Thanks for looking!

Variations on a Teardrop Chain...

After seeing this chain on Pinterest this morning...


http://www.pinterest.com/pin/30962316162889083/, tutorial available here.

...I was meandering around in my mind as I often do wondering how I could improve on this. Because I tend to not like "open-ended" anything -- if for no other reason than I have long hair that gets caught in everything, not to mention if I'm wearing anything expensive or precious, it's guaranteed gonna get snagged and ruined -- I came up with this variation where the round loop carries to wrap and contain the teardrop end.

I have been making a lot of wire "bone" chains in copper and decided to try this new chain in tinned copper, my other go-to metal since I'm also using a lot of handmade, raw and matte stones, pewter pendants and coin silver anything these days. FYI, I was at Arton Beads in Toronto the other day and noticed that while a bit shiny it's a grey shiny: their white gold plated jump rings actually have a pewterish colour to them, which makes them a bit more blendy than regular silver-plated jump rings with the tinned copper wire.

After a bit of experimenting with the wire and pliers (I arbitrarily picked 20 gauge wire for this, and worked off an 18-24" piece of wire) this is what I came up with. At about 1/2", I found the little ones are too stumpy, although they'd make nice dangles for something with another bead hanging from them. The longer links forming the chain run from 5/8" to 3/4" in length.

This now kinda looks like barbed wire to me... which is interesting, because one of my intentions is to make more guy-ish jewellery and this would make a cool bracelet or choker/necklace for guys and not be that expensive. Looked up barbed wire images on Google and found this...


http://patentpending.blogs.com/patent_pending_blog/2004/11/barbed_wire_.html

...as well as all kinds of jewellery with barbs... so I guess I'm a little late to the party. Story of my life.

Tools:
Pretty simple. Also the hammering isn't that loud. Tinned copper wire is very soft and it only requires a few taps to work-harden the links.

Steps:
Pix are fairly self-explanatory. Let the wire poke out a bare 1/2", then wrap the wire around your pliers.

Bend wire straight back at a 45 degree angle, and 45 degrees to the plane of the teardrop loop.

Do a regular wrapped loop...

(After you've completed your first link and before completing your wrapping on the second link, don't forget to string the first teardrop to start the chain.)

Wrap three times. Cut the wire so that when you squeeze it in, the cut end will line up between the two parallel wires at the top of the teardrop shape. Try to goosh it down in between the two wires a bit. Use a file to smooth off any rough edges.

Ready to hammer...

...et voila.

Chain in progress & some variations:

I had some 6/0 seed beads handy, so I tried a few links with them. You'll need to straighten out the wires at the top of the teardrop so they're parallel and squash them flat a bit to get them both into the seed bead, then complete the wrap up top. Be careful to wrap firmly but not too tightly or you'll break the bead.

Then I got to thinking... my barbed wire has turned into a noose... This would make a nice earring.

This is the part of making something where things get a little fuzzy: as in, have I started to lose the concept? Does this still read as, say, a stylised barbed wire chain, or a noose design... or is it kind of a nothing now with the skulls included???

I'll send this to one of my guy customers and get his input.

What are you working on these days? Thanks for looking!

Beads, Bones & Stones...

...is the name of one of my favourite boards on Pinterest. Yes, I confess, I am an addict and my name is Barbara...

It's also what I'm up to today, the Sunday of the Thanksgiving weekend: making endless seed bead chains, watching Bones, and I thought I'd throw in a picture of my latest display of beads here in the dungeon... I mean studio. Rather than wrapping the grids around a table corner and then having difficulty reaching across the table for the beads, I can walk right up to them. Now to figure out how to incorporate this (three rows of beads on each grid this way) in The Gem Expo display in November. See how I cleverly work that reminder in? One part of the wall of my booth will be a pillar... not sure if I can incorporate the grid...

Have a great Thanksgiving weekend, leave some turkey, stuffing, gravy and cranberry sauce for me. Actually, stuffing, gravy and cranberry sauce is all I'm interested in...

Thanks for looking!

10 pairs of earrings almost complete & many short beaded chains later

I've been spending waaaaay too much time on Pinterest and obsessively, mindlessly, longingly (WHY???), clicking on pictures of pristine studios with beautiful storage and display features. Who can possibly create in these zen oases of calm and emptiness, let alone find anything once it's put away? Not meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...


The worst thing is I'm running out of the things to MAKE stuff with, like earwires and whatnot,
no time to make them and less time to order any.

Along the bottom, kyanite, lapis, Kingman turquoise & quartz chains; white jadeite, melon-cut quartz, hawk's eye, kyanite, black tourmaline, garnet, high cut amethyst, high cut citrine & amethyst earrings,
all with Bali silver spacers and awaiting sterling earwires to finish them off.

Every flat or near flat surface eventually will be piled high with something...

...eventually with Max

Et voila

This must get cleaned up SOON...

Lynn, my organising genius pal, is coming on Monday... But for now, back to work to finish off the earrings and putting some necklaces together with my new beaded chains. Right now -- at 1:56 p.m., eleven days and two Saturday markets before Christmas -- I am about where I wanted to be in September.

Thanks for looking!

A thought about sites like Pinterest... and Nelson Gemstones

I wonder if Pinterest or similar sites have taken off in other countries like it has in the US? I wonder if there's a correlation between the high level in North America of "shopping culture" and other countries where consumerism, for various reasons, hasn't taken root? I find I'm using Pinterest as a substitute for shopping-shopping and also for bead shopping at the moment. Appeases my hunter-gatherer instincts. Certainly I can afford to hoard much nicer pictures of things than I could ever afford to buy, at least in this lifetime.

Any thoughts on this?

But I did buy these... and they showed up two days ago. Got 'em from Nelson Gemstones. Joanne's got quality gemstones in most of the sizes of rounds for most of the popular stones, as well as her own jewellery. My order was her first time shipping to Canada and any form-filling-out bugs were successfully dealt with. Also, back orders are processed very quickly. Worth checking out especially if you're looking for those elusive sequential rounds.

Mmmmmmmmmmm lapis...

Thanks for looking!