"Powerful Woman, Powerful Love", A Wild & Raw Turquoise Bracelet...

Anatomy of a commission: the questions I've learned learned to ask... mostly the hard way.

Always take written notes. Get their email or phone number. Do not be afraid to ask for a deposit, particularly from first time customers, and it's perfectly acceptable to ask for enough to cover any out-of-pocket expenses.

Saturday 18 April:

Last week at the market I received a turquoise bracelet commission from Marlene, who will be attending a wedding in October, so we have plenty of time -- I like her already! Marlene told me her dress is grey and very simple in style, she won't be wearing any other jewellery, wants an off-the-charts turquoise bracelet that's chunky but not blingy -- and also requires that the design be something she could wear daily.

As a side note re the dress, normally I would also ask to see the item of clothing or other jewellery that is to be matched as fibre, texture and sheen all affect any colour. Is this a blue-grey, green-grey, yellow-grey or purple-grey? Pale, medium or dark grey? In this case, the beads are all different turquoises and the bracelet a statement, standalone item, so given the design parameters I think it's safe in this case to assume that whatever grey the dress is (even its style) is of very little importance.

After looking at bracelets I have on the table, she said she didn't want one with a clasp, that she prefers the stretchy bracelets. I let Marlene try on a bracelet that fits me to figure out a good fit for her: just snug on me should fit her perfectly. I've found fit to be quite different than length; bead chunkiness being the major factor. We also determined her budget.

I showed her examples of my "good" turquoise, the Sleeping Beauty, Castle Dome and Kingman, but nope, even the nuggets were all too blue and way too tiny, shiny, perfect and pretty. We need more chunk. The Ma'an Shan nuggets were heading in the right direction because of the matrix and shape, but the strings are graded, so all the beads are roughly the same size and colour distribution. Then she saw my rough donuts and pendants, in particular the Chinese spiderweb, and said that was the idea of the look she was after.

Going through an elimination process with your customer is important. I discovered a long time ago that people may not know what they want, but they are very clear when it comes to what they don't want or like. I'm sure you've all either said yourselves or heard a variation on: "I don't know what I want, but I'll know it when I see it." Just as important as budget, it's critical to find out early on in the commission process what they absolutely do NOT like/want.

Saturday 25 April:

This morning at the market I spent two hours sorting and sifting through my stash of miscellaneous chunky Chinese turquoise. I was a little stumped in which direction I should go and was thinking right about now I needed her input because these particular beads I'd initially chosen were maybe a bit on the large size for a bracelet.

From a technical design perspective, I also needed something to smooth out and cover the "corners" created by such large beads. After trying and rejecting umpteen sizes and shapes of silvery pewter beads as being too big or too blingy I decided to incorporate these 4/0 black glass beads. I had first thought about using matte black beads, but I think the gloss gives off just that subtle titch of formality and elegance. Copper wouldn't work in this instance because it'd give a too casual vibe -- have to keep in mind this is for a wedding. But there's no reason that later on we couldn't restring the bracelet with copper to change the whole look and feel of the bracelet.

At this point, Marlene dropped by to -- yay! --see how things were going, and she approved of the direction I'd taken with the black beads. We discussed whether it should have a "back" and a "front" (no) -- and she chose the final large black spiderweb bead. I subbed out a couple of smaller beads for the large one. She left me to it, and I played more with the bead order.

This is what I ended up with:

Sunday 26 April: 

Living with it a day and looking at the picture with fresh eyes, I find I don't like that there are four of the large pewter spacer beads. At least one of them will be coming off. I'm also questioning whether I should have the two pewter beads flanking the large blue turquoise bead. This was a leftover design element from the bracelet having a front and back, with one main focal bead. All this is to say I really do need to get into the habit of photographing things before tying off the Stretch Magic (or crimping the wire) in order to check the balance. Measure twice, cut once; but photograph as many times as necessary first! If nothing else, it's getting expensive tossing half the roll of Stretch Magic or stringing wire.

Here are two more versions:

10:00 a.m. Monday morning:

Coming back with fresh eyes to look at the photos, I think I prefer the version with three pewter beads.

I'd sent the original picture to Ruth (who works with me at The Gem Expo) and she wrote back:

"This is really lovely, ... something she will wear daily. It shouts "powerful woman, powerful love" to me." 

I'll definitely let you know what Marlene thinks when she picks up the bracelet this coming Saturday.

Please email me with comments or if you would like to commission something. Thanks for looking!

Chain Maille Earrings, Semi-Precious Pendants & Earrings, Lynn's Birthday... & A New Venture at the OOAK Antique Mall

I'm still in the country with no Internet and still coming infrequently into the library to use the computers here. But working hard -- a ton of typing showed up all of a sudden earlier this week and I'm pounding away on hours and hours of yakkety-yak. Plus making lots of jewellery:

I'd seen these chain maille earrings on Pinterest quite a while ago -- apologies to the original designer -- but I had to try making them. As with all chain maille designs, these are endlessly fascinating. It always amazes me how a tiny difference in the size of the jump rings, not to mention different metals and combinations, changes the whole feel of the earrings.

These look fabulous on just about anyone. A great and simple go-to style and very easy to make. I liked how they're all floppy when you make them because of course I started at the bottom, but once dangling, the rings all fall into place perfectly. Hint for making these: start from the top working down from the earwires --  the earwires act as a "handle" -- or am I the only one who automatically dives into the "business end" and starts with the bottom rings???

First iteration where I pretty much copied the original designer's earrings, except I didn't like that the two top jump rings were the same size as the other jump rings, so...

The second iteration, I reduced the size of the two top jump rings. Still didn't like it, so...

...I used small, medium and then large jump rings in a two-tone variation. Still didn't like it, the top part somehow looked too weak and wishy-washy and unbalanced when I tried them on, so in this final third iteration I doubled the second ring and bingo. Fixed all the earrings...

Then got a call from my pal Lynn (who does my displays) and found out that it had been her birthday the day before, on Tuesday. We had already planned to go Wednesday evening to see the new Tom Thomson biopic at the Woodstock Art Gallery (go see it, it's fascinating, not only image after image of great art and scenic beauty, but it's also a murder mystery with forensic anthropology in action -- the title? West Wind: The Vision of Tom Thomson) so I invited her out to dinner afterwards. I picked up a slab of cheesecake from Let's Eat Cake and packed up the all-copper earrings for her. When we met up at the art gallery I was wearing the mixed copper and silver earrings. Lynn greatly admired them, and I said, "Good thing you like 'em, 'cause that's what you're getting for your birthday."

I'd never been to the Charles Dickens Pub in Woodstock, but it came highly recommended, all homemade-from-scratch pub grub. It was really good. I ended up taking half mine home for lunch the next day.

I sent a large order of earrings and pendants off to Toronto with my sister on Monday to take around to her co-workers, so really schmancy packaging wasn't the priority, just keeping them visible, clean and still easy to access to examine more closely.

Sleeping Beauty & pewter drop earrings with sterling earwires; an all-pewter drop version; and two chandelier variations, on the left, matte crackle agate chandelier earrings, on the right, pearl chandelier earrings, both with Swarovski crystals.

Closeup of the matte crackle agate & Swarovski crystal chandelier earrings.

All the pendants that went off to Toronto (on black Greek leather adjustable cords): top row, five raw lapis lazuli pendants, two Nacozari turquoise slab pendants; raw black tourmaline along the right side; five Mexican fire opal pendants; one polished faceted lapis lazuli pendant; one Nacozari turquoise slab pendant; one pearl & quartz crystal pendant. I actually kinda liked the punky/bikerish look of the lumpy bead caps with the pearl, so I'll be making earring variations on that theme and will post the results later.

Aaaand, I started putting items into my booth at the One-of-a-Kind Antique Mall. It's looking a little sparse at the moment, but every couple of days I manage to get another two or three items in there. Forgot to take a picture today after I added a cast brass and copper seahorse bridge lamp and some other odds and ends, but this is what it looked like on Wednesday. When May comes and Nancy returns, it will be chock full of stuff... I tend to attract stuff, packrat that I am. Hooks for the peg boards are on the list, and I'll be putting up a lot of frames that I have for sale.

Hope everyone is staying warm. Can you believe the weather we've all been having across North America? Seems like no one has emerged unscathed, although it's finally a mild and melty day today.

Thanks for looking!

Mixed turquoise bracelet...

I'm trying to get packed up here so I can load up the truck for the market tomorrow. Every time I uncover a layer on my table I get an idea and stop and make something. I had a bag of mixed turquoise that I've been eyeing and here's what I came up with while at the same time trying not to think too hard about how the beads should go.

I need to find someone who will wear this and give me an opinion as to how it feels on. It's designed so that the curved metal part will snug into the shorter curvy side of one's wrist so that the turquoise will stay in place across the top/bottom.

I've used Kingman boulder, lovely pale green Kingman nuggets, Sleeping Beauty nuggets, Ma'an Shan and some miscellaneous Chinese turquoise of unknown provenance.

Note: This item has SOLD, however, I can make variations on this: email me with the length you require.

Thanks for looking.

Some Bead Show pictures...

Emphasis on the word "some". My camera has decided not to download pictures to the computer. The computer does its "ka-dunk" sound and the camera turns itself off when I try. It worked fine yesterday morning to get these pictures off the camera, but the pictures I took for over an hour yesterday afternoon of all the matte lapis, Afghanistan and Tibetan turquoise and coin silver beads that I bought there? Still locked in the camera. Maybe I'll scan some pictures and at least give you an idea of what I have. Sigh............ back to primitive pre-digital camera technology. So much for cameras worth hundreds of dollars. Maybe that's why, when I bought it, the guy talked me into a 2-year repair/replacement warranty -- in fact he said, "Oh, we don't repair cameras anymore. We'll just give you another one." It's only 18 months old! This is madness, the world we live in now.

Anyway, back to the relatively sane world of bead addiction. Pictures from the Grand River Bead Society Bead Show in Guelph:

Lynn McLean, visual merchandiser, working her magic on my table. She's also trying to organise me at home. This is her business and she's GOOD. In fact, I was told by one of the show organisers that my table looked a whole lot better than last year. Uh... thanks, I think.

Me. Sleep deprived to the max and doing things I should have done weeks ago.

Next year, I want to use risers to get the table level up.
On the other hand, that means that it will be difficult to get at the beads on the grids.
Lynn didn't stop tweaking the table the whole two days.

Kalimantan glass beads, old chevrons and African sandcast beads.

Kingman boulder rondelles, rounds, Kingman blue rondelles and rounds, Sleeping Beauty nuggets and large blueblueblue Kingman nuggets...

Chinese saucers, Hubei rounds, Ma'an Shan nuggets, Campo Frio, Pinto and Castle Dome,
more large blueblueblue Kingman nuggets...

 



A display case of large turquoise nugget strings.
The postcard photo shows the young man with a joclaw at the bottom of his necklace.

Another show done and gone. Now to get everything online. Once I get a functioning camera I'll get the new pix online. Email me if you see anything here you're interested in.

Thanks for looking!