How I Spent My Christmas Vacation...

Some people lolled on beaches all week. In my usual fashion, after procrastinating most of the week, I finally buckled down and starting making jewellery on the 23rd for the last market day before Christmas.

One of the perks was walking into the market on the 24th to an almost-set-up table at 4:57 a.m.

While at the market, I had plenty of time to play...

...and sell. Who woulda thunk that rhinestones and bone skulls would go so perfectly together?

I did surprisingly well for the day before Christmas, considering most people dash in for their turkeys, vegetables, pies, candles, chocolates and flowers -- everything it seems but jewellery -- and immediately dash outta there to the malls to do final shopping. Me, I dashed off to the bank and then to the Charles Dickens Pub for an incredibly good ooey, gooey grilled cheese sandwich. Four cheeses on it, something like that, including Gunn Hill, which is located about one or two kilometres south of me here in the wilderness of Southern Ontario.

Christmas Day I finally got off the desktop and into the other room to make jewellery and binge watch Death in Paradise on my laptop which has external speakers.

I made all of these in two days...

Alas, the triple wrap bracelet above has sold already, but I'm getting more leather and beads in so I can make lots more of these.

Please email me for details on any of the above bracelets. I still have lots, and while some are one of a kind, some styles I have sufficient beads that I can make more, and I can always adjust the size up or down to fit you perfectly. Email me here.

I hope everyone was able to spend time with family and friends or, like me, hunkered down in restorative peace and quiet. Thanks for looking!

Father's Day Gift Bracelets...

...well, bought by a guy, at any rate.

These stretch bracelets are consuming me. I made several more while at the farmers market today. The first two sold immediately (yippeee!!), but I can make more and/or variations on these or any others I've posted in the past. These glass beads I've been using are terrific. I've seen them labelled as small pony beads; I think they're 2/0 seed beads. But what's really cool is they have a great hole -- easy to thread onto 1.5mm leather cord. Just about any of these bracelets can be made into adjustable chokers or regular necklaces. I can also make them larger to be worn as ankle bracelets.

Black glass beads, etched 2-eye agate bead, copper skulls, copper jump ring spacers and coil. 

Black glass beads, copper jump ring spacers and an etched 9-eye carnelian dZi-style bead.

This bracelet is made with dark dusty blue Picasso 2/0 seed beads (small pony beads) with a silver-plated feather and spacers and a pewter horse, bird and turtle.

These all fit kind of loose medium to large. I got a guy pal to try one on and he said it was very comfortable. Prices are as marked, shipping is extra depending on where you live and your need for speed. I take PayPal and Square, and within Canada bank eTransfer. Email me for information on these or to make a special request.

Thanks for looking!

Thrift Sale-ing...

It's late spring here and the lawn and garage sales are in full swing. I've furnished and unfurnished my own apartments across Canada and in Italy at lawn and apartment sales, the Goodwill, Sally Ann, Value Village, junque stores and their ilk for too many years to count. Thanks to friends, I'm currently amassing quite a collection of old wooden mug trees which are really, really handy for displaying bracelets at the market.

Like a lot of you, I scan the jewellery tables for overlooked treasures. I'm not very good at seeing the potential of some things -- I've always been strangely resistant to the idea of taking perfectly good (albeit totally useless) things apart, but I'm getting there.

These are my two latest finds: a sterling silver amber ring and a dragon, phoenix and butterfly pendant. What is more interesting to me than The Great Score is what I can learn. The first thing I learned was that I MUST start carrying with me at all times a small and powerful flashlight and a loupe because of what treasures I can miss.

I almost passed on buying both the almost black and gungy "amber" ring and the "glass" pendant.

I examined the inside of the ring and saw no .925 stamp, which made me suspicious about the "amber". Was it just plastic? It wasn't heavy enough to be glass. I held it under the lamp at the sale. Because I noticed the sheen and also that the high dome wasn't slick and polished like glass or even plastic would be, that there were tiny old, smoothed-over nicks and gouges in the surface, I figured, mmmm, mebbe, mebbe not. But at the very least, it's pretty, and I bought it.

Good thing, because when I got it home and started polishing the band, lookee what showed up invisible under the black gunge:

The .925 stamp was on the outside of the band. I called a friend of mine who buys a lot of estate jewellery and she immediately told me that a .925 stamp on the outside of the band indicates it's made in Poland, and therefore it would be genuine Baltic amber.

My second score was this pendant that I thought was glass and who knows what metal but I kinda thought silver...

But yet again, under the poor light at the sale, I was convinced it must be green glass, and in the end I only bought it because of the dragon and phoenix: I was born under the sign of the dragon, and I'd read many years ago that the phoenix is the dragon's most auspicious partner sign.

I also bought it because it was double-sided and it looked cobbled together and I prefer wonky, handmade things to slick, commercially produced items, no matter what they are. The dragon and phoenix were cast, and I'm presuming likely Chinese because of the tiny cloud that binds their feet at the top (their hands are touching at the bottom and they're looking at each other) and were very obviously cut from some other larger design. They're of a completely style than the butterflies, which are twisted wire and are possibly Bali or Indian silver?

Once I got home and under good light, I clearly saw the banding deep inside the green, meaning this is a huge lump of uniformly milky agate. Dyed, according to what I found online, but oh well. It's still a very beautiful colour and it's not splotchy like a lot of dyed stones are these days.

I'm intensely curious about where this came from. All the metal bits look to be silver, polishes up nicely, but there are great lumps of solder everywhere, and as I said above, it's definitely been cobbled together from many different cut-up pieces. There are what I think are called sprues still poking out here and there that were never filed down. The entire soldered-together medallion on both sides is domed over crossed flat metal strapping over the agate that's also been soldered into place. 

I'm currently looking up the symbolism of the different parts of the medallion. If anyone has come across something like this, I'd love to hear from you.

Thanks for looking!

Mystery Beads...

I dug out these old hand-carved matte mystery beads that I would like to mix with either large chunks of turquoise, chrysocolla or even some rough chunks of black tourmaline. I think they might be carnelian, certainly agate -- but the buttery yellow beads are throwing me, if they have a different name possibly. Looking at them under bright light, you can clearly see banding inside.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks for looking!

"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!

New Stacking Stretch Mala Bracelets...

Variations on an agate and turquoise theme.

It never fails to amaze me (despite being aware of this when I'm drawing and painting, but equally applicable when making anything) how any colour imbalance, goink or other oddity will only show up when the item is being photographed, that something minor but off will be what ends up drawing the eye so well when the item is finished. Memo to self: photograph the jewellery before tying off or crimping!

Here is yesterday's production. I'm very pleased with them: I think they look good on -- and more importantly they feel really good, too. Just loose enough. These would fit a ladies' medium wrist.

Prices range from $38 to $43, shipping is extra. Please email me for availability or to request a custom size or stone.

I will have these and more this Saturday at the Woodstock Farmers Market at the Fairgrounds on Nellis Street, and at the One of a Kind Antique Mall on Wilson Street, Showcase 800.

Thanks for looking!