If you fear change...

The Cavern bar/resto at the HI-Toronto youth hostel where I stayed this past weekend. I really, really like it there!

See you all at the Woodstock Farmers Market this Saturday with all my Toronto Gem Show goodies. I got lots of new beads to make chakra bracelets, as well as earrings and pendants!

Thanks for stopping by!

Fab news...

The Gem Expo in July was a total hoot, met lots of new and returning customers and friends -- and the class I taught went really well, so much so I plan to offer two or three different classes at the November Gem Expo. Stay tuned for advance announcements on that front, and I'll give you a heads up once the classes are posted. This time, though, the classes will be capped at 5 to maybe 8 students, so don't delay in registering. If we know far enough in advance that there is sufficient demand additional classes can be scheduled.

In fact, think about giving the gift of learning to a friend as an early Christmas present. There are jewellery-making classes at the show for every skill level and interest. You'll definitely make new friends and jewellery buddies in the classes, as well.

My fab news is this summer I sold the smaller copper swirl citrine pendant and the wire-woven Sleeping Beauty turquoise nugget ring. Then yesterday I sold the larger swirl citrine pendant.

Aaaand... three weeks ago I sold the double-sided dragon-skin/crackle agate Backside of the Moon pendant.

People who know me know that I am a big fan of more is more, which means my market tables are usually crammed with stuff. Well... the past few weeks I've been experimenting with putting on the table just one or a few items in a style instead of the five, ten, dozen or more that I have... and it seems to be working. There is breathing space now between each item and sales seem to have picked up. There might be a little of the "uh, oh -- there's only one left, I'd better buy it now" scarcity strategy going on, too... maybe.

We also got new lighting in the market building a few weeks ago thanks to a grant. Makes a HUGE difference, so much so that I don't have to put up spotlights all over my table. Instead of walking from sunlight into a dim and depressing building, it's like walking from sunlight into sunlight. It's quite spectacular, actually, and all the jewellery across the table looks ten times better instead of the spotlit puddles I had before.

This summer I acquired some really great crystals and unusually-shaped tumbled and raw semi-precious stones. I'll be posting pictures when I get them made up into pendants. Meanwhile, you can always contact me here or by email for special orders, and you can find me at the Woodstock Farmers Market every Saturday morning, 7:00 a.m. to 12:00.

As always, thanks for stopping by!

Success!

On Wednesday I wrote about trying the (new to me) "Curl and Swirl" wire-weaving style by Making It Easy With Liz that I'd read about on Pearl Blay's blog. You can read about my less-than-successful efforts here.

Meanwhile, my real job intervened and I didn't get a chance to go back and try, try, try again until a few minutes ago. Yes, minutes. Once you figure it out, and kind of have an idea of what you want to do with the particular stone you're using, this is quite a quick technique to do. Meaning, it either works or it doesn't because if you goink the wires at all then you pretty much have to start over: the beauty of the swirls lies in their smooth, sinuous, unbroken curves.

The primary reason my first efforts weren't successful is because I didn't use two wires in parallel.

Here are my two do-overs, using the same two citrines from Wednesday. Finally the fronts look marginally better than the backs!

As a comparison, here's the picture of my first efforts:

These first two (above) maybe don't look so bad -- but they're very wobbly and look kinda wimpy. You'll also note in the video that Liz is quite specific about crossing the pairs of wires behind each other early on. This interweaving locks the entire piece together, giving you a very sturdy base on which to attach and tighten the stone.

Closeup of the the asymmetrical citrine pendant:

Closeup of the tall citrine pendant:

I will have both of these strung on Greek leather and for sale at the market tomorrow morning. I have a small selection of copper chain, as well, if you prefer. Please email me if you're interested in either (I take PayPal, Interac/email transfer, cash works, too!). I will definitely be making more of these pendants in different stones, and I am always happy to do a special request. Yo, guys? Only five weeks 'til Valentine's Day.

Thanks for stopping by, and hope to see you at the market tomorrow!

Saturday Morning Woodstock Farmers Market Setup...

Sometimes there'll be no teardown at the end of the market, the food vendors leave their shelves and coolers in situ and the rest of us non-food vendors leave our tables as is with cloths draped over everything.

I found out the hard way that I am located in front of double storage room doors and came back one Saturday morning to find at least two of my tables moved all over the place, the cloths and surfaces every which way, which means I now have to consolidate all my stuff onto the one table that is rarely moved.

What hides under the tablecloth. Any empty bins have to be stacked on top of the table, as well, for when the floors are washed.

Everything back in place. Takes me about half an hour to do this.

Ready to go. Yes, all that was hiding under the sheet! I'm off now to get coffee, visit and buy the week's groceries, and it's barely 6 a.m.

Unfortunately, this Saturday it was a full teardown. Next week I'll show you how I pack my bins.

Thanks for stopping by!

Wire-Woven Crab Agate Pendant...

"Crab" is another wire-weaving meditation done this morning at the market in between customers where I varied the weave from the first one I tried with the Cobra pendant (the modified soumak): instead of wrapping once, I wrapped twice, and developed a kind of organic zig-zag with gaps, to which I added lengths of wire which I first curled and hammered. In the interest of trying to stop being so freaking precise, I did all this adding and subtracting of wires randomly.

When I went to choose a pendant out of a bag of miscellaneous assorted pendants, the light hitting the weave pattern kind of mirrored the crab agate pattern (I think this is crab agate; someone please correct me if I'm wrong), so crabs, water, waves, undulation, and the wrap pretty much took itself over from there.

The back view:

This is the first time I'm doing a lot of hammering of dead soft copper. It gooshes out a lot more than half hard, and I need to keep an eye on that to keep all the hammered bits a little more equal, as the ones that aren't hammered enough look it. I'm seeing this more clearly in the photographs: I'm not getting the curves quite as swoopy and curvy and loopy as I'd like, and I'm still cutting off wire ends waaaay too soon, but it's coming -- and it's So. Much. FUN!!!

The other bonus is this is a great technique to use up all those orphan beads off the mixed strings of budget beads that seem always to have three or four really cool pendants that pretty much sell themselves as is, but the rest of them are.... kinda... meh.

As always, see me at the market on Saturday mornings, or email me for the availability of "Crab" or other items.

Thanks for looking!

It took me two days...

This is the mess I've managed to create in just two days. I spent several hours yesterday sorting tax receipts into quarters, and then my pal Brenda arrived to learn some wire-wrapping techniques, so the receipt piles all got shoved to the back against the wall. Who knows how long they'll remain there as I just got a pile of typing in.

This is the pendant I wrapped with dead soft copper wire and which will be going on my market table tomorrow morning. No idea what the stone is. Reminds me of snowflake obsidian, but this doesn't have the opacity, and it's dyed. Most of the beads on the table in the above picture will end up wrapped. You can get some really cool examples of beads on multi-strings for next to nothing. I got mine from Arton in Toronto a year or two ago.

Thanks for looking!