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!

Mixed Pearl Necklace & Earrings

It's February 15th! Happy Half-Price Chocolate Day to you all!

A long silence. With both the weather and roads being the height of crappy the past two Saturdays I erred on the side of caution and skipped the markets. I had visions of sitting at my kitchen table, the only semi-clear space in here (I have four -- count'em -- work tables each of which is completely buried a foot deep in stuff plus the kitchen table), snow silently piling up to the eaves outside and putting jewellery together, but with another onslaught of transcription to plough through not much jewellery-making got done at all.

I finally got around to adding this pretty heart clasp to the mixed cream, pink and purple pearl and Swarovski crystal necklace I started two weeks ago. I have a feeling the clasp could be sterling, but like a lot of things there including these mixed pearls, unmarked and unpriced bags of this, that and the other surface periodically and with no idea from where or whence they came. No .925 on the clasp anywhere to be seen, but it has the sheen and weight of sterling, so mebbe. Sterling earwires for sure on the matching earrings.

Necklace is approximately 25" long

I have a million ideas of things to make but unlike so many of the prolific bloggers I follow, I'm mired deeply in the winter doldrums (and those pesky files). Fortunately the emergence of the sun the past few days is working its slow but sure magic. Now if the temperature could just get above freezing and stay there... how nice that would be!

This is what my pal Lynn (aka Lynny Claus) over at http://cattaildesigns.blogspot.com/ has been working on -- the jewellery display frame AND the earrings. Once the hangers are attached, this and its duplicate will be winging their way to her daughters (2 frames, 2 daughters) as combo V-Day/B-day gifts.

Again, Happy Half-Price Chocolate Day everyone, and thanks for looking!

The Jewel in My Crown & A Chakra Necklace...

My jewel, aka Max, in our moveable garden...

Been busy today, finally got around to making this chakra necklace that I've been meaning to do for a while. It's based on a free design from Mama's Minerals, an online store based in New Mexico.

Chakra Necklace:

From the centre, the beads are garnet (also the focal), carnelian, citrine, peridot, turquoise, iolite, amethyst and moonstone, with a sterling silver lobster clasp, "Tibetan silver" beads, 21 inches long. I can add a sterling extender chain or doeskin ties to lengthen this, $5.

$70 (plus $5 for extender) plus $5 shipping and handling. Please email me for availability, or for a different configuration of beads. I have many beautiful focal stones that would look great in the centre.

I have many more stones of all sizes and qualities, particularly if you are interested in something tailored more to your needs or related, for example, to your zodiac sign. Mama's Minerals has an interesting chart showing some of the many different stones associated with each chakra. I spent a couple of days last year going through all my books to compile an Excel spreadsheet cross-referencing stones with zodiac signs. Email me for a copy.

Thanks for looking!

It's Friday and Bwahaha III is baaaaack

I was pretty busy all week. Got a lot of turquoise and chrysocolla leather-wrapped bracelets made in single, double and triple wrap combinations. Pretty much all of them will have to be taken apart: I didn't have any nylon thread so I figured I'd see how bad it could be using polyester. Bad. Really bad. The thread was fraying like crazy before I'd even finished making the bracelets. Here are some pictures for now, but I will be redoing all of them this week. They look fantastic on, if I do say so myself.


Kingman turquoise (4mm boulder & 6mm) triple-wrapped bracelet, natural Greek leather; double-wrapped chrysocolla; single-wrap 4mm Kingman boulder turquoise bracelet

The turquoise is from The Turquoise Chick, Albuquerque. The natural Greek leather is from Bamiyan, Toronto. I cannot get over how great this stuff is to work with compared to the el cheapo stuff I've been buying from India. Orders of magnitude difference.

Got through a ton of earrings today. Nose to the grindstone day. I'm whupped. Finished off my typing at 9:30 this morning and basically chugged along all day. Got a lot of inexpensive feather earrings done finally, and made a pile of Swarovski earrings to replace the ones I've sold in the past few weeks.

I made fairly simple earrings that I can sell for around $5 or $6 a pair depending on how many feathers are on them. I want to talk to people to see what they're looking for.

Then I kind of went nuts and made Bwahaha III. Not sure how the feathers are going to hang when there are two on one side and one on the other side of the skulls. Might have to add another feather to each. Pewter skulls are from Happy Mango Beads and, yes, I'm getting lots more.

Silver-filled wire vs sterling or Argentium, with some hammered tin pieces

The following is my too-wordy-to-post contribution to a discussion thread about silver-filled wire versus sterling or Argentium wire on Wire Wrap Jewelry, a fun and interesting Yahoo group I recently joined.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wire_Wrap_Jewelry/message/99912

I think I agree with Perry here, as well as the comment about labour and also using the tinned copper for the special effects achievable. Here are my post-rainy (yay!) misty Sunday morning and now almost 1 p.m. coffee-fueled musings. I have to say there is nothing like mist-muffled car tires on wet country roads.

I don't know that the price differential would mean much in the end, and the cost of this silver-filled wire at 50% of the price of sterling wire for only a 10% silver content versus 92.5%? No, definitely not. Yes, when starting out, cost definitely is a huge issue, and no, you don't want to be practising or working out a new design with sterling -- which I still use Artistic wire for. But I'm sure, like me, you've occasiontally come across some of your beginning efforts that you remember you were so proud of: nothing is so full of character and dimension as the frayed, rusting cut ends of Artistic wire.

10% silver content versus the 5% of other plated wires? As anyone becomes more experienced, considerations around producing jewellery based purely on cost drop away and it is quality on all fronts that becomes paramount because the customers you started out with either grow with you and accept the increased cost of your work and materials as a mark of the product... or they won't. Of course you will find appreciative customers to replace the ones who fall away who be more than willing to pay the higher price for that quality.

Personally, I'm making jewellery which I hope will last a lifetime, and if I'm using plated components -- and the end result of silver surrounding a copper core is "plated" no matter how hard you wrap schmancy words around it, and silver does wear, does it not? -- then that silver-filled wire jewellery will not last a lifetime, particularly at wear points, not to mention those cut ends so full of character and dimension will wear even more. I think that the marketing argument for using silver-filled wire over sterling or Argentium based on cost is specious and they're missing the true marketing opportunity.

I know I'm not alone in this, but while becoming more experienced in making jewellery, I've also been learning about the difference between D grade and AAA grade stones. If I am increasingly buying much higher quality beads that cost heart-stopping dollars per string, why on earth would I used a 10% silver-filled wire with a copper core on a bead that costs $10, $20 or more each to save a few cents?

At the same time reality intrudes: along with market table stuff mostly for kids that I put together to sell for a few bucks, I make a medium-price "diffusion" line for people like myself, which is to say champagne taste on a beer budget, but who still have a few extra dollars to spend where justified.

Given that my labour costs are always going to be the same no matter what I'm making and that components and dangles are where the money goes -- and that's where silver prices have become particularly atrocious -- I've started using more and more high-quality pewter and/or silver-plated pewter with great results, BUT I still use Argentium silver wire. I mean, really, how much does a few inches of 24 gauge cost, ditto a pair of sterling earwires? It's not like it's a full ounce of silver wire, it's a few inches. Essentially, I give people a choice: go with all-sterling, or yes, these are sterling earwires, but you can save a few bucks on equally interesting, but different and much less costly pewter dangles or just two amazingly outrageously beautiful beads out of a costly string versus an entire necklace -- for now. I show them how the piece is constructed so that if they come across a to-die-for pendant or dangles, or some day they come into a little windfall they want to invest in sterling components or upgrading to a complete bracelet or necklace, their piece can easily be upgraded by me or someone else.

Re: using tinned copper and sanding away or hammering the snot out of the tin so that the copper starts gooshing through -- yes!!!!! I love doing that, the effect is fantastic. This is where we're getting to the wrongness of the advertising: I think it would be fun to experiment with this specific property of the silver-filled wire, which I'm not arguing is not a good product in and of itself, but it's this property, I think, which IS the potential marketing strategy, not that other babble about characterful and dimensional ends and saving money.

Silver-filled wire manufacturer, are you listening? I have the suspicion that whoever is writing their ad copy does NOT make jewellery if this is the best they can come up with because they're missing the marketing opportunity of the decade... mixed metals is hot!

In the end, I still think you have to consider that using by silver-filled wire, you're making jewellery with a wire that will eventually wear down to the copper core, and at 10%, a lot faster than not. This all goes back to knowing who you are as a designer and who your market is: are you a designer from whom people buy quality jewellery around which to build a wardrobe for the next umpteen years and for whom finding, buying at any price and wearing a particular piece of jewellery is a visceral experience, or do you make jewellery for those who buy something to match an outfit that they feel okay about tossing after a season? Both are equally valid points of view and creation but the price differential between this silver-filled wire and sterling/argentium isn't worth it.

Anyway, I hope I've contributed something to the conversation. I do find it fascinating the stories people tell me about their jewellery, and listening to the discussions that ensue when considering what to buy for someone definitely helps me when thinking about new pieces. The take-home message is that price is not entirely the question, but what you can do with the materials is: does it serve the purpose?

Long story short, and speaking from a practical point of view, I don't see that the price differential is sufficient to justify choosing 10% silver-filled wire over 92.5% sterling or Argentium for most jewellery, but what would make me buy it is the design potential inherent in a thicker silver plating on a copper core.

Here are some pictures of what I did a few years ago when I first started hammering and using tinned copper. Definitely an ick factor looking at these from a design/workmanship point of view, but, oh, the gooshing... and over time, as you polish the tin to buff it up to a pewter glow, it wears off ever so slightly, exposing and more copper, and it develops the most amazing patina. It's like a living thing!