I would rather have made these with lapis stones, but recall I'm still on my "bead cold turkey," so I used some blue apatite stones instead. Pretty pleased how they came out, would like to try making more hoop earrings.
On beauty boards, the expression would be as follows: *head explodes*. That's what happens when you have too many choices or too much information to process. :)
I'd like to try my hand at making an illusion necklace. Back when I was starting out, I did make a couple, but that was before I had much idea what materials to use. Also the beads I used were too heavy...the virtue of an illusion necklace I would suppose lies in choosing lightweight beads.
I've seen a really nice one with several strands, using amethyst beads. For this one I'm thinking small pearls, or even a mix of pearls and crystals. Not sure what to use for the "string" part. I have regular and bronze Soft Flex on hand but nothing else that falls into that category.
A few things I'll try to photograph tomorrow...I didn't make them but think the designs are interesting and might be inspiring. They're Middle Eastern style necklaces and a couple of components.
Did a little clothes shopping today, went to Target...got some of that Proenza Schouler stuff. I haven't been following their guest-designers project too closely but it was marked half off and looked pretty decent. Last summer I got some of those Mossimo tee shirts and tank tops; frankly I'm not that happy with them. I don't think some of them are going to last a full year. So I'm game to try something new.
I also got a black dress, fairly sure it's this one:
Not something I'd normally buy, but I need an inexpensive black summer dress which is machine washable.
Now I need to make a necklace to go with this dress. Really have no clue what to make...sometimes it would appear that people who make jewelry have too many choices. :)
My first thought was crystals...clear or black ones, or both. Here is a picture of one of my early wire-wrapped links projects:
For a long time I was thinking of doing something similar (with better workmanship of course) with crystals instead of the carnelian beads and pearls. Not so much the triangular shape, rather the idea of creating "fabric" for the necklace out of wrapped bead links.
Or I could go for something like this:
...only with smaller pearls. I still have a set of filigree cones I could use for the back.
Basically it should be either crystal or pearl, or otherwise something with a "fancy" look to it. Still pondering...
The earlier version was terrible! I wore them in windy conditions and they were all over the place. I had the idea of stabilizing the bottom wire by simply adding more weight (hence the extra crystal) and added some on the sides to boot. The side crystals probably aren't necessary, but they look nice. This design is quite stable (I test it by grabbing the earrings and shaking them the way you would a smoothie in a bottle before drinking) but don't know yet if it's too heavy. If it is, I'll toss the side crystals.
And...Einstein that I am, I forgot not to do those teeny-spiral headpins on the bottom dangles of long earrings. Even hammering them doesn't help...they still end up sticking to your fake-fur collar, should you have one (looks guilty). So I switched these back to small-loop headpins and moved the spiral guys up to the sides.
At the end of all this, these remind me now of Indian chandelier earrings, on a slightly smaller scale.
Edited 4/27/07 to replace that horrendous night photo.
This is a very simple design...I'm working toward making "wall of crystal" earrings, but these are not it. (I suspect slightly smaller crystals would be better for the "wall of crystal" earrings.)
Still they came out nicely. I'm going to wear these today.
If you look you'll see it's largely odd pieces of wire and chain. The readymade components are the earring wires; you could just as well make your own out of goldfilled wire. I haven't bought niobium wire yet--and not sure how much cheaper it would be if I did--as I have tons of preformed niobium wires on hand.
I'm running out of supplies...on purpose. Right now I need to be more creative with what I have. It's too easy for me to jump on the Internet and find what I need for the moment, or for the next few projects...more difficult for me to look at what I have and make something interesting out of that.
I do plan on buying more supplies of course, just seeing how much I can come up with before doing so.
Rambles...
posted by Colleen Shirazi,
April 25, 2007
at 8:20 PM (Pacific)
Didn't get to make anything new today...too tired. I did however get a kick out of some folks comparing this piece to Turkish Delight:
image courtesy www.mrsbrowns.co.uk
Yum!
I'll have to say it is a singular experience wearing this sort of jewelry...it's out of the realm of much of my prior experience. I hardly ever shop boutiques...love the idea but find boutiques generally beyond my budgets of time and money.
Within my spending limits, I've owned a limited range of jewelry over the years. A few really good pieces, certainly, and some things I got at a Tibetan store in Berkeley. It's on College Avenue; a nice shop, one guy running it, a wide range of sterling and semi-precious stones...a couple of pieces from a Japanese gift shop on Solano (Albany)...some stuff from the hippie guy who used to sell at the Fourth of July Fair here (he wasn't there last year, that was disappointing)...that's about it.
These are in short the first pieces I've owned in a long time that are unique, that can't be placed. It's "a boutique feeling at a chain store price." lol
What to do next? I need to glue my end caps and try them out. I've already made the hook part of the clasp for that piece, waiting before making the "eye" part (since the eye can incorporate a bead from the overall design of the piece, thus making it a customized clasp).
I'd like to hammer some earring components...I have made some (few) I like out of wire, would love to see how they look hammered. I'm going to have to buy soft wire for at least some of these ideas.
For that matter I'm game to hammer an earring wire and see how that goes.
I went ahead and made the WigJig ones (linked to earlier). They're not bad...I hammered the end rings some to harden them (besides, I like hammering). When I get something made up with them, I'll take a pic.
I feel this design would work best for lighter weight designs...for heavier beads, I would probably still use readymade end caps. It's not that I actually detect a weakness in the handmade ones...with hammering, the construction seems pretty tight. Hm. I think I will just have to get gluing and do some tests.
They look nice, and they're reasonably sturdy, but the design flaw lies where the coil meets the loop. At that point, there is a single wire...it's 20 gauge and half hard and yadda yadda, but if you bend it enough, for whatever reason, it is going to break. Back to the drawing board...
This is fairly standard, a single loop at the bottom and a pair of "rabbit ears" on top. It's not soldered so I carefully filed and bent the wire ends so that nothing ill should happen (poky ends, et cetera).
Here I can see afresh how useful it would be to have soldering equipment handy. I've been trying to pace myself as far as acquiring new techniques...it's less for the learning curve and more a matter of expense. Even "money saving" techniques can cost a lot of money at the onset...thinking of all the various materials and tools I'd love to use at some point--PMC, torch, solder...
I'll wear this little pendant today...its green glass Venetian bead is the "little sister" of the one in this earlier wire bail experiment:
End caps
posted by Colleen Shirazi,
at 10:26 AM (Pacific)
So far, so good. I haven't glued them yet of course...have to see first if I have other things to glue, since some of the E-6000 remains in the applicator tip after you're done.
Here's what I was listening to while hammering the loops:
Blondie's "Shayla," 1979 Written by Chris Stein
Promise I won't put too much off-topic material in this blog, but I've been fascinated over the past several days by the sheer wealth of Youtube...it's like the original MTV (back when they had no commercials and played music videos 24 hours a day), The Midnight Special, Saturday Night Live, Fridays, and bootlegs, all rolled into one.
Rambles...
posted by Colleen Shirazi,
at 1:24 AM (Pacific)
Found this image on another site:
I suppose back in the day I would have been entranced by the cosmetics in this pic, now it's the necklace that catches my eye. :) I'd like to make something with a similar structure...not the same materials in the sense of using bronze or champagne pearls, but rather the idea of three strands of such a length that it covers the upper chest area. Mind you this could as well be a single, long strand, worn looped, but for my version I'd like to do three strands.
This would truly appear to be a place to watch tv on your computer...I started to watch an episode of Absolutely Fabulous, but it's past one in the morning here, so I'm going to bed.
I went ahead and glued the steel block back onto its base. It's still curing but that hardly means I can't use it. :D Thought I'd try my hand making a simple sterling hook and eye clasp.
Not sure if I'll keep this clasp on this piece...thinking it would make more sense to use a lobster clasp the way I did on the previous Venetian glass bead necklace. My reasoning is, these beads are expensive and they're glass. If the hook slips out for whatever reason, a chance the piece will fall and the beads crack.
That said...hammering wire is one of the most fun aspects of jewelry making ever. Even if you don't actually need to hammer something, I think you owe it to yourself to own a block or anvil and a hammer.
Sweet! Got a hammer and a "block" today. The block...coughmade in Chinacough was a steel block glued to a wooden base, and the block came completely off the base after I'd used it...once.
I'm not overly concerned, as the steel block seems beautifully solid and it's simply a matter of E-6000'ing it back onto the wooden base...and you could just as well not glue it at all, and use it set on top of a wooden cutting board. Still, guys, could ya just glue the darn thing?
Anyway...still loads of hammering pleasure. Here is my first project...it's crude but I will keep it, the same way I've kept a sample of just about every "phase" of my jewelry making journey. The hammered spirals catch the light when you wear them. Plus, they feel just gorgeous when you touch them...nice and smooth.
My aim is to make more of my own components out of wire. I've seen some beautiful ones and found them inspiring. Plus, I'm tired of having to buy something every time I turn around in order to complete a project.
The bottom line is that handmade components can look better because the eye can discern that they were not mass produced.
Was trying to take a pic of the "light azore" shade of Swarovski crystals (far right). The sun was setting and I don't feel I got it quite right; the picture was too dark so I had to lighten it in Photoshop. The actual crystals are a bit paler and more delicate-looking, but it does give an idea what they look like in real life.
Light azore is a very pretty color. Sort of a shade deeper than an aquamarine stone.
In fact that is a problem...Swarovski's can look very different in person than they tend to online.
Take "crystal silver shade" for example. In real life, it's a lovely pale grey. I would say it's a neutral grey rather than "cool." I was checking it out to match some pink keishi pearls. But online it can look almost clear, not grey at all.
Going back to the above picture, two kinds of clear crystals: "Moonlight" finish (far left); AB finish (top). Moonlight is sort of a cross between a plain clear finish and AB...a little more "shine" and "glow" than the plain, but not as much rainbow dazzle as AB. (Moonlight is nice, I like it.)
Rambles...
posted by Colleen Shirazi,
April 19, 2007
at 3:11 PM (Pacific)
Taking a little break from jewelry making...I put all my finished pieces on the bed. I have a bad habit of making a piece and not 100% finishing it, or else neglecting to repair/redesign pieces. It's just so fun to start on a new piece.
I changed The Broadroom's logo to Flash...hopefully not "Flash because everyone has Flash" Flash. Also, it's a minimal file size. Someday I'll finish transferring all of the old site over...I had to do the moneymaking parts first to keep the site going, but what you see is about 50% of the original site.
I'm warming to the idea of doing more handmade components. These look better than readymade ones if you have the skill, because they stand out.
Isn't that just a beautiful green color? The picture's pretty accurate...it has green and blue glass in it.
This also represents me being tired of buying stuff. lol I decided to try my hand making a wire bail. It's nice...the fine gauge wire in the back doesn't show much when it's on. I could also make it fancier by wrapping the entire bail in fine gauge wire, but I thought I'd save that for another bail.
I'm also in the process of making some end caps out of wire. What with the E-6000 working so well, it occurred to me that handmade end caps would work just as well as bought ones...and again, I'm tired of buying stuff!
As it is, I'm out of 22 gauge wire...so trying to think of ways of trimming my costs.
I actually slept in this last night...not something I make a habit of, I really just fell asleep with it on (damn taxes!). It seems to have stretched out a tiny bit. Interesting...it's not horribly stretched-out or anything, but I can see that would be a factor in designing on leather cord, especially if you have heavier beads in the design.
The chain design in front was still intact when I got up! The necklace had turned to the side some but the butterfly-esque six chains were still nice and flat.
Still not sure of the design. It's a bit old style, like the chunky bead chokers people wore in the 70's. That could be a good thing. At any rate, the E-6000'd tiny cord ends worked great.
The whole thing is modular...I was struggling to remember that term the other day. It's used in programming among other things...modular programming means you can move the code around, reuse it...rather than a ginormous block of code you can't do much with, beyond whatever it was originally supposed to do.
So the idea here is this...if I wanted to swap out any of the components in the piece, I could do it easily. I've been doing that for a while...the one thing I haven't gotten down yet is getting a wrapped-link bracelet to work, other than just wrapping the links together. I'd like to come up with a better-shaped wrap (shorter and fatter) so that the links could be joined with jump rings without looking too sparse.
Rambles...
posted by Colleen Shirazi,
April 16, 2007
at 8:11 PM (Pacific)
The sterling end caps are on completely tight. Amazing! I doubt I'll have to crimp the ends, just deciding whether they'd be prettier if I did.
I'm wearing the one with the heart pendant on it. Hm. The design is good in the "stable" sense...I lay down and took a nap today with it on, half-wondering if something would pop in my sleep, got up...everything looks fine. It's a bit eerie actually, I expected the six chains in front to tangle up somewhat.
Now...is the design fantastic or craptastic? That I do not know yet. I don't usually do big chunky beads, or red beads, or even glass as much these days, and I have little experience with leather cord beyond making a simple cord for pendants. It's comfortable though, not too heavy, since it's only just the three beads.
The other piece looks okay too, I'll figure that one out tomorrow.
Oh and cough cough How about someone making wire guardians for leather cord? Wouldn't that be nice? I'll have to see if there's already something like that...as far as I know, french wire is usually quite small, designed for silk or softflex.
Rambles...
posted by Colleen Shirazi,
at 12:38 PM (Pacific)
I looked at the E-6000'd end caps today some, they seemed pretty tight, even the larger sterling pair. Will wait the full 24 hours before testing them much though.
Already I prefer E-6000 to GS Hypo Cement (it's apples and oranges, I'm just saying). It's much easier for me to use. The Hypo Cement is thin and tends to ooze out of the tube even after you've stopped squeezing it...I've read the trick is to not get impatient and squeeze too much in the first place...but the E-6000 is quite thick and hardly oozes at all.
I can see Hypo Cement would be better for small applications...even the smallest hole in the plastic applicator tip that came with the E-6000 is large relative to the needle tip of the Hypo Cement.
Here is a link I got from the jewelrymaking.about.com forum: The Fairtrade Foundation, London, UK. I haven't explored it yet so can't comment much, but it is intriguing. I'll have to see how many jewelry supply companies belong to Fair Trade associations...Rishashay comes to mind, I will have to do some research.
Got about an hour of sleep last night, stayed up to do the taxes and then started doing Net stuff. So I'm not sure I'll be able to do much jewelry-wise today. There's a ton of work I'm supposed to be doing at any rate (not jewelry related).
I have some commission pieces coming up, which is a bit more fun than designing for yourself. I think the ideal of jewelry is not dissimilar to cosmetics in that you should enhance the beauty of the wearer...not always easy, it's an art.
These aren't finished yet of course...I got to try out my E-6000. The heart pendant on the bottom piece is detached because it kept gravitating...the heart always faced sideways no matter what, so I redid the wrap and got it to stay put (knock wood anyway).
The top piece uses the same silver end caps I used before...I had to crimp them on the previous piece (being glue-in and crimp after all), so I'll probably have to do so again. There are a couple of red vintage glass beads on it, that I've had for quite some time.
These beads are a pleasure to work with. I still have three heart beads left...two green ones of different sizes, and one I'm fairly sure is dichroic glass...that I'll probably just make into pendants.
So what? you're thinking, well the funny thing is how "right" these two pieces felt on me. A bit hard to explain. I'm naturally a shy person, I don't wear flamboyant things...but then there has always been a side to me that was never afraid to stand out. The vermeil cage beads, along with the bright blue turquoise, really do stand out...and paired with the earrings (more bits of bright blue), the effect is noticeable.
All in all, pretty darn pleased with these pieces.
Oh, I'm dying to finish off the piece I started after the Bead Expo. It's three red Venetian glass beads...the beauty here is the depth of color. I don't normally wear red stones or beads at all, feel they look best on brunettes, but I couldn't resist these beads. I've got a design of goldfilled chains in front with the red beads, and a double length of 1mm black leather cord on the sides. It's an unusual design and either it works brilliantly, or else it goes over like a lead balloon. Can't wait to find out which. lol
What I need is to use the E6000 to glue the 4 leather ends into tiny goldfilled end caps. Now I could have elected to just knot the two ends together on either side and then finagle the clasp in there somehow...I was playing with it last night. Or I could have done the adjustable leather cord thing, like this: Robert Wan, Tahitian Pearl Necklace.
Why the end caps then...it just seems nicer than knotting or doing the adjustable cord thing, for this piece. I have some gold in the design after all.
Rambles...
posted by Colleen Shirazi,
at 8:07 PM (Pacific)
This is sort of craft-related, but it's also a bit creepy.
They just opened a Wal-Mart in my area...we're probably one of the last places that never had one, up until now.
That's not the creepy part. The creepy part is that every surrounding store that I visited today, was next to empty, on a Saturday.
Went to Jo-Ann Fabrics...I'm not generally crafty, don't know how to sew or knit, but I needed to get some E6000 to try out. There was a handful of people there...and that Jo-Ann Fabrics was usually very busy.
Went to Target (needing some socks) and that was similarly quiet. Usually I spend my time there maneuvering my shopping cart around all the other carts...not this time. Again, the relative handful of shoppers.
The entire strip mall outside where the Wal-Mart was, was almost deserted...Circuit City, Ross Dress for Less, etc. Places usually mobbed on the weekend.
Out of morbid curiosity, I decided to drive by that new Wal-Mart. Sure enough, the place was packed; you could see even from the parking lot.
I'm not going to launch into an anti Wal-Mart diatribe. It's just true what they say. If a Wal-Mart opens anywhere, everything around it dies. Or at least I hope it doesn't die in this case. I hope this weirdness is only because of the Wal-Mart grand opening.
I went to this yesterday. Here are some thoughts...
I don't have a resellers license, so I attended only the "Open to the Public" Bead Bazaar part of the show. (There is a wholesale preview as well.)
It's definitely big...and there are finds there. But there was a markup on a lot of stuff too. I felt some of it was geared less toward people who obsess about this sort of thing and more toward casual buyers. That's okay, it was still worth visiting for me, because most of the stuff I buy now is online. The opportunity to see the stuff in person was well worth the price--$6 admission with online coupon, plus parking or BART (it's downtown Oakland).
I didn't buy much, wasn't planning to since I'm doing my bead "cold turkey." I'd already decided to buy "once in a lifetime" items, such as the Venetian glass beads I could finally see...got some from Merchant of Murano. I'm working on a necklace using some of these beads now.
And I got some pearl strands from BeadBabe/BeadBugle which were extra nice for the price.
In conclusion, worth going to, but shop carefully.
Turquoise necklace
posted by Colleen Shirazi,
April 12, 2007
at 4:47 PM (Pacific)
Wonder whose hand is in the background? lol...
I'm not sure this necklace is quite "it." If I were making it to sell, I would have used fancier chain or some other way to make it stand out more. In fact I'm thinking chain with long and short links (don't have any on hand).
I'll give it some thought...designed it anyway so that the turquoise dangles could easily be moved to a different chain.
I have it scheduled to deliver a daily email update between 9:00 and 11:00 PM, Pacific time. And sure enough, I got a nice email update at that time tonight.
If you read this blog regularly, you might consider signing up for the service...it's super easy, there are no forms to fill out or account to create. Just type your email address in the little Feedburner form in the top section of the blog:
You'll get a confirmation email with a link to click. That's it. You should be able to unsubscribe at any time.
Handmade Jewelry photo gallery
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Not sure yet about the black ones. They're exceedingly simple, made to match a black Swarovski crystal and Bali vermeil necklace. Since the necklace was kinda fancy, thought I'd go simple with the earrings. They're a good light weight, and not too long, on.
The turquoise ones are standard jig creations...the trick is to bend them so that the turquoise drops don't flip around when you wear them. I also "soldered" the side loops with some fine gauge wire. Debated whether to wrap the bottom loops as well, but there's no purpose in doing so (I could also have wire wrapped the top loops but wondered if that would be "too much").
Testing...
posted by TheBroadroom.Net,
April 10, 2007
at 10:16 PM (Pacific)
Hey, it's me. I tried subscribing to the email update service, so far I haven't gotten emails. What I'm getting out of it, is it'll send you the updates once per day...it doesn't send them at the same time the blog is updated, only on the same day.
Okay I'm back!
posted by Colleen Shirazi,
at 8:24 PM (Pacific)
Last night and today I was working on adding more features to this blog and some others on our site (Beauty Blog, Fashion Blog, the Lipstick Page Forums site in general).
Now I need to test them out! All of the new features are on the top, right-hand side of this blog:
You can now have updates to this blog emailed to you, from Feedburner.com.
A new and much better search feature, Google Custom Search, replaces the blog search that used to be at the top of this page, and the domain search on the left. All it does is search this blog, and it's better and more up-to-date than the old header search.
I don't subscribe to feeds myself but there is a link to do that now.
The next logical step would be to get a Flickr account and use that for my images. I'll definitely do that if I start selling jewelry but probably not now, I'm really tired of hacking this blog. ;)
Rambles...
posted by Colleen Shirazi,
April 8, 2007
at 9:00 PM (Pacific)
I haven't made anything on stretch cord for quite some time.
Part of it is the philosophy of experienced jewelry makers (I'm not one, I'm just saying) that stretch cord wears out over time...if you have beads you care about, you should avoid stringing them on stretch cord. That's the philosophy anyway; I haven't been at this long enough to have a piece wear out one way or the other, but it does stand to reason.
Stretch cord is more attractive to the absolute beginner, because there are several components involved in making a good non-stretch piece. If you don't have the components yet, it's more straightforward doing the stretchy stuff.
Non-stretch pieces are showier since you get to do a clasp...and more versatile, since you can make their length adjustable. You can also do heavier beads and longer lengths.
I don't know where that came from...I was just remembering when just about everything I did was on stretch cord.
Tried taking this pic at night...the previous pics were taken just as the sun was going down, and they're better than this one. Indirect artificial light didn't work, so I put the overhead light on and played with the settings on the camera. It's still not optimal...the shiny parts of jewelry make them difficult to photograph...but it'll do.
Here, the gift bag didn't actually belong with the set but I liked the idea of including a gift bag in the picture! Makes it all look so gift-y.
This set incorporates some Bali vermeil beads including the square one in the center of the necklace that didn't come out too well. It's this one (in vermeil of course):
I'm pretty pleased with this piece even though these aren't the best pictures. I've found with my (older) digicam, the lighting has to be just right or else the pics get out of focus to a degree.
This is a bit more luxe than I usually make it, but it's a gift (note the gift bag!), and I wanted to do something with aquamarines. The strands are mainly faceted aquamarine rondelles, with some faceted labradorite rondelles and Bali silver beads. The clasp is also aquamarine and silver.
Got to try out that EZ Bracelet Sizer while making this piece. It does help actually. I started out with two strands, then decided to add the third strand with three aquamarine nugget beads in the center. It was too big with two strands but just right with the three.
