February 27, 2008 4:15 AM,  Dain said...

This post has been removed by the author.

February 27, 2008 4:47 AM,  Dain said...

I've been thinking of color combos that might go well with gold and a pearl: milky multicolored sapphires, pink tourmalines with a smoky blue, and maybe a pink-orange sapphire.

February 18, 2008 1:13 PM,  Dain said...

Hm... the jasmine seems slightly the stronger, to me, but then I'm more comfortable with rose. Imo, I think they're well-balanced by each other. I find it ageless (in that it defies the trends), but nevertheless of a certain age (in that, I feel gauche in it).

I'm not sure if vintage and reorchestration will make much of a difference (I have not smelled it before I tried it), but I suspect concentration might.

February 19, 2008 11:17 PM,  Colleen Shirazi said...

I think you're right...Patou is unlikely to have changed much. I was a bit stunned when I smelled the Sublime sample--it's exactly the way I remembered it smelling, back in the mid-90's when I went to Nordies and sampled it.

On me there is only a bit of jasmine.

I'm not much of a parfum person, I can dig the idea but eau de parfum tends to suit me better.

February 21, 2008 10:57 AM,  Dain said...

Me too, except when there is a decided difference (Chanel No. 19 EDT is pitiful, but the parfum is a marvel). I like an EDP because I really like to spray with abandon.

February 15, 2008 8:50 PM,  Dain said...

Wow, what a great present! I like how the strands twist around each other. I imagine there are some uses for lower grade gems. Sometimes the occlusions give a nice texture to the look.

February 16, 2008 3:25 PM,  Colleen Shirazi said...

Yup...well, I do want to make better pieces this year. There's a surprising amount of complexity to it. It's a bit like programming in the sense, people look at the surface of an application; sometimes they can be very impressed with appearances. But I'm always thinking, what's behind it?

I went through two different handmade silver hook closures (and have two silver hooks lying there as a result), as well as a larger silver toggle. The balance has to be just right.

Sometimes you want a sort of rough look. I have some rough-looking freshwater pearls that look better than smoother ones. Or say you have an oxidized chain, you might want slightly flawed stones to go with that.

I'm still a bit fuddled what to do with your pearls. They're nice pearls, I'm just...fuddled.

Thinking of ordering some chain...for example, the oxidized silver chain. There's a big trend now for the oxidized look, and it's mostly just that, trendy, but I would like to do a bit of it. It can look nice.

Then thinking of a more textured goldfilled chain. I'm skipping the big-link chain trend. Next year you won't see it.

February 16, 2008 3:56 PM,  Dain said...

I like the colors here. I find the combination of purpley blue, soft rose, and the creamy pearls particularly resonant in this gold setting. I'm not sure which stones, or which cuts would work best in an earring. But there's no rush, my ears aren't even pieced.

February 17, 2008 9:56 PM,  Colleen Shirazi said...

You're right. There is something special about pairing a rich gold with an intense color such as purple or blue.

February 19, 2008 8:08 AM,  Carol said...

WOW!
That is beautiful!
Lucky girl!

February 19, 2008 11:18 PM,  Colleen Shirazi said...

:D

February 21, 2008 11:02 AM,  Dain said...

I bet you when other girls exclaim, she's like, yeah, my MOM made it. And all the other girls squirm in jealousy. ; )

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February 12, 2008 12:27 PM,  Colleen Shirazi said...

Normally I'd zap this comment right off the blog; it's pure advertising. SO PLEASE DON'T ADD ANY MORE COMMENTS LIKE IT.

Still...Shanghainese tailers in Hong Kong? Four weeks' turnover time? It is kind of cool.

February 12, 2008 6:38 PM,  Dain said...

Yeah... my friend Cathy, who spent a year in HK, says that women take the fat issue of Vogue, go straight to these tailors, and knock an entire wardrobe off. ; )

February 12, 2008 11:10 PM,  Colleen Shirazi said...

Fan-freakin'-tastic.

February 5, 2008 4:51 PM,  Dain said...

Interesting. The peanut oil in this product clogs my pores. Otherwise, I like it. I'll agree that you don't really need moisturizer afterwards. The spritz of a toner will do. In fact, that's how you are supposed to do it at night, according to the Dr. Hauschka regime, so that skin can "breathe". That might be why the cleansers have such a heaviness to them.

February 6, 2008 12:27 AM,  Dain said...

Hey Colleen, you know that hoop design you've been working with lately? Have you considered looping it back down before you wrap it and making a small hoop that descends into the center? That way, you can attach a stone that floats in the middle of the large hoop, and whatever you like on the ring itself. It might be a way to tinker around with color combinations and not worry about the stones themselves knocking into each other.

February 7, 2008 1:49 AM,  Colleen Shirazi said...

The funny part is, it doesn't leave my face greasy. When I'm using it, it feels like hand cream--after rinsing and drying, it doesn't feel different from my regular moisturizer. Possibly it's better for oily skin than for dry.

I haven't bothered with the toner yet. I've used the cleansing milk for three nights now--I'm using it only at night, I use the cleansing cream in the AM. My skin does feel a bit softer and smoother.

Ah, the quest for the handmade wire hoop. The thing is you can buy readymade components, but they'll look readymade, in the sense of being something anyone can buy. I'm not knocking it...I've been pondering getting some myself, like a round hammered silver link with tiny holes in it.

The handmade ones are a bit tricky...you have to get it so it doesn't look bulky, since you have to get the thing to stay together using only wire.

February 7, 2008 12:05 PM,  Colleen Shirazi said...

Doh?

Recently I've been doing the double-looped wrap I saw on the SkyDreams Etsy site...it really does work better. The old top wrap had only one loop, which you used to wrap the other end of the wire. I was having a problem with the end of the wire popping out of the wrap if you pulled it. If you put a loop at the top of the end, it really can't pop out.

What I'd need to do is bring the wrap itself down and terminate it in another loop. The hoop would have to be bigger of course but there's no reason it wouldn't work.

February 7, 2008 7:16 PM,  Dain said...

Yeah, I figured that might be it. Dr. Hauschka, try as I might, never quite suited me. And I first scorned Jurlique as a Dr. Hauschka copycat, but it suits my skin far better.

The toner is great--it's the only toner I'd actually recommend. It's somehow "more than toner". There's alcohol in it, plant alcohol, but IIRC is it's ethyl not isopropryl, as it is for so many products. There's just lovely botanicals floating around, and it smells wonderful, and like nothing else. (I'm talking about the Facial Toner, am allergic to Clarifying).

February 7, 2008 7:47 PM,  Colleen Shirazi said...

It's weird eh? It seems to me the greatest fans of Hauschka are in fact those with oily skin and/or acne.

February 2, 2008 8:02 PM,  Dain said...

Hm, I know you're done with these, but, some color pairings (mostly drawn from looking at too many eyeshadows). Since the prehnite is such a delicate color, perhaps a very delicate contrast? I've always noticed, for example, that the perfect contrast works better than a near match. It seems crazy, I know, but perhaps you are not getting the color resonance you desire because the greens are similar, but in their very similarity, compete.

The prehnite might work better set against opals, or sort of watery raspberry, or a smoky grey, something with very cold fire, because anything truly strong will, as you noted, make them disappear. Even the gold might be competitive. Whereas the emeralds might resonate better with warmer, stronger colors: coral, amber, ruby, amethyst... um... yeah, what do I know?

February 2, 2008 9:48 PM,  Colleen Shirazi said...

Actually I think you'd be great at designing jewelry. You have excellent design and color senses. I've thought it would be neat to go into a partnership...where you come up with the designs, and I make the stuff. It's not practical now...and I haven't even gotten into metalworking, which is the Mecca of jewelry-making. Once you can do metalworking, you can make any kind of jewelry. I'm not sure when I would be able to do that...but I haven't ruled out the concept.

I'm better with prosaic designs, like...I need a pair of green earrings. That's about as far as that gets.

I've concluded that the prehnites I was trying to use were too small for earrings. I have seven of them and was planning to make a necklace. I'll probably go back to that idea...I have something similar, it's just seven or so stones on a chain.

February 2, 2008 11:42 PM,  Colleen Shirazi said...

Argh, I fixed that tiny bend in one of them. It's good photographing jewelry for that reason--anything wrong with it is gonna show.

February 3, 2008 2:28 PM,  Dain said...

It's interesting how there are new challenges with every piece. When you first got into this, I was like, ok, hm, odd hobby but who am I to talk? But ever since you sent me those sites, I've been looking at each piece and thinking, now how did they do that? And it's sometimes amazing how it's all put together.

February 3, 2008 2:56 PM,  Colleen Shirazi said...

The craft itself has evolved a great deal over the past few years. It sort of exploded at one point...there were tons of people getting into it, people like myself, who had never crafted sweet fanny in their lives. And other people who were already crafty of course.

The market became saturated, and many people dropped out. Basically they went into it to make money, and it's incredibly difficult to make money making jewelry in a saturated market.

It reminds me a bit of programming, that is how it was. A massive explosion, tons of people jumping in on the promise of making money. The "market" for programmers was never saturated, could never be saturated; what happened was, once the people here had developed the software field, it could then be shipped elsewhere. You'll note any real software innovation is still happening here.

The similarity continues in the sense of people dropping out, and the people who really like doing it, remaining, and turning it into something ever improving.

You have to be willing to start at the bottom--that is like programming, where you start with DOS command-line programs. No one is impressed by these: to the non-programmer, programming means fancy animated GUI-based programs. To the programmer there is no difference. One looks different, but the mechanics either work or they don't. The prettiest program that cracks...eh...

Over the next few years, we should see ever-improving materials for handmade jewelry. The people who remained in it are switching to better stuff. And because there are fewer of them, they all sort of "know" each other, so they influence each other.

Goldsmithing is really the thing. Or silversmithing. sighs If I were rich, I'd build a small factory.