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· 10:21 PM by
Dain
· 1:35 PM by
Colleen Shirazi
· 12:43 AM by
Colleen Shirazi
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Posted by TheLipstickPageForums.com, Sunday, December 17, 2006 12:22 AM (Eastern)
It's Colleen btw. I switched my Blogger account to the beta version...mumbles...on the premise that the new Blogger features "labels." This is a feature that other blogging programs already have; at the least, it means we can categorize our posts (under, say, "Chanel," "grunge," "ramblings" etc.); same post may contain multiple labels. Ideally it would also mean our labels would be keywords, although I doubt it. Anyhow, I can't retrieve my "old" blogs from my "new" account until, I suppose, tomorrow, and I've been reluctant to switch these blogs over until the beta is out of beta.
I've ordered some more components...sighs. Perhaps the obvious tactic for me would have been to Google until I found jewelry I liked, and then duplicate it. After all I'm making it for my own use. My problem is more along the lines of my pre-Net cosmetic persona: I never really figured out what I liked in the first place. Sure, I like a big rock, same as the next gal, but so what? That's not a solution since I can't produce the big rock.
At least I've boiled some of it down. I like gold more than silver, faceted more than smooth, rondelle over round; I can't abide toggle clasps on bracelets (they look great and invariably drop off your wrist after a few hours), but find they work perfectly on necklaces.
I prefer bracelets that clasp over stretch pieces; for whatever irrational reason (it's a contradiction, but haven't you done things for irrational reasons?), they feel more secure. Box clasps are ideal for bracelets, being both decorative and secure, but most necklaces can do with the less-expensive toggle or lobster/spring ring clasp.
Crystals work for instant, affordable glamor; they are amazingly good. But I don't like most of the colored ones. They depress me...they just feel like fake gemstones.
Multiple strands tend to be better than single, depending on what you're working with.
All of that said...I'm working on a few pieces. One is the citrine and silver set I mentioned earlier. I'm not happy with it. To think I used to strive to make a new piece every day--what a mistake! It can take weeks to develop a design and find the components for it. There is no one source anywhere I've found, that actually has everything you need.
Another piece consists of pink "cornflake" pearls and pink tourmaline rondelles...a rondelle is what it sounds like, a sort of flattened round:
 Bali silver bead image courtesy rings-things.com |
 Rhodolite image courtesy firemountaingems.com |
 Swarovski crystal image courtesy artbeads.com |
I'm going to use vermeil Bali beads in this. I have it in mind to make a three-strand bracelet to "go with"; no idea if that's going to work (the pink pearls for this are drilled through the top, so it'll be an engineering feat if I can get them to line up).
I'm also making a simple strand of white square pearls, connected with goldfilled wire. Not wrapped, just simple loops. This is going to have a diamond-shaped vermeil toggle.
The citrine bracelet...needs a new clasp. I took the citrine drop off the necklace because I want to do this with it:
Image courtesy beadshop.com
For this you need "dead soft" wire; you can bring the wire down as far as you like (more decorative than the plain wrapped loop I had on it before).
If I can pull all of this off, I'll have several highly wearable pieces.
fashion, style, jewelry, beading
Recent blog posts:
10:21 PM,
I suppose it's like any other thing, you learn as you go along. I've always thought that taste is the ability to know yourself very, very well, in whatever capacity. You learn what you like and don't like.
I would suggest looking at what people are doing contemporarily. I don't know any good jewelry sites, but I imagine there are shops that sell offbeat, upcoming designers--really inventive stuff. I figure, that's the best place to look for ideas.
Or maybe it would help to expand into other materials... like metalworking. I bet you could take art classes that would let you build up skills. Once you have new skills, new styles open up to you, I think.
I don't know, I barely know a thing about jewelry in the first place. But just some ideas.
1:35 PM,
Yeah...it's tricky. Ultimately I would like to do metalworking, because I would then be able to create unique components, which are key to unique pieces, after all. But I don't foresee doing so for at least another year. It's a money investment but as importantly, a time investment. What I'd like to do is figure out what I want to do first, before making the investment.
It's not too different from what you and I have done with cosmetics. We started out with less expensive cosmetics, to figure out what works and what doesn't. It's better than investing heavily in the $ stuff only to find out later that most of it doesn't work.
Hermmm...I do check out what other people are doing. Most of it, I can admit, I don't like. Some of it I like but can't see buying or wearing. It's...as I say, tricky.
Oh well I'm in phase three. This year (I'm starting my "year" around the time I started making jewelry, September 2005), I intend to make permanent pieces...the stuff you can see yourself wearing ten years from now.
Next year or thereabouts...that's when I'm thinking of going to only a few pieces, but expensive materials. You can buy 18KT gold components online, you can buy a lot of stuff...Tahitian and Akoya pearls, you can buy antique beads, yadda yadda... I don't want to do that yet, it's too soon.
12:43 AM,
My daughter just pointed out that briolette bead looks like Dior J'Adore.
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