Setting Cabachons - Finally!

I think I've been building up to this moment from the time I first picked up a piece of copper wire and started to create. These earrings were in my head...in my creative energy thoughts...and now they are real.

When I bought my last order from "Rio Grande", I decided to poke around a little at the other items. Setting stones in sterling silver bezel cups has been on my mind for a while so I looked at the cups available to buy. I found a great assortment of sizes - 50 cups in all for a really reasonable price so I added them to my cart with a sense of excitement and a bit of nervousness. Now I was almost committed to another creative learning leap!














I did a quick search to find out what kinds of tools I required and discovered I needed a simple and inexpensive burnisher, so I added that to the cart too. I chose three different cabochon selections for my new project: some sleeping beauty turquoise, some garnet (very tiny), and some man-made opal that is really pretty. I knew the turquoise was the first that I would attempt to work with. I placed my order and waited, somewhat less than patiently.

When it arrived about four days later, I tore into the box like it was Christmas, because that's what it felt like. Gifts, lovely gifts. I pulled the new treasures out of the box, admired them, and did what I always do with new creative processes - set them aside. I left them there for about a week, at the back of my bench, just within vision while I waited for the right time. The right time came on the weekend, despite the heat pump in my house being broken so the studio is hot without air conditioning, but the time was there and I was ready so I went ahead.

I selected a piece of sterling silver sheet and marked it out for cutting. I cut it into strips for the earrings I planned to make, using a great pair of scissors I bought locally at "The Rock Hound" in Victoria, BC Canada. Then to the process of filing down the edges to get them nice and smooth, and a good pounding with my little hammer to create the dimpled, organic look I love. Then it was time to get the solder down from the shelf and the torch from the other table, gather up the flux and my cup of water I always have nearby, along with tweezers and a paper towel (kept far away from the torch of course). I turned on the mini slow cooker with the pickling solution for taking off the blackening from the torch process. Then I selected the bezels and got started soldering them to my new silver strips. All went well and they adhered nicely then got a bath in the pickling solution, then off to the tumbler to polish up overnight.

They came out totally shiny but I wasn't about to settle for that! I oxidized them and then polished them with rouge to bring out all the lovely, organic look that you see below. Finally, I added the sleeping turquoise cabochons and used the burnisher to push the sterling bezel side over the cabochon to hold the stones in place and voila! They will get their final photo and posting to the shop later today.

Photography

I think the hardest part of online sales is how to get the best photo of my pieces. It is a particular issue when it's a 'one of a kind' piece - how much time do I invest in getting just the right photo? I've tried a light box without success, and while I'm sure that with practice it has to work (since it does for so many other folks), I don't like trying to maneuver around in the little space mine has to offer.

Yesterday I played with props for my photos and I really like the effect but I could use some feedback! I've seen some other listings with props that really distract from the jewellery and I don't know if mine detract or add to my pieces.

All feedback is appreciated - thanks :)

You Just Never Know

Surprises are in order all around this time of year - a huge dump of snow here in my not so terribly snowy part of the world, holiday surprises, and surprises in what I feel the need to create.

I spent a whole bunch of money on some great gemstone beads recently and I truly love rocks. I love the feel of them in my hands, the coolness against my neck, and the myriad of colours and textures they come in. And yet I have found my inspiration in metal this week - copper and silver swirls, hoops, loops and spirals - different sizes and gauges - hammered and polished. As I say, you just never know what will happen - in the earth or in the creative endeavours of our lives.

As I enter this holiday season I am grateful for inspiration - the thing that always surprises me and keeps me young in spirit.

Inspiration - You Never Know Where It Can Come From

Funny thing about inspiration, isn't it? That I could see something and be inspired by it when another person might not. Or one day it might inspire me when I've seen it many times before. Such was the case with last night's inspiration for this lovely little loopy hoop.

Last night we had a power outage and I was playing around by candlelight. I couldn't do much so I was cleaning some copper bits off my work tray and putting them in the copper bucket when I noticed this coil in there - left over from some experiment or other. I wondered how it would look in my ear if I snipped off some of it. I snipped off a piece and filed the end by hand with my little file and slipped it into my ear. I picked up the candlestick, went into the bathroom and loved what I saw. When the power came back on I created them in sterling and tumbled them all night to harden them up.

My Latest Line

Oh, how I love to get more for my money! That's the idea behind my newest line of jewellery - 1 item shown here and more to come over the next few months. I thought it would be awesome to have more freedom with your jewellery so I created this bracelet that is three separate strands of yummy pearls that are joined with a sterling "S Clasp".

This design enables the wearer to wear one, two, or all three strands - depending on the mood of the day. Watch for new designs to come using this concept - be on the lookout for rock, rock, and more rocks!

The Handbag's Tale

Most of us women have a favourite little handbag and I was thinking about this when the inspiration for these earrings came to me. I made them from copper sheet and formed them to look like little handbags and immediately fell in love with them. So far they're a one of a kind item, but I may make more someday. I paired them up with sterling silver earwires and chain. I'll be posting them for sale in the shop at some point in the next day or so.

I used my dremel to round out the corners a bit - putting a hard sanding disk on the end of the dremel. A word of caution if you plan to play with this method: safety glasses are a must, along with a dust mask of some sort. You don't want the tiny bits of metal in your eyes or in your lungs! These are actually a pretty simple concept - just cut, folded and formed copper, but they turned out so lovely - proving sometimes simple is best!

How Exciting!!

Call me quirky, but one of the things I LOVE about selling on Etsy is checking out where the pieces are going. It's so interesting to think of people in places I've never even been to - wearing something that I made by hand.

Yesterday I shipped these earrings to Holland! So I just had to find out a bit more about Holland, which is actually a country called "The Netherlands". I didn't know that it is a monarchy, rather than having a president or a prime minister the way we do in Canada and the US, nor that the weather sounds very similar to what you might find on Vancouver Island - I had presumed they would have very cold winters. At 41,528 square kilometers, it is only 9394 square kilometers larger than the island where I live in British Columbia.

So, in a way, making jewellery is expanding my knowledge of the world I live in too. What a neat concept! Cheers all:)

Fun With Form

You know, every now and then it's important to just have some fun, and that's what I chose to do this evening. Rather than second guess what someone might like, or want, or buy, you gotta just pull out the rocks and the wire and play a little - that's what tonight was about for me. I played and created, and posted a few new things to the shop. I love the new mannequins too!

Thrifty Finds

I’m doing my first show next week and needed some racks for earrings. I haven’t seen any commercial ones that I can’t live without so I thought I’d get creative. I went out to our local thrift shops and within 2 stores I came up with two pieces.
Both of them started off an ugly brassy gold colour (I should have taken before and after pics!). This is the first one I picked up for $2.50. Many of my earrings are on earring cards in small Ziploc bags to keep them clean and to resist tarnish. I could easily see the little bags hanging on this rack – it’s perfect for them and it spins, so I bought it right away.

This second one was the same awful colour but I could see the potential in it. I thought if I painted it black I could hang earrings freely from the loops in the center and on the outside edge; potentially being able to display a lot of earrings on it. I didn’t have a sense of how to keep it upright at that point, but for $2.00 I decided the ‘how to’ could come later.

I brought them both home and my husband and I sat at our bar counter in the kitchen with them in front of us and talked about how to hold the wreath upright. We finally came up with a stand idea that we thought would work okay and then he went to pick them up and take them out to the shop, and when he did, he hung the wreath on the side of the other rack to make it easy to carry and we both looked at it and at each other and….eureka! There it was – the perfect rack. It still spins and it takes up half the space that the two of them would separately. He took them out and painted them black and here is the finished rack.

These are just two simple finds for a total of $4.50, which shows that displays don’t have to cost a bundle to be effective. The last pictures are from one of my favourite stories. I told my husband I was looking for something that looked like a treasure chest but the closest thing I had seen was a box and it was $17.95. He remembered a gift that we were given that was really quite tacky but it came in a little trunk that he thought might be what I was looking for. I didn’t remember it at all but he thought it might still be at his dad’s – leftovers from our last year’s joint garage sale. Sure enough it was there. We painted it black and it’s the perfect chest for some bargains to go into.





Now I’m excited to get set up! I’ll be taking pictures of the final display next week and posting it here so stay tuned :)

Going into creative mode!

Oh boy, does this weekend ever need to see some production time! I've been so busy getting the promotional aspects of things set up that I haven't had time (sigh) to create very much. I suppose that will always be the fine balancing act of this type of business venture. I'm the whole show - the person who creates the pieces, the one who promotes them, and the one who keeps the business records (okay, who am I kidding? LOL - you should SEE my horrible mess of paperwork waiting to be entered into a spreadsheet!).


The beautiful thing is that I can choose to leave the paperwork for another time, and I can go for a walk and get inspiration for my next piece. It's fall in my part of the world and the trees are all this lovely golden colour, interspersed with the odd tree turning red, and there are big leaves scattered on the road and the walkways - it's truly lovely. What a gift to be alive and well!

I think I might be ready

Well, I got this set up (finally) and I think I'm finally ready to begin. Blogging is new to me and I find it fascinating that people might want to read what I have to say. I'm going to use this blog to share a little more of who I am, and what I do.

When I was a kid I was always creating something - macrame, little bracelets, braiding, key chains, pom poms for my shoelaces, you name it - I did it. And then somehow, the years went by and I lost that spark. But thankfully, only for a while. I turned forty this year and the magic is back. I've taught myself how to make amazing jewellery (at least I'm amazed;) from sterling silver, copper and gemstones. I've set up a small shop on Etsy to showcase my work, and hopefully make a few sales. I take pride in what I do and love the creative process! I've been asked over the years, "what would you do for a living if you never got paid for it". I didn't have an answer until now - make jewellery!

I get lost in it and I love it.