News: the new things

A couple of things. Spring break was fantastic...I got not nearly as much work done as I planned, which is probably as it should be considering my schedule lately...unfortunately, I got hammered with schoolwork immediately afterward, and I have not been able to go to bed before 3:30 am since break ended last Sunday. So forgive my silence, and here's some news and some pretty pictures to compensate.

I joined a project called the Year of Jewelry - it's a yearly project in which participants make a piece of jewelry every week for a year...obviously no promises, since the only free time I really have weekly is on Wednesday nights, and jehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifwelry-making inspiration is not something one can turn on on cue...but I managed my first week, at least. This is week 12, because the sign-up goes by quarters of the year, so I'm not starting at the beginning...I wonder if I should restart at week one next year or just go until week 12 again...then again, I guess it doesn't matter. The Project is a really neat forum full of people like myself, but people who know more than I do and are better at what we both do than I am. They are friendly and like sharing what they know, and I'm really excited to be in a community with them where I can make friends. If you want to see some really spectacular pieces (as well as some pretty normal pieces from people just starting out, like me) go visit http://www.bleilysgems.com/YearofJewelry2011/.

Anyway, here's my first post for Year of Jewelry:

This pair has been floating around in my head for a while like a blossom on the breeze. I wanted it to be extremely light and open like the first spring breezes that have been sifting through my hair lately...but knowing me, it had to be something small and subtle. I don't go for gaudy. So here's the result; they go very well with dark hair. I like the organized but somewhat chaotic wrapping of the wire and the contrast between the dark and light oxidization.

By the way, the peach head pins in the middle are exclusive to livewirejewelry and I have no idea how she makes them! A really interesting effect and the contrasts are perfect for flowers, looking like nature herself built them.

And, some more pictures! I went on a roll recently and then got a chance to take pictures over break.

These are in no particular order: celtic knot copper and sunstone earrings, copper and multi-gemstone earrings (that's lapis lazuli, chrysocolla, moss agate and sodalite), earrings of moonstone and sunstone, a mandala-style necklace of copper and carnelian tentatively titled "spokes of the sun", and some tribal-looking fishy earrings I think I'll call "Fossil".

Can you tell I've been having fun with copper?
The glow of sunstone is really hard to capture on camera, by the way...the problem with selling chatoyant gems online. Moonstone also glows, making those peach and orange earrings the most awesome piece of subtle work I've ever done.


The mandala necklace, by contrast, is big and not subtle at all. The bail is one of my better ideas, though I still might modify it - the wire is wrapped tighter in some places than others so that part of it seems to float off the chain. It looks really neat on...that was actually the necklace I was wearing when the man complimented me and asked me what my website was.


Those last ones weren't even meant to be fish. They just turned out that way. This is rhyolite - rainforest jasper, jungle jasper, basically these are amazon piranhas in a hammered-copper-ancient sort of look.































Edit: Due to a lot of comments on my Year of Jewelry post (the project, by the way, has already gotten me more feedback than I expected, I'm very happy about it) that said that the headpins in the earrings looked like "clean copper...just out of the pickle [solution]" I'm posting a couple of pictures of the other head pins that livewirejewelry makes, just as an example to prove that it's a mysterious process and they're not just shiny copper. My camera's not the best, so it's kind of difficult to tell.


The peach-colored ones are the ones in the project. The others are aqua and red, and I don't have those, these pictures are used with permission from Lisa at livewirejewelry.