Lots of playing going on! I love the sparkle of Swarovskis, so I added a thin row of crystals to this next pendant in the series. I love the classic “sweetheart” look that resulted!
I’m still working along the lines of “quick and simple” for this series, but this time, I wanted to add a tiny splash of colour.
Still trying to keep the cost of the pendant down, I didn’t want to spend too much time on the coiling, so I added only one little Swarovski, strategically placed.
I bought a bunch of these 2 mm Swarovskis back in the late spring when I was preparing for my class at Haliburton. I hadn’t intended to buy them, but when the supplier I was visiting only had half the tools in stock that I needed, I had to choose some other things to bump up my purchase to their minimum order requirement. (It’s incredibly irritating when the stuff is shown in stock on the website, only to discover empty bins when you get there. Unfortunately, this is not an unusual occurrence with this particular supplier, which is why I always go in person, and I don’t shop there unless absolutely necessary.) They are one of the few officially sanctioned wholesale suppliers of Swarovski and Preciosa, so I picked up a few packages.
After several different attempts, I also finally came up with a nice bail that compliments the marquise shape of the pendant.
Marquise Series: Pendant 1
Sterling silver, fine silver, cord
Constructed, cold-joined
L 6.1 cm x W 1.0 cm
One of the jewelry groups on Facebook is currently running a design contest to “overcome the economic crisis”. The idea is to use cheaper materials to reduce the price point of the finished piece. The problem I see with the contest is that the value of the physical effort involved is completely discounted. The cost of the labour stays the same regardless of the materials used.
The only way reduce the cost of the labour is to simplify the designs so that they take less time to make.
There are two challenges to making simple designs: one is to make them well, because the simpler the design, the more important the finishing becomes; the other is coming up with an original concept, something that will appeal to the customer without looking like the same old same old that someone else has produced.
I think the latter is the harder of the two to overcome.
This was the background I was thinking about while making this pendant. The goal was to produce a nice, quick-to-make design, that could become part of my bread-and-butter line for next year. As much as I like making the complex one-of-a-kind pieces, most of my sales fall in the in $20-$150 price range.
Without the neck rope, the pendant on its own would fall easily in the lower end of that range.
It’s been my experience that chains are uneconomic for me to make from scratch, and that was proven true again with this piece. The labour involved in making the neck rope bumps the price up substantially, and the change to the cheaper material (polymer cord) has a huge impact on the perceived value. I end up with a piece that is not sellable at the price I need to sell it at to recoup my costs and actually pay myself.
It’s perverse. It’s also why I don’t generally use “cheap” materials. I want you to feel good about what you’re buying from me, so I make high quality jewellery, with high quality materials. It’s worth every cent.
Marquise Series: Bracelet 2
Sterling silver, fine silver
Constructed, cold-joined
L 19.5 cm x W 1.4 cm
The next step in developing the Marquise Series was to add some form of embellishment, like a spiral. To give this bracelet a bit of visual interest, I decided to alternate the links in mirror image. They remind me of fish, and a bit like the stylized birds from the Partridge Family tv show.
I debated about using solder to join the spiral to the frame, and then decided that I wouldn’t save enough time doing that to make any difference in price of the finished piece.
Marquise Series: Earrings 1
Sterling silver
Constructed, cold-joined
L 5.4 cm x W 1.4 cm
The next logical step from the Bracelet I did for YOJ09-43 was to make a pair of earrings. I liked the idea of making the earwire in the same shape as the link – it gives the earring a chain-like look.
Marquise Series: Bracelet 1
Sterling silver
Constructed, cold-joined
L 19.5 cm x W 1.4 cm
I’m doing a serious push to get caught up on my YOJ projects before the end of the year. It’s sort of cheating, because I’m working on a bunch of things all at once, and posting it all in a very short time frame, but so be it.
The other week I was working on my Secret Santa project for this year, and it inspired me to explore some other ideas. (I can’t post the SS photo until after Christmas, so it will be a few days yet.)
This week, I started working on what has become a new series of pieces, all using a marquise shape as the starting point.
This is the first bracelet from the series, which is just a simple marquise link. This is such a basic shape to make that I can’t imagine it not having been done elsewhere. It’s a good start point to develop other designs though.
Still trying to play catch up on the YOJ, but I’m feeling decidedly uninspired. So, I decided I’d break out my bench block and do some hammering on copper. Just playing, nothing serious.
I like pieces that resulted, but realized that some of them resemble the work of Ann Wylie-Toal, a fellow Canadian whose pieces often look like gesture drawing.
To add a bit of visual interest to these, I hauled out my frying pan again and cooked the copper. It’s so much fun watching the metal turn from orange to brown to red to purple to blue to silvery! Unfortunately the blue is an oxide layer that wipes off very easily. Immediately spraying with Krylon would be the only way to preserve it. Still, I love the possibilities!
The opening of the Metal Arts Guild of Canada exhibition “MAGC 2067 – Crafting the Future”, held on November 7 at Arta Gallery in Toronto, was a costume ball. In connection with the theme of the show, people were encouraged to dress up in character.
I originally planned to wear a costume, but then, in the week before the opening, the issue I had been dealing with in my personal life came to a head. Although able to attend, I didn’t have the emotional or physical energy to dress up.
My character was “an acolyte of the Goddess” – a jewellery maker for a matriarchal society devoted to worshiping a Gaia-centred deity. As part of the costume, I made a couple of “Goddess Jewels”. These are very loosely based on Bajoran earrings, of Star Trek fame. My version has a chain of handmade spirals, two Preciosa crystal drops, because I love dangles and sparklies, and is worn via an earcuff on the centre of the ear, and a spiral earwire through the lobe.
I used to wear these a lot, and had forgotten how much fun they are. It’s been several years since I made one. Usually only worn on the left side, this time I wanted the pair. Someone took this photo of me at the opening, where you can see one of them. The whole set of photos from the show is worth a peek.
Recently members of the Starving Artists Etsy Team did a critique of my Etsy shop. One of the comments that came up a couple of times was that my descriptions tend to be a bit on the sparse side. I generally give information about the piece, what it’s made of, basic sizing, etc., but only rarely is there a “story”.
My reply to one of the ladies who asked me about this was “Well, sometimes the design is the result of nothing more than “I had this idea and decided to play around with it.” ”
The truth is that I just have no talent for writing bullshit. What I write has to feel authentic, otherwise it doesn’t work for me. Hmmm…. maybe I need to look into a creative writing course…
Anyways… I was playing around with some scraps of wire left over from working on my Clip-on Earrings tutorial. I tied the wire up in a small knot – not quite as tight as I would have liked, but it worked. I have a “thing” about dangles, so I added these little tourmalines. I love the vibrant pink – they’re just juicy! The result is a cute pair of earrings that works for everyday wear.
The SATeam critique did confirm one thing: my photography is pretty good. It never stops surprising me how much time it takes to get the photography done. Nowadays, I’m not only doing photos for my regular record keeping; I’m also doing set up for Etsy. “Product” photography is different from jury photography – attention must be paid to angles, and multiple positions. A lot of people on Etsy photograph on elaborate backgrounds. I have yet to find one that works for me, so I’m still working with the “jurying grey”.
Photographing studs is difficult at the best of times, but these earrings were particularly challenging. There was just no good way of laying them nicely to get a straight-on shot. Finally, I decided to cut a upright display card out of an old layout board and poke holes in it. Voilà! It worked!
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Okay, so life fell apart for me two months ago, and I’m just starting to recover. I have not been making much new jewellery, but I am going to still try to keep up with the YOJ postings.
I got this purple jade cabochon through a Bead Box swap several years ago. Those Bead Boxes were lots of fun: the idea was to put in things from your stash that you weren’t using and swap them for beads that other people had put in from their stash. I was the Bead Box Mama who organized the whole shebang for Bead Box North, which traveled around Canada and the Northern US. It was a lot of work, but every time the box arrived on my doorstep, it was like Christmas Day! I managed to keep it going for about three years.
Purple is my favourite colour, and I’m always drawn to it. For this pendant, I wanted to work with the same sort of weaving I did on the Moonrise pendant, but on this smaller cab. Well… the cab’s shape proved to be quite a challenge: getting the wire to fit around the pointed ends was very tricky. After multiple attempts to get a pendant that hung lengthwise, I gave up and set the stone sideways. It ends up looking a bit like a genie bottle 🙂
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I’m pleased and excited to announce that my piece “Moonrise” was accepted for The Metal Art Guild of Canada’s national juried exhibition “MAG 2067 – Crafting the Future”!
The piece will be on display along with the work of other Canadian metalsmiths and visual artists at Arta Gallery in Toronto’s Distillery District from October 31-November 19, 2009. The jurors for the show were: Sandra Noble Goss, metalsmith/jeweller, long-time MAG member and 2000 Steel Trophy Winner; Jay Ingram, host of Discovery Channel’s “Daily Planet”; and Bob McDonald, host of CBC’s “Quirks and Quarks”.
The exhibition explores what Canada will look like in 2067 – will we have achieved utopia, or will we be living a nightmare? Artists were given five scenarios from which to choose, and were asked to create a piece that reflected a particular possible future.
MAG 2067 – Crafting the Future
Arta Gallery
Building 9, Unit 102
Distillery District
Toronto, Ontario
October 31-November 19, 2009
Opening reception: November 7, 2009, 5-7 p.m.
I’m about a month behind in my YOJ postings due to a personal crisis that has blown me completely off track. It’s been a very emotional couple of weeks with some highs and a lot of lows. I am determined to catch up, but it’s going to take some time.
I figure the easiest way to get ahead of the game is to focus on earrings. Since I’m stocking up for Christmas anyways, this is a logical course of action.
So… first up is a pair of Star Earrings. I wanted to make a simple pair of stud earrings, something neat and clean looking. Making this design and trying to wrap the tail around the stem would not have given me the look I was after, so it was time to break out the torch. Yes, Virginia, I do solder!
It’s been a while since I’ve soldered anything, and I discovered that my solder is really old. Initially, the solder absolutely refused to flow. I ended up melting the wire. After I pickled the pallet, it worked better.
These earrings will be available for purchase from my Etsy shop.
