Spring Comes!

I have been doing far too much looking at pretty things and not enough making of pretty things lately so, over the past few nights (while waiting on video game buddies) I have been working on this charm-heavy bracelet. I love the little blue fiber optic stars; the pink flowers with their fossil bead centres, and the silver butterflies add a lovely touch of spring to my otherwise dull, chosen-purely-for-warmth, ensemble. Just looking at it sitting around my wrist is enough to remind me that the winter won’t last forever! Of course it will be a lot more comfortable once this long-sleeve weather is over but I can’t help but wear it anyway -  there is something really nice about bracelets because you can see them as you wear them; the rest of my jewelry feels like it is for everyone else to look at and admire whereas this bracelet is for me.

The purple stars are made of my favorite material ever – vegetable ivory – and were a bit of a challenge to connect. See, everything else has vertical holes making headpins easy and convenient to use with them, but, these adorable purple hearts, they are drilled like charms with the hole through one point – what to do!?

At first I tried to find some jump rings that would fit through the fairly small holes but, even when I could get them on the jump rings, they did not move very much and seemed altogether too static so I went back to the headpins. I knew I didn’t want to just hang them sideways and I played around with a few different ways of attaching them before settling on this: I simply wrapped the headpin around the star and back under itself then pulled it as tight as I could – luckily vegetable ivory is quite strong so I knew I wouldn’t break the stars as I pulled.  Unfortunately the headpins I had when I started were too short to be easily attached to the bracelet once they were secured around the bead so I had to wait until today to get some longer ones.

Now that’s done I am left with only one thing on my to do list for this week – to get my Bead Journal Project piece done! I had a really hard time deciding what I would do each month, and even toyed around with the idea of cheating a little bit and doing something seasonal instead of monthly but… I have finally settled on something that I think will be easy enough to complete monthly and still true to the idea. I’m not going to spoil the surprise yet tho – I have more work to do this weekend now that I have read about a bazillion tutorials and guides on working with seed beads but you’ll see this months piece soon I promise!

I made the above necklace for Halloween as I have always loved the combination of orange and black, the symbolism of the harvest and the respect for the dead play off each other well; a celebration of both life and life’s impermanence. Loki is a shape-shifting Norse god of mischief who is currently suffering endless torment in Hel, awaiting the coming of Ragnarok when he will lead the armies of the dead against the other gods. (Norse mythology is pretty interesting, like their Roman and Greek counterparts, Norse gods were far from perfect and had a multitude of personality flaws.)

This second piece features an asymmetrical chain closure with two star shaped charms, one red with a silver lightning bolt, one black leather with a dark silver star and silver wire. All the coiled wire beads were crafted by me (and they are lots of fun to make, especially with the bead accents, I still have a bunch I have not used for anything). The focal bead is a coiled wire bead accented with crystal Swarovsky’s.

Both of these pieces are listed in my etsy shop.  You can click on each picture to be taken to that listing.

Coming up next in this series, an interview with a talented wire artist as well as my final thoughts and tips on wirework and wirewrapping.

Happy crafting!

When I first saw this piece, I was sure it was silver; the leather has such a great shimmer it mimics the look of metal incredibly. Part of Eninja’s stunning leather collection on etsy, this piece is elegant and chic as well as comfortable and light. Doesn’t it looks just like those paper snowflakes almost everybody cut out as a kid?  Way more sophisticated tho.

I always love to see crafter’s thinking outside the box and this leather necklace is truly creative and inspiring.

Until next time, happy crafting!