Today's Project

Today was spent getting a light box built so I can take clearer pictures.  This afternoon I spent taking pictures and editing them.  Now I am ready to start listing on Etsy and start posting more pictures on here.  If you happen to see something you like feel free to send me a message.

This picture is of an Ammonite.  This was once, about 65,000,000 million years ago, a sea creature.  They are only found in rock which appears to have been in areas of ancient sea beds.  The pendant is wire wrapped in Sterling Silver and the rest of the necklace is tigereye chips.  The length of the necklace is 21 inches.

The stone that started it all!

Happy New Year !  May 2010 be a happy and healthy year for everyone.                                                                                                           This natural ruby is the stone that set me on the bath to jewelry design.  I set it in sterling silver rather than gold as I think the silver sets off the color of the stone better.  As you can see the stone is opaque and not at all perfect, but that is what I love about it.  My husband found it for me and had it cabbed at the mine then sent to me.  I has taken me 6 months to decide and learn how to set it.  I wanted to design the setting myself, but needed to learn how to do it before I could.  It is very busy with curls and silver beads, but that is the way it turned out when I set it.  I am not a designer who will ever draw a design and then create the piece.  As I work with a stone it decides how it shall be set. 

Winter is here in the Northeast !!!

We are now blanketed with snow as is much of the rest of the country.  I am so glad I discovered the art of jewelry making.  Through the long winter days it will be fun to learn new things that can be done with wire.  There are some things I have seen that do not interest me at all and I will be doing my best to stay away from them.  I have many ideas floating around in my head so it will be interesting to see what comes of them. 

Today is the first piece I made with SS wire.  I promptly gave it to my daughter for her birthday.  I have no idea what the stone is, just picked it up at the local rock swap this summer.   It was a good stone to practice with.

I have much to do this weekend so I think jewelry will take a back seat although I want to get my work room organized so I can get out of the diningroom and into a space that can get messy without having to pick up everynight. And creating a light box is also on the agenda for this weekend.  Then I can start listing on Etsy and see if others like my design style.

Life is good!

After a crazy couple of days I thought it time to take a breath and post some pictures of my work.  I am generally my own worst critic and for me to be happy with what I have created is a wonder.  Here goes nothing and feel free to comment good or bad.

This is the first time I have posted pictures on the web so will try to get more out there as the days go by.  I need to get more taken with a light box so you can see the true colors of everything.  This necklace and earrings are made from a polished Chrysocolla stone and chips for the necklace and earrings.  The setting and clasp are sterling silver with silver tone bead accents.

Until tomorrow. Have a great evening.

New Business is Born

Wire wrapping is one of the oldest forms of jewelry making known. In the winter of 2008-2009 my husband and I started planning our vacation for the spring. I so wanted to do something different this year and so it was decided that we would do a multistop camping trip going as far as North Carolina this year. So I started researching things to do along the coast and in the mountains. We love both so thought we could go either way. Our oldest son live just outside of Durham so we thought it would be nice to end up in that area. After seeing a show on TV about mining in NC I thought what FUN! My dear husband's thought on the idea was - BORING! But he went along and we had so much fun that we could have stayed all day. We went to Emerald Hollow Mine which was one of the mines highlighted on National Geographic and Discovery Channel. We came away from the sluiceway so excited with what we had found. My goal was to find a ruby, which we did and decided to have it cut into a cabachon. They do lapidary there at the mine so we left it and had it about 6 weeks later. What started out as an ugly, my thought, average rock came back looking beautiful. Now I have a lovely natural untreated ruby. I wanted to set it myself and initially thought about the new silver clay as a way to set it. During my forays on the internet I found wire wrapping and thought - I can do that! - or so I thought. It has been almost 8 months and the ruby has been set in it's first setting and will be finallized after the holidays.

I decided that jumping right into the whole process was way beyond me until I got more information, so off I went to the internet where you can find anything. I am the type to research something to death before I finally start on a project. I wanted to play, but sterling silver is just to expensive to waste so after reading 100's of posts on Wire Wrapped Jewelry a Yahoo group I found in my searching phase, I decided to go with copper wire. One of the posts suggested that I go to Home Depot and buy wire by the foot to play with. I wanted some stones to wrap and knew I could find them at our annual rock swap here in Gilsum, NH. So off we went, I have lived here for 15 years now and had never been as all I could imagine was a bunch of rocks that would have no interest to me. Truly amazed was my first reaction to what I saw that day and it only made me want to keep trying. I picked up a couple of polished stones for pennies and you can bet next year I will be looking at the trays and trays of cabachons that are avaiable. One vendor alone had to have thousands of stones, a jewelers paradise to say the least.

Well my first try was, shall we say, pathetic at best. Now you have to realized that I am not one to practice without having good results the first time and every time. I hate learning curves and it frustrates me to no end when I don't get it right the first time. My birthday rolled around in July and I had asked for money to buy wire and tools. Off I went and stretched it as far as I possibly could. I kept at it because I so wanted to set that ruby myself.

I printed off a couple of tutorials, but there is no way I can follow a pattern or directions without changing something to make it my own. I have to say that it did teach me a lot about making the bails and clasps on necklaces and earwires on earrings. The one thing that amazed me was the amount of wire that is used when you want to incorporate a lot of swirls around the stone. The last necklace I made was a triangular amethyst which has 48" of 22ga sterling silver wire around it. Yes, I have graduated to silver wire. I am having fun and love doing it. I am sure I will be learning for a long time to come.