Valentine's Day is around the corner

It's already that time of the year again, nearing Valentines Day. This is such a beautiful holiday, where people in love can reinforce their commitment and feelings to each other. This day everything evolves around love, red, strong sentiments, hearts, all these being symbols recognised by everyone in the world.

Some beautiful artisan handmade jewelry dedicated to Valentines can be found in my Dawanda shop. A beautiful Valentines' heart wrapped in sterling silver, superbly hanging on a silver chain for the more sophisticated.
Or what about for the even younger among us, with a new love just now blooming? This gorgeous carnelian red heart wrapped in silver, on a faux leather cord will be just right for your partner: not too expensive, but not cheap either. It shows no strong commitment to scare away your newly found partner, but at the same time displays sensitivity and emanates the feeling that you are interested.
Or if you don't care much about hearts, but want to offer something unique and full of mystery and intrigue, check out the silver pendant displayed here.
And coming back to hearts, here is a beautiful jasper heart, wrapped in sterling silver on a silver chain.

And I have an offer for you until Valentine's day: if you mention in your purchase note that you've seen this post which has redirected you to my shop, I will send your item airmail express, for a super fast delivery, at no additional cost.

Back

I'm finally back from holidays. Two great weeks together with my family, even saw my grandparents whom I haven't seen in the last 14 years. Sadly even two weeks are too short...

I took my Koil Kutter and a few silver coils with me, as my father has a dremel and I wanted to learn with his guidance how to cut coils (he is very good with everything technical, he's actually a sort of genious in his field, but about that at another time). To our big and sad surprise, the KK was not working with any of the 2 dremels and one Proxon that my dad had, even though one of them was exactly what Dave said it is working with (the exact model). After carefully measuring, dad told me that the saw, key and everything else is in inches, not in mm, so I got pretty upset that I spent around $100 for nothing. Dad didn't get discouraged and spent most of the day fixing my KK to work with European dremels. He had all the equipment at hand and made it for me, so now I can screw on the KK to my dremel and cut coils without a problem. Without my dad I couldn't have been able to even use the darn thing and most probably would have had to send it back to Dave or something.
Besides this major annoyance, all was well, and finally I could cut my coils much faster than with the jeweler's saw, which is great!

While on holidays, I managed to make a few pendants as I started to already feel withdrawal symptoms without making jewelry. Good that I took some of my tools and silver with me. Here is the result below.

Away for two weeks

Tomorrow I'm off for two weeks, going to Hungary to visit my parents, and then we all go to Romania (that's where I'm originally from) to visit our relatives whom I last saw over 14 years ago, when I was last in the country. I'm looking forward to the trip but also am worried about a few things. My grandmom is very ill, most probably on her deathbead, so I'm just hoping to get there on time to say goodbye before she leaves this world.
The weather is very cold over there, and I don't have enough warm clothes (since in Cyprus you don't need really warm clothes anyway), so I'm dreading this a bit as well.
I won't have access to the internet during this time, so I'm going to miss my online friends and jewelry making and book reading/trading forums that I usually frequent.
I'll take the camera with me and hope to get some nice pictures to post when I'm back end of January.

In the meantime, here is a quick bracelet I made two days ago, red agate and yellow-green turquise with sterling silver. I quite like it, it was fun and relatively fast to make - compared to the big pendants I was busy making during the last few weeks.

New pendant

Here is a piece I've been working the whole Sunday and made the finishing touches last night. I see better wrapping here, but boy I did manage to hide the gorgeous shell in all my zealous working, lol! I guess it's like when you learn to drive, you can't focus your mind on everything, but on a few things at a time only: looking in the mirror at times, signaling when turning but also looking at the stop signs and don't forget the break and gas pedals!. Something's gotta be forgotten in the process! Once I'll be confident with the actual wrapping techniques, I'm sure I'll start to see the bigger picture and focus more on design...

Progress piece

I made today this pendant totally freeform. Hardly following any tutorial (just peeked at Remy's tute for the bail). Just went along with the wire where it took me. I see (of course) plenty of mistakes, but generally I think it's an improvement (?). Hubby said that this one's nice as well.
It just takes so long time to make one - this pendant took me almost the whole day and it's hardly called 'elaborate'...not by the standards of the rainbow wrappers anyway, lol...

New practice piece

This is what I've been working on last night. It took me about good 3 hours. Ton of mistakes in this one, the bail is too long, the actual frame is not nicely shaped (shaped it by hand, not with a tool), but I'm keeping at it. That's why it's a practice piece, not one to sell :)
Picture showing front and back.

First Wire sculpture practice piece

So this is what I've been working on the last two days. I call it 'The Monster'. Coz it is.
I have Remy's wire sculpture pendant tutorial, and after drolling over the metalworkers.org pieces, I just had to try it. It turned out really ugly (as you can see), but boy did I learn a lot in the process, about coiling wire, wrapping, making a bezel, setting a non-drilled stone...
Now that is finished, I'll take it slowly, with less 'elaborate' pieces, not only to learn more, but to also find my own style.