Heart pendant/necklace - SOLD

I made this a few days ago for Dawanda, but today a co-worker (who bought also the other pendant for her friend) wanted it for herself. Gotta take it off Dawanda now...now I'm glad there are no listing fees at Dawanda, lol.

My new best friend, the file

It seems that the more and more I'm working with wire, the more sensitive I become to each flaw, things that I might not have noticed earlier.
I started with a pair of earrings today (similar to a previous one that I sold on Dawanda), and upon finishing them off, I noticed the little wire ends sharp against my fingers. So I took out a file and started filing away the wire edges until they became nice and blunt. Then I had some more free time and decided to also make a matching bracelet. And of course I took out my new best friend and started filing away at every wire end (i..e both ends of each bead). Took me a while, but now I don't feel any sharp edges anywhere on the earrings or bracelet.

I'm wondering what else will I be able to notice later on when I will become better at jewelry making, that I have no idea about just now that I could improve upon...

I love autumn

This is how I named my latest pair of earrings. Bronze shell, murano heart glass and sterling silver are what these earrings are made of. They do remind me of falling leaves in autumn. Add to it the heart = I love autumn :)
For me this is something new as I've never used silver chain for earrings, only to string pendants on it. It was quite fun, I'm sure I"ll be making more such chain earrings.

I came home from work and we decided with hubby to go out for dinner as we didn't have lunch together today. We ate souvlaki and then came back home. And then my fingers were itching to create something, anything, just to have the pliers in my fingers and work with. Which I did.
An now I can go to sleep :-)

Featured at Dawanda Shop Directory

I have been featured at the new Dawanda Shop Directory blog. To see the actual directory, click here.
I love the way Dawanda gets a lot of support from users who create blogs, directories, advertisements for it. I hope it will become and remain the most important artisan's site for European crafters and artists who want to sell their work online.

Pendant took me half day

We had a public holiday today (no work, yeah!), so during the afternoon I worked on this pendant. Just finished it, and it's 8.30 pm already.
Not sure how I feel about it, I like it, but there is a 'but' as well. Will wear it tomorrow at work and see how it feels.
Silver wire, silver chain, and all (almost all) semiprecious stones: garnet, Soo Chow lade, carnelian, jasper, agate and iolite.
The pendant is based on a tutorial by Eni Oken, and all the semiprecious stones from the pendant (which is 90% of the stones in it) have been purchased from Szarka.

Pendant rush

Yesterday I went shopping for semi precious stone and I ended up spending a fortune there *gulp*.
So today out of feeling creative (and guilty!), I made a few pendants.
From left to right, the first one is black onix with a small pearl, the second carnelian, the third is agate and the fourth is olive jade with a pearl as well.

Here is also a pair of earrings I made yesterday using some gorgeous shell beads that I bought a while ago at the same shop.
Earwires are handforged by me.

Third sale

Thank you Alex, for helping me make my dream come true (one step at a time...but eventually I'll get there).
This is the pair of earrings my friend just bought from me at Dawanda.
Since we are trading a lot on Bookmooch together, I waived the shipping fees, as we agreed that I will send her the earrings when I next send her books, and she will send me the cash when she next sends me books :)
And this brought us to an idea, which I will also add to my Bookmooch bio page.
Any European bookmoocher who purchases from my Dawanda shop, will have free shipping on jewelry as long as they mooch a book, simply so I can add the jewelry in the package with the mooched book :)
Sounds like a deal?

Aventurine pendant - SOLD

A colleague at work wanted for a friend's birthday a similar necklace - pendant to the one shown in my previous post, however as she is a read-head, she wanted something in stronger colors. So I made this pendant with yellow aventurine and silver and attached it to a bought silver chain. She liked it and next week it's going to her packed in a box. She also wants another one for herself, but in really strong colors, so this weekend I have to go shopping! Next Monday is a public holiday in Cyprus, so I can get creative and do stuff!

I'm so happy, I've just sold my second piece of jewelry :) At a low, startup price, but she will get me more customers from a club she is in, so I promised her better prices. For me it's worth getting my name and silver jewelry out there as fast as possible.
Maybe my dream of quitting working in the corporate world and working for myself in jewelry design is getting closer to becoming a reality?

Sold my first item!

Not long after I opened my Dawanda shop, I sold my first piece of jewelry. I've just seen today that the money has been transfered to my bank account.
It is only a pair of earrings and the price was very low, hardly covering the cost of the material, but it's my first sale, so yes, I am excited!
The item sold was the earrings shown in this post.

Style...getting there

I'm trying to find my wrapping style for the pendants. I think these two are closer to what I like than any of the previous ones. Maybe there is hope yet?
I like particularly the second one, the olive jade wrapped in silver. Based on some suggestions, I am trying to limit the amount of wrapping, to actually enhance the stone rather than bury it in wire :)

DaWanda - new European online shop for artisans

Since I am in Europe, it makes more sense to sell in Europe, rather than in shops in US (like Etsy.com). I was so glad when I heard of DaWanda (through a comment on one of my posts on this blog), and today finally I took the plunge.
If you are interested in buying jewelry, or anything else crafty from Europe (and not only, as I've seen that there are also sellers from Phillipines, from the US, Canada, but still, in minority), check out Dawanda.com. My - so far small - shop is at http://en.dawanda.com/shop/MarikaJewelry. Come and visit and send me a note - and maybe purchase some :-)

On the road to success, one step at a time :)

I woke up this morning to a new comment on my blog from The Beading Gem, telling me that she featured my fuchsia earrings in an article on her blog.
It is such a lovely article, and it feels great to finally know the feeling of what it means to be 'featured' in a blog, or online magazine :)
As this is what her blog reminds me of, an online jewelry magazine where you can browse for interesting pieces of jewelry of all kinds, learn about new jewelry designers and artists and get new ideas.
Thanks Beading Gem, I will continue checking out your blog for more great article posted by you. Love your site!

some more of the same

A few more pendants done this morning for practice.
One thing I notice is that I seem to have the wires a bit more under control, they tend to stay together more than in the yesterday pieces. Still lots more work to do, but maybe I can pull it off using round wire afterall...

first attempts at wire sculpture

Wire sculpture is a bit different from the typical wire wrap, as here the person can get even more creative with the wire, twisting it and turning it to no ends, letting it become as abstract as they want. I have seen some gorgeous wire sculpture pendants and I decided to try my hands at it. Here are my first test pieces (done in chronological order), turquoise and copper wire. As usual, I'm not too pleased with them, but I see here lots of potential. One obstacle I have though is that I can't get square wire in Cyprus. Round wire doesn't sit too well on the piece, it tends to slip away from the stone and the wire next to it. Oh well, I'll have to work with what I have, I guess, and do the best I can with it...I'll have a few more goes at it in the next few days...

Freeform pendant

I made the earrings in herringbone weave yesterday, and I felt like taking out my silver wire today again and playing a little bit more. The pendant is free form, using the main instructions from an older Step by Step Wire Jewelry magazine. I formed the frame by hand, was fun to make.
I will send the set for a swap in a jewelry group. Hope she will like it.

Lattice chainmail bracelet

This was an easy bracelet to make. Weave must be a variant of the Japi 12 in 2. Irene from Petersen calls it in her book Silver wire jewelry, Lattice, so that's what I leave it at as well.
Rings are bright aluminium and clasp is silver (since I don't have bright aluminium wire to make the clasp myself).

Remote viewing video

If I did get you curious about remote viewing, at this link you will find a very good intro video on what remote viewing actually is, and also a small demonstration done by one of the remote viewing 'fathers', Joseph McMoneagle. It was filmed at his home. Highly recommended.

On spirituality again

I haven't written on spirituality for quite a while now. Making jewelry took all my energy away from anything else but making jewelry. I even stopped meditating for months now. I think this is why I craved reading about 'paranormal reality' again.

About a week ago I read a book called Psychic Warrior by David Morehouse, an army officer, and his story on how he took part in a remote viewing program and lived to tell about it.
The book reads fast and the story is very interesting, so I got intrigued by remote viewing.
Usually when people talk about paranormal (and who knows me, knows I don't shy talking about it), they are shot down fast as it's all bla bla, silly things, not explainable and not true. Not real, anyway. However remote viewing is real, is scientifically proven, heck the US and Russian governments used it as well, how more real than that can it get?
Basically remote viewing is about being able to view or access information about objects, places, people, feelings while originally not knowing anything about the target. You will get only some numbers (either by a second person, or can be computer generated), and blindly you try to get as much info as you can. Once you finished writing down (or drawing) your impressions, you find out what the target was. This is different from 'regular' psychic work, as there you know in advance what you want to get info on. This way though, you are working completely blindly. No bias (prior knowledge, impressions, thoughts, etc) about the target gets in the way at all. You have no clue what you're trying to describe: is it a building, is it a ship on the sea, is it a person, is it the Eiffel Tower?

I never realised that there is so much material about it on the internet, for free. Even manuals, and downloadable audio tutorials.
I tried my hands at a quick intro exercise at DoJo PSI, and the results were quite interesting. Must be beginner's luck though, as the next attempt was a total failure. And the third one was quite interesting again. Although the drawing I made of the target was totally off, the description words I wrote down (cold, green plain, cave entrance, constricted feeling, ceiling, dark) were a good match for what I then saw on the picture: the entrance to the underground (metro). Nice green grass and a tree and in the middle, and then the metro entrance, which was indeed looking like the entrance to a cave! Dark, narrow, low ceiling. Got shivers over this one!

Byzantine flower...garden

I was playing around with the Byzantine weave, trying to follow a tutorial and getting nowhere, so I turned it around and made something completely different. Then I just continued until I got the bracelet length.
I quite like it, it's fun and fluffy on my wrist. On a jewelry forum somebody told me it looks like a flower garden, so there, this is the name I gave it :)

LibraryThing

I must have been the last person on Earth who still didn't have a shelf yet! Now thanks to my friend Alex, I'm not an outcast anymore, lol!
I've decided to add all my jewelry making books (and possibly magazines) to my LT shelf, so I have an easy overview of what all books I have at home. I tend to buy a lot of these types of books and I really want to avoid buying duplicates!
For all other types of books I still have my Bookcrossing shelf. Those books, however, have a BCID sticker or a number written on the first page for tracking purposes, and I don't really want to mark the jewelry books. Hence the LT way of categorizing them.
I've added a small widget on the right-handside of my blog, below my Etsy shop, with random pictures of books I have on my shelf. I've only started adding books, so it's still a relatively small library :)
Also as per Alex's idea, this gives you a glimpse into what types of books I'm using for reference when learning to make jewelry, such as beading, chainmail or wire wrapping.