Two new pair of silver earrings this week

I was quite busy this week with my business, however I managed to squeeze in two quick pairs of sterling silver earrings. The green stone is jade and the red is agate done in herringbone weave with a clear quartz briolette hanging from a sterling silver chain at the bottom. I guess silver chain was the motif this week for both pairs :) I had a few shorter chain ends which I wanted to use somehow. And this is one tip for people who have lots of lose ends of wire or chain or even 1-2 beads. You can very easily incorporate them in your new jewelry pieces like I did with the chain links for both earrings.

3 Work Tips For Jewelry Beginners

I wish I had these tips when I first started out in jewelry making. While for some people these are simply common sense by now, for those who are just starting out in jewelry making these should help you make your life easier and more comfortable when working with wire or any other kind of jewelry material.

• Work directly from the spool. There are times when this is just not possible, however for the most regular things such as coiling wire, avoid pre-cutting it since you might end up with a smaller piece than you original wanted and have to cut some more. And particularly with wire the less 'lose end' wire sticks you have, the better for the piece and the wearer. Also you might be cutting a bigger piece than you need, so the remaining one will be wasted. Copper might not matter much, but silver and gold is not cheap.

• Use a magnifying lamp, such as the Magnilamp (which is extremely cheap at Amazon). Trust me the difference is amazing particularly when it comes to helping your eyes through the strain of the very small work, and making more beautiful work.

Check out the difference in the wire:

- without a magnifying lamp








- with a magnifier lamp







- with the extra magnifier setting

• Use two monitors. I know this does not apply directly to jewelry making or wire wrapping but trust me when you're many hours at your computer (especially when your craft desk or table also happens to be your pc table, just like in my case), having two monitors makes your life much, much easier. I use one monitor for browsing the internet using various tabs, and the second one for local harddrive, or working from the pdf tutorial - like in my case, I have one monitor open on Eni's older site looking at the various tutorials picture deciding on which one to do, and on the left side monitor I have the actual pdf open, ready to work.

I will post more beginner tips as I get a chance to take some more shots of various things around my craft table. I hope these tips are helpful to newcomers to wire wrapping and jewelry making in general. Comment away if you have other tips or you have other experiences with the above.

The Eyes Of Horus - Herringbone Weave Silver Earrings

Rather crappy shots but I like this pair of earrings. Reminds me strongly of the eyes of Horus. Mixed in a couple of techniques, of course my favorite herringbone weave and used one of Eni's chandelier tutorials for attaching the smoke quartz briolettes. Sterling silver corrugated beads surround the goldstone eyes in the middle.
I might have to retake the pictures in a better lighting.

Drops Of Sunshine - Yellow jade agate sterling silver necklace

I've been working on this necklace the whole week, a bit every evening after work. Today I finished the chain, clasp, tumbled it for about 2 hours for extra spark and durability and took pictures of it.

The stone is a gorgeous yellow jade briolette that matches beautifully the small yellow agate beads. Wrapped in several gauges of sterling silver wire, the chain is approximately 45 cm.
It wears perfectly with a summer dress on a tanned decollete.
To purchase, visit this link at my Dawanda shop.

Quick Silver Earrings

I made these two pairs of silver earrings during the last few evenings after work. They were fun and easy to make. The orange pair uses two lampwork beads that I bought from a UK lampworker two years ago and never got to do anything with them. The second pair uses two crystal quartz briolettes and two pink jade beads that have truly a beautiful color. Hope you like them :)


Sweet candy












Princess Charlotte

Amethyst Delights Pendant

Here is my first wire wrapping since I've started making jewelry again. The pictures are taken with my new camera (mentioned in my previous post) and while I still find darn difficult to capture sterling silver, I hope these do show the wrapping details.

The piece is inspired by Nancy Wickman's free earrings tutorial.

The stone is a gorgeous quality amethyst which really sparkles under the light. The entire pendant with bail is just a bit over 4cm (close to 2") and I've used 1mm, 0.4mm and 0.25 mm silver wire for wrapping. I hope you all like it.

A few more pictures below, including a close-up of the wire work. Loving my new camera and my new Magnilamp that allowed me to do the wrapping without serious flaws :)
Click on the images for more details.

Got myself a new camera

Today was a big money spending day. End of the month is my birthday so I told hubby I wanted a new Canon Powershot SX20IS. We bought it today and let me tell you, it is an absolute beauty and truly powerful. My previous camera was a Canon Powershot G5, but this one is like a Mercedes next to a Volkswagen. It was quite expensive as around here the prices are at least twice as much as in the US, but finally I have it in my hands. And I had to try it out right away, of course. Still loads of settings I have to explore, but the macro feature - which is the most important feature in a camera for jewelry photography - is amazing. Did I mention I'm in love with this camera?

The first guinea pig for this camera was a pendant I made the other day - which is for the scrap pile as there are loads of mistakes in it - but was perfect to see how well the macro works (and how visible the mistakes are....).
I added a second tiny pic at the top to see just how small the pendant really is and how well I could zoom it with the Canon. The whole piece with the bail is around 1.2" (~3cm) so it's really tiny in my hands. And now off to the scrap pile it goes...


Also got myself a Magnilamp from Amazon and as luck would have it, it arrived today. I'll work on a second pendant under this magnifier, which also has a small lamp, just perfect to get a good focused light under my work. I know there are many other more expensive ones out there, but for now this will do. My eyes are no longer what they used to be when it comes to wire wrapping and I really need something to see what I'm doing.
Seriously, if you don't have one of these or some other magnifier which also has a lamp, you don't know how much you could improve your work by truly seeing every single detail of your wrapping. I'm working on a new version of the same pendant but now I clearly see the wire and where it goes over the base and I can see the difference.

Gorgeous free wire wrapping earrings tutorial

Even though it's an older tutorial, I only saw this today and I couldn't believe it's FREE! It's absolutely gorgeous and my fingers are simply itching to try it out.

If you want to check it out, it's a very long jpg picture that you can enlarge onscreen. Click here to visit Aniolek's Deviant art page where the tutorial is waiting for more visitors!

Mihaflower - Pearl Flower Pendant

I made this piece during the Easter holidays. It' s a practice piece based on a tutorial by Gailavira that I purchased the other day. It's my first attempt at this particular weave and while I'm not especially impressed with my work (lots of flaws that I see), I'll give myself a bit of leeway as I haven't really attempted anything serious in over a year.

However I really enjoyed doing this pendant and I'll make it again which will be much more improved. I've ordered a magnifier lamp from Ebay as my eyes are definitely not what they've used to be when it comes to fine work, so I'll be able to see those little mistakes and correct them right away before the actual piece takes form and shape.

In the meantime this is dedicated to my friend Mihaela who was here recently in Cyprus, and gave me 4 pearls, of which I used one in this piece . Hence the mihaflower :)

Tiger Eye Earrings

Well I lied in my previous post and I made this pair of tiger eye earrings yesterday. Very basic pair, little wrapping, just to get me started again since I haven't wrapped in almost a year at all!. I might not do as much as I used to before right off the bat, but I want to get back in the swing of wire wrapping things, as this is my main passion. Internet marketing is my business. There is no reason I can't do both :)

I bought the tiger eye stones at Etsy about two years ago and just now I got a chance to use them. They are absolutely gorgeous and flawless and they have a nice size at 18x13 mm.

Jewelry pieces sold recently

While I haven't been doing jewelry recently, I have been selling from my existing stock. I will start again making when my stock is a bit lower. Last 3 years I've been working like crazy without stopping and now I could open a real shop with what jewelry I have around :)
So here is what I've sold during the last couple of months or so. Enjoy.

Hematite silver cross



Moebius silver earrings



White onyx herringbone bracelet



Turquoise nuggets silver earrings



Jellow jade silver necklace



Greek mocca earrings



Victorian Heart Necklace












Purple Tulip Necklace

Wire wrapping a Cabochon - Free Tutorials

Cabochon wire wrapping seems to be somewhat difficult for many. I know I struggled a lot with it when I first started out. Although at the time I bought several books on cabochon wire wrapping, there are also many free tutorials that you can get your hands on to jumpstart your cabochon wire wrapping learning. So here are a few listed below, enjoy.

• Tumbleweed Glass - This is a video tutorial (just what I like) that will guide you step by step through making your first wrap for a cabochon. I love this one! Also here is embedded if you want to watch it without leaving the site:
  
  
  
• Another great tutorial with step by step screenshots and explanations is at Rock&Gem. Give this a try if you feel you can tackle it.
• Also not to forget About.com with Tammy Powley's tutorial. Personally though I don't like to go much to About.com as I have to click on Next after every few paragraphs and that annoys the heck out of me :)

There are many more online and another good listing of the best is Pearl's page at The Beading Gem. Site worth going through post by post, as it's very informative all around.

Privacy Policy on Blogger Blogs

If you have Adsense on your blog (like I have right at the top of this blog), you need to have a Privacy Policy in place. Google is getting tough on people who display Adsense ads and they have no privacy policy. In some cases, accounts have been banned. At first I didn't even realise we need to have it in place until I read a few horror stories about it.

I know that for us, hobbyists and jewelers, Adsense is there, but we don't even remember it at times, we certainly don't really make money from our Adsense, but what the heck, it's up there, so why not. But if you've earned even one cent from Adsense, Google won't care a bit about the fact that we are not real Adsense earners, we get banned. So if you have ads on your Blogspot blog, add a privacy policy and make it visible on your blog. This is how you do it:

1. Create a new blog post and while writing your post, click on Post options.
2. Now change the date of your post to a few months older, so it goes off from your first page
3. Publish your post
4. Find your post and copy the hyperlink to your clipboard
5. Edit your Sidebar widget (or top widget the way I have it), up to you, and add it as a new link. Name it Privacy Policy
6. Save your widget

That's it really. Let it not be on a small thing that you lose your Adsense account, when all it takes is 2 minutes of your time to fix it.

Purple Tulip, aka started wire wrapping again - SOLD

After a few months of abstinence from wire wrapping, here my next piece. My fingers were itching to do something, so I came up with this pendant. It's really beautiful, I couldn't capture it with the camera properly. I guess it's time to get myself a new camera as well...

Gorgeous amethyst briolette hanging from a sterling silver pendant. Size is ~ 3.5x3.5cm (~1.5 inch). Comes with the silver chain in the picture, and of course, free shipping all around.

10% discount for Twitter followers

If you are one of my Twitter followers, as a thank you, you get a 10% discount from my jewelry at Dawanda. All you need to do is enter 'Twitter - your username' in the check-out message to me. (your username is your Twitter username).
Of course, FREE shipping all over the world also applies.

Finally caught up with Twitter

I have setup a Twitter page ages ago but haven't really bothered with it so far - I must have been one of the many who just couldn't get the hang of it. Recently though, I've decided to catch up with everyone else, and give it another go. And whadya think, I actually enjoy twitting. It's really a nice and quick way to keep in touch with friends, and just update the 'followers' with what you've been up to since the last twit.

As you know, one of my side 'hobbies' is internet marketing, and as a specialty, I focus on setting up blogs and selling them at webmaster forums. I was looking for some great headers for the blogs, as content is not everything, the blog also needs to look the part, and I found FionasDesigns (Virginia) who is really good at making headers, ebook covers, etc. Being happy with her, I've sent her way more and more work. And to my surprise she sent me this weekend as a thank you gift my new Twitter background. I didn't even realize she is also doing Twitter backgrounds, but I guess she's a multi-talented lady!

So just to boast a bit, I'm a proud owner of my new Twitter design, made by FionasDesigns. What do you think of it, please let me know in your comments!

If you want a header, or a Twitter design, send her a message, she's incredibly fast to reply!
Now if only Twitter allowed a generic (or dynamic) design size, which doesn't have to look different depending on your monitor resolution!

Jewelry I sold recently

I did promise that I will not make any more jewelry until I sell at least a large part of the my previous creations. The last 2 years I've been on a race to make jewelry without to stop, and not only I burned out a bit, but I also ended up with a serious amount of silver jewelry. So far so good, I've only made a few pairs of earrings on commission, so I've been a good girl. My fingers are itching to work again, but not just yet.

In the meantime, Dawanda seems to be keeping me busy as I've started selling there more, even without any additional advertising. People seem to just somehow find my jewelry, which is great! Thank you everybody for that!

I've been asked what all I've sold this year, so here are a few pictures of jewelry sold through Dawanda and my blog (no direct and custom orders shown here). Hope you like them.