All about jewelry: October 2007

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Boo! Halloween Jewelry!

Can you believe the end of October is tomorrow?! Yikes! And, me with no Halloween costume to wear.

If you are in the mood for some scary Halloween jewelry, then flip over to the new video posted at the Metal Chik web site. Victoria visits Halloween Adventure and Gothic Renaissance located in New York City.

Among the freaky stuff she checks outs in the jewelry department is this wacky cabochon necklace pictured above. Yes, that is a necklace! Watch the video and you'll see what I mean. As pictured, it looks like a bunch of wires tossed around a rock, but when you see it better in the video it does finally look like a necklace, or at least I think it does.

So, enjoy your candy and spooky day tomorrow! At the very least, I guess I can throw a lot of beads around my neck and hoop earrings on my ears and be a gypsy for the day.

See article.

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[Source: The Jewelry Weblog]

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

CERF Helping Jewelry Artists and Crafters

With Southern California going through one of the worst fire seasons in a very long time, a huge number or residents have been affected, and that includes many of the artisans who live in the region. Luckily, there are organizations like CERF, Craft Emergency Relief Fund that exists primarily to help out in times like this.

Art Biz Blog is also spreading the word and asked fellow artists and art lovers to post the following:

The Craft Emergency Relief Fund (CERF) is taking action to respond to the community of craft artists affected by the Southern California Wildfires. They say:

We are reaching out to artists, arts organizations, galleries, businesses and others in the affected areas to offer assistance and to locate information about the arts community. While it is still too early to know the extent of damage, we do know that the situation is severe as news reports indicate. We also know that this area of California has a significant population of craft artists. We have already heard from a jeweler who lost both her home and studio and CERF Trustee and clay artist, Lana Wilson, had to be evacuated from her Del Mar home.

Please help us spread the word that CERF is available to offer assistance to craft artists in Southern California. Please also be aware that your support of our work during these times is essential so that we can deliver aid quickly and effectively.

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[Source: The Jewelry Weblog]

Mother of Pearl, Labradorite, and Lampwork

It's a miracle I have any new pictures to post: besides doing custom work and packing like crazy, we have been remodeling our home (new floors in 3 downstairs rooms, a new upstairs bathroom, and downstairs bathroom as well as some cosmetic changes and painting the den). The workers are finally finished and my work has just begun. All the furniture in the rooms we changed had to be moved and while the workers moved the furniture back (my whole closet had to be emptied - shelving and all!) this is a wonderful opportunity to clean, clear out old clothes and all the junk we seem to have collected over the years. Of course, we still have to get a lot of decorating done. Fun, but whew! time-consuming and tiring!
A couple of nights I stayed very late at the studio, and the result is what you see on this post today.
When I started out, I didn't mean to work with mother-of-pearl, but like so many times, these funny silver mother of pearl pieces were on the workbench where I kept looking at them until I had to pick them up and play with them. The result: earrings and a bracelet made with silver mother-of-pearl with an Aurora Borealis coating added and Swarovski crystals in Silver Shadow.

Of course, I love labradorite and work with it any chance I get, so the natural thing to do when I realized I needed to replenish the abalone jewelry stock was to mix abalone and labradorite together with sterling silver and some of my favorite lampwork beads from Robin Weber. It's a combination that I've used before, but one I don't think that I will tire of anytime soon.

The last lampwork bracelet is one of the prettiest bracelets I've ever made. Unfortunately, the picture is one of the worst that I've ever taken. I think that the soft almost opalescent pink on the beads is so subtle that it just doesn't show up well. The lampwork beads are made by Lynn Nurge of Laffingull (she's the beadmaker who makes smaller scale beads that are perfect for bracelets). I've mixed the lampwork with good gem quality peridot and sterling silver. The second strand of the bracelet is a very large linked sterling chain with the tiniest little sterling daisy charms hanging from the links (these don't show up very well either).

To my readers in the Scandinavia and Estonia, I'm sure that you're beginning to snuggle in and get cozy while to those of you in Hawaii (you know who you are), once again, I am so jealous of your climate. Meanwhile, I can see that a fire in our fireplace is in the near future.

jewellery

accessories

handmade beaded jewelry

mother-of-pearl jewelry

jewelry trends

labradorite

peridot

bracelets

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[Source: The Jewelry Blog]

Monday, October 29, 2007

Jewelry and Fashion Blogosphere 10/28/07

It's not easy being green. 55 Secret Street braves stormy weather and spilled coffee to see beautiful handmade jewelry and fine crafts at Greenjeans in Brooklyn's Park Slope neighborhood.

Style so inventive that Chanel tried to rip it off? Yep. Stiletto Jungle features the newest bracelets from Jessica Kagan Cushman.

Bag Bliss has fallen for the Limited Edition Handbag by De Couture. Only 50 in the world.

Forget the LBD, Bag Snob has the perfect LBT (Little Black Tote!) from Anya Hindmarch.

Beauty Snob gets a moisture boost for wintery dry skin with Awake Polyphection!

Kristopher's tough but no punk, so she loves this Kenneth Jay Lane bracelet.

My Fashion Life meets Abigail Lorick - the designer behind some of the amazing outfits on the new TV series, Gossip Girl.

Papierblog looks at the social implication of high end designers with collections for children

If you don't happen to live in NYC and missed the Princess Grace 25th anniversary hoopla, no worries. Second City Style has photos of the Sak's window display of unique Princess Grace inspired couture outfits by 6 amazing American designers.

So you're up on the latest trends but aren't sure how to put them all together? StyleBakery.com offers this chic cheat sheet to help you figure out what to wear today.

Serious cute overload! Check out Stylehive's slideshow of the most adorable infant and toddler costumes we've been awww-ing over.

WE LOVE BEAUTY Celebrity Stylemaker's top eyeshadow picks for Fall

See Christina at eBeautyDaily getting rid of her wrinkles with the Rejuvawand home laser treatment!

Halloween fun is still in full swing at the Jewelry and Beading blog, including some cute black cat beaded earrings.

Metal Chik has some tips and tricks for hunting down wholesale jewelry shows.

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[Source: The Jewelry Weblog]

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Opal Bunny Pendnat

It's that time of the year again, and distributor orders are keeping me very busy indeed, which is great! I work 4 days a week in town + 3 days of jewellery in my workshop. Made this little pendant the other day for our family friend Gio and Helen. I don't usually take on commission work, but I really enjoyed the challenge of working with this beautiful black opal from Broken Hill. It's for their grand daughter Karin who is born in the year of the Rabbit. Below is my temporary setup in Armidale. I'm staying with my parent's at the moment, and I have managed to take over quite a large portion of their ceramic studio- whoops.

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[Source: Kyo Hashimoto Jewellery]

Jewelry and Fashion Blogosphere 10/28/07

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[Source: The Jewelry Weblog]

For Earring Lovers Only

Jewelry designers are known to specialize. For example, they may only use certain types of gemstones and metals. Or, they have may lean toward a particular sort of technique or jewelry style. But, jewelry designer Mary E. Pongonis has a unique specialization - earrings. She even has a patent for a certain type of ear wire design. Her company is called Meya2s, where the 2 is square, not a 2 right next to the other letters, and she sells finished earrings designs (pictured above is Beaded Amy A's) as well as just earring wires, which are unique wire designs in themselves. Here are some more earrings from the Amy A collection.