Week 19: Skull Invasion!

I thought I was going to be able to resist the lure of Halloween crafting until at least September, but I am weak!  All the stores have their Halloween merchandise out, just waiting to be picked up and altered.  Let alone the Halloween goodies I have in my own stash!  It's my favorite of the major holidays; I bet you'd have never guessed.  : )  That said, I'm trying to keep to a theme within a theme; all my crafts this week include skulls!

A choker made with various skull charms and some other Halloween bits I had around.

Skeleton Key Medallion Necklace.  The medallion is made from mostly scrap-booking supplies; a dimensional sticker key and some paper flowers.

Peter Pan-style collar necklace with skull.  The skull pendant piece is made from a washer and a button.  I added rhinestones and some dimensional glaze to the eyes.

Poison Skull Crystal Necklace.  Made from a flat backed crystal.  I adhered the image to the crystal and then painted the back of the pendant with glitter nail polish.

Skull and Spine Earrings with Glass "Blood" Drops.  I filled in the eyes on these bad boys with red glitter puffy fabric paint.  Fun!

My favorite of the batch.  A sugar skull bracelet for Dia de los Muertos!  I had painted all the little skulls myself. 

Skull and spike earrings.  I hand painted the skulls and added pearlescent puffy paint to the eye sockets.

A lot of the skull bits I already had on hand, but I did end up buying and customizing a $1.99 bag of tiny plastic skulls for the sugar skull bracelet and skulls with spike earrings.  A little nail polish will go a long way! I still have a bunch more of the little plastic skull beads so plan to see some more of those in the future.   Here's till next time!  <3

Week 18: All That Glitters

THIS is what happens when Michael's has a 50% off bead sale.  I went with the intention of just getting another organizer for some homeless beads, and ended up buying out their stock of hematite and pyrite beads.  I'm loving the combination of gunmetal and black!  Then of course once I was home the guilt set in, so I had to make good use of what I picked up.  Fortunately, there were enough beads in the batch for it to last through a themed week of hematite and pyrite jewelry crafting.  Check it out:

Hematite and Pyrite Handmade Earrings

Hematite and Tourmalated Quartz Earrings

Pyrite Nugget and Hematite Cube Earrings

Earrings with Pyrite Ovals and Nuggets, with Hematite Accents

Gunmetal Pyrite Cube Necklace with Hematite Spacers

Gunmetal and Gold-tone necklace with Pyrite Cubes and Raw Black Quartz 

Gunmetal and Gold Woven Chain Necklace With Pyrite Cubes and Black Quartz

Although I used very similar materials for the entire batch of jewelry I feel like I got some nicely varied results.  Hurray for pyrite jewelry!  It's so shiny.  : )  Thanks for looking, and catch you next week!

Week 17: Feathered Friends

This week I decided to give in a fully play around with feathers as a jewelry making medium.  They seem to be pretty darn popular right now, and as much as I hate birds themselves I do enjoy the different kinds and colors of feathers that have been popping up in our local craft stores.  I've used feathers a bit before, but mostly peacock feathers.  So I grabbed some bags of feathers and some stems from the floral department, where there are also super cool feathers, and got to work.  This is what I came up with:

Nothing special here, just feathers and beads.

More feathers and beads, this time with bead caps!  Ooooh.

This is where I feel like I really started to hit my stride.  Multiple feathers, bead cones, and crystals.  Now we're talking!

Just feathers and bead cones for this one, but I went with a black and white theme that I thought was pretty fun.

Again, just feathers and cones but this time with some color.  I had a great time picking out most of the feathers on these earrings from a variety of $1 floral stems I got on clearance.  Yay cheap!

These are without a doubt my favorite of the bunch.  The chains and rhinestones really did me in.  I can already tell I'm going to make about a million pairs of these for myself in different colors.  These feathers were also from the cheap-o floral stems. So hurray again!

Peacock feathers with accent feathers, bead cones, and a single crystal.  These earrings are HUGE.    I like big earrings and they're big for me; they dip past my collar bone. 

That's all for this time, but expect to see some more feathers in the future.  I didn't set out intending for all the pieces to be earrings, but once I got started I just kept going down that path.  I had so much fun with this "new to me" medium that I may try feather hair accessories or necklaces some other week.  Thanks for looking!

Week 16: Memory Wires

This week's blog is sadder than most.  This past Thursday (the 26th) my family and I lost our good friend, Stephen Tong.  Stephen was an amazing person and a hugely creative soul.  One of the things I enjoyed most about him was his passion for semiprecious stones and wire wrapping.  His wire-wrapping technique was out of this world.  In order to cope with my grief (keeping busy always helps with that), and to honor Stephen's memory I decided to do all new wire wrapping projects for this week.  I didn't try to replicate Stephen's style (I need a few more years of practice before I can hit that level of skill), but I did enjoy taking on projects that I normally would have been too hesitant to try.  Thanks for inspiring and continuing to inspire me, Stephen.  We will miss you so much.

Wire wrapped brass earrings with glass stones.

Copper wire shape with matte polished crackle quartz accents.

Black Onyx beads in a brass frame with chain.

Silver "heart" flower with fancy jasper central stone.

Wire woven leaf with wire wrapped & seed bead bail on leather.

Shell set in spiral wire bezel.

Amethyst teardrop in silver wire frame with spiral accents.

Week 15: Bracelets Abound!

I don't know what kind of can of worms I opened up by flirting with bracelet design, but I'm hooked!  This week is now the first back to back theme week of the year; mostly because I just wanted to make some more bracelets.  And here they are:

This was a fun bracelet I made by raiding my overabundant hook-and-eye stash.  Add jump rings and a clasp and voila!  Instant bracelet.

Leather with beads and a wire spiral

Leather with a small (and functioning!) hinge.

Multi-strand bronze metallic leather bracelet.  There are eight strands of the leather, but you can't quite see them all in the picture.  This one may be my favorite to wear of the new batch.

Leather cuff with eyelet studs and chain for a hand wrap.  Whoo, fancy!

Wire circle with wrapping and  various semiprecious stones.  I lied.  This one is my favorite to wear of the batch!

And here is the final (and most time consuming) bracelet of the week!  Two leather straps connect a strip of Euro 4 in 1 chainmail.

I got the design for the Euro 4 in 1 bracelet from an excellent book by Laura Poplin called "Unconventional Chain Mail Jewelry".  I highly recommend checking out this book if you are in the intermediate stage of chainmail construction and are looking for new directions to take your designs.  Expect to see more projects inspired by the book in the future!

Week 14: Brace Yourself!

A friend of mine recently pointed out to me that because I don't wear many bracelets I tend not to make many bracelets.  I didn't believe her at first, but when I went back through all my posts I found that to be really true.  I did a little looking around on the interwebs to see what kinds of bracelets seem to be popular right now, and I came across the trend of wearing a lot of chain and leather bracelets stacked all together.  I feel in love.  LOVE.  Inspired by my new muse, I decided to do an entire week devoted to bracelets.

I started off easy with a simple braided wrap bracelet.  This one goes around the wrist three times and connects with a lobster claw clasp.

Braided leather "charm" bracelet

These leather and button closure bracelets seem to be quite "in" right now.  I can see why; they're the only bracelet I've ever made that I haven't had a hard time closing myself.  Yay button magic!

Another kind of button magic bracelet.  I like this one a lot too; it feels quite sturdy.  Also, the fake buffalo nickel  button is pretty fun.

The first of the chain wrapped in leather set.  I really like how the turquoise and gold turned out.  The silver and green was a fun color combo but a little chunky to wear.  These both close with lobster claw clasps.  At least the chain is sturdy enough for me to tug on while I try to get them fastened!

The second version of the chain and leather bracelet.  This one is probably my favorite.  The extra strip running along the sides of the chain adds some structure and some extra color.  Also symmetry = happy me.  these close with toggle clasps, which I'm not super fond of for necklaces but turns out I love 'em for bracelets!  Go figure.

The mac daddy of the chain and leather bracelets I made.  This bad boy combines two chains.  Whoo!  Livin' dangerously!  I like the fall colors, but all in all it's too much bracelet for me.  : )

I really enjoyed the challenge of making something that I would not ordinarily wear.  I know that a lot of things I make aren't my personal style, but I still feel like I have a good sense of balance for earrings and necklaces.  Bracelets was a totally new territory for me though, and it was nice to have to work my brain in order to get some of the styles to work.  I'm also super stupid excited about this new "wrapped chain" thing and can't wait to incorporate it into some necklaces.  Maybe that'll be next week.  Until next time!

Week 13: Birds of a Feather

This week is a celebration!  First, one of my Etsy shop's items trended hot on Wanelo for like a minute. I was very, very excited.  Then it sold!  This marks my very first Etsy sale.  Woohoo!  To celebrate, I decided to make the medium I used in the item my weekly theme.  And lucky for me, it was peacock feathers!  I'm super into peacock feather jewelry right now.  On to the show!

Peacock sword feathers under microscope slide glass, topped with a tattered silk bow.

Peacock eye feather in a glass locket.

Peacock eye feather and pheasant feather in bead cone on a long (29'') silver chain.

Fancy glass tube filled with peacock sword feathers, plus a rhinestone!  Am I in heaven or what?

Peacock sword feather pad (I think it was meant for a hair piece) with a button and a bail = a big funky necklace!

Peacock feathers in a bottle!  This time it actually turned out how it wanted it to; with all the feathers facing the same direction instead of getting all knotted up like in Bottle Week.  Success!

And peacock feathers in tiny little earring bottles!  Ok, I know the last two are really similar, and that's almost breaking a rule but I'm too excited right now to care!

Wanelo is pretty darn cool; it's like Pinterest but for shops and items for sale!  I imagine I'm going to use the hell out of it for christmas shopping this year.  Like Pinterest you can have groups, follow people, and gain a following yourself!  For anyone interested you can find me on Wanelo here, and Pinterest here.  That does it for this time, have a great week!