Turquoise Set - Viking Knit Technique

Another bracelet I made with the Viking knit - I just bought these adorable turquoise beads (it's actually dyed magnesite of a brilliant colour!) - hexagon rondelles - and I want to use them in a thousand of designs!

The bracelet looks really nice on the wrist.

...and it comes with earrings!

Earrings - beginning of 2012

Copper and pearls earrings

So couple days ago there were earrings with copper washers and pearls, here comes yet another design with copper and pearl combination. These earrings are wirewrapped - so far my favourite technique.

They were an order for my mum's friend - her ears aren't pierced, so I worked with leverbacks. The moment I put the photo on Facebook, another friend asked for the same design, for pierced ears. Nice networking:)

Old Design/ New Design - Reworking a Finished Design

More copper washers! Don't say you didn't see it coming (especially after I blogged yesterday how addicting working with washers is).

So there are two different designs on the following pictures. If you think that they look very much alike, you are completely right, because it is one and the same pair of earrings. First photo shows a combination of three different sizes of washers bound together by a copper wire - that was the original idea. I have added some silver coloured wire as an interesting detail, but then I noticed, that the washers are slightly turning while being worn, which caused irregularity in the detail (you can see the silver wire at a different position on the second photo).
I gave it a thougt and as much as I hate reworking a finished project, I wanted it to be 'perfect'. In order to stop the washers from turning, I drilled holes into them and secured with a piece of the same wire used for the contrasting detail.

I hope you like the "upgrade"!

Copper Washers Are Great!

There are so many things jewellery can be made of - things considered junk (or at least "suitable for something else"). But as the saying goes, one's person's junk is another person's treasure.

I have first seen washers used by great jewellery maker Sharilyn Miller (http://www.sharilynmiller.com/,  here is her blog: http://sharilynmiller.blogspot.com/). The ideas Sharilyn has and the pieces she makes with washers are amazing! Following her recommendation, I have bought a kit of 110 copper washers (car repair shops have them, and they're on Amazon too) - that way you get 6 different sizes that you can combine. Hammering them and oxidizing afterwards makes the washers more attractive.

Here is my first pair of copper washer earrings! And they're certainly not the last, I'm already addicted!



Mixed Metals Earrings

It was time to experiment... steel wire, check... brass rivets, check... copper sheet and beads, check, check... MIXED METALS experiment!

I might patina them as well, have to think about it a bit.



Liver of Sulfur

Oooh, this is fun! I have finally purchased Liver of Sulfur and I keep "livering" (or "sulfering"???) everything with it!
Here is the first pair of copper earrings I have tested it on - the one on the left is already getting antiqued, the one on the right is the original. I really like how it gives the wirewrapped design more depth...



Now it's the one on the right that's getting antiqued (just in the case you didn't notice they switched sides:).

Copper - Patina, Rivets and Stamping

And here is another patina project - a pair of earrings that speak to you. Well, at least if you believe in HOPE and LOVE, because that's what they "say"!
I have combined a number of different techniques to make this pair and I'm hoping to come up with more than this, since I really like the result.

I have used ammonia and salt to add patina to copper plates. I actually forgot about the experiment and left the metal "under influence" for longer than intended (2,5 days to be precise), so if you look closely enough, you might notice, that snippets of the metal have been eaten off by corrosion at the edges. But I don't mind, firstly this was my first experiment with patina, secondly I was trying to make the metal look aged anyway.
The patina was so thick I even had to remove some, otherwise it wouldn't hold on well even after spraying with clear paint. I had removed more patina from waht was going to be front side of the earrings and that created a nice effect of 2-coloured patina; red and green layers.

Then I've sprayed a clear paint over the plates, so the patina wouldn't come off or stain clothes. I have applied 2 coats on each side and let dry for several hours between the coats.

In the meanwhile, I have prepared 2 pieces of copper and stamped them with words HOPE and LOVE, one for each ear.

After the paint dried on the patinaed metal peices, I had to measure where to put holes for rivets and hammer the rivets on.

And then all I had to add were 2 handmade jumprings (how good does it sound, instead just jumprings) and earwires. Tadaa!


Here is front and back of the earrings:




Hope & Love... who's in?

Some Simple Earring Designs

I'm going to be traveling for a month now (so you won't see me around for a while) and I'm going to visit my family as well - so what better to bring to family and friends than a handmade gift! In my case jewellery :-))) - what else!
Most of the earrings from my previous post have somebody's name already written all over them. And here are just a few examples of SUPER simple designs that take just a moment to create - all you need is a wire, steel block, chasing hammer - and earplugs!

New Copper Earrings

My love-affair with COPPER seems to be never-ending! Well, there are several reasons for this - copper looks amazing, copper is in vogue right now and it's fairly inexpensive! And as if I needed another reason, I have lots of copper wire at home!
Remember my "trash stash" that I got from our Engineering? I got even more! Lots of discarded copper wire! It's rubber coated (like telephone wire) - so guess what I was doing for hours and hours while watching my fav TV programs? I think you got it: stripping my precious wires off their rubber clothes!

And here is what I've been working on recently:

Copper earrings with lots of copper beads.


Just wires - hand forged and hammered:


Swirls with copper beads:

And simple hammered swirls:

And this is just a bonus - next swirly earrings will be patina-coated! This is what ammonia with salt can do:

New Item On Etsy - Brass Key Earrings

This is a new listing I have added to my Etsy shop today!

Herringbone Weave

It's snowing like crazy here in Jackson Hole, so I'm hoping to hop on the skis one or two more times before the mountain closes for the season. And mext Monday (ohhhhh, it's only in 3 days!!!) we're off to India - I'm so excited! I hope I would be able to find some nice beads or maybe more! And the food! And the weather! And the colours! And the jewellery! And I will stop right here, cause I don't want to break the exclamation button!!! !! ! !! !!!

But that's not what I wanted to write about - this blog is about jewellery (if you want to see pictures from India, you have to go to our travel site misandeep.webgarden.cz) and I wanted to tell you about my new discovery:

Herringbone weave!
To be precise, I didn't discover herringbone weave right now, I had a tutorial for it for a while, just didn't try it out... so the discovery is that I CAN DO IT!

I tried one pair of earrings - and then I just threw myself into it. So this can essentially be called Earrings Craze no. 2!

If you like the weave, you can try it too - Eni Oken, an amazing jewellery artist and teacher, is offering the technique free on http://www.jewelrylessons.com/jewel/node/370
Warning: you might like it too much!


Just a simple combination with pink freshwater pearls - I made these also with black pearls (even nicer), but didn't take a pic, because I was wearing them at the moment... lame excuse, you'll see them some other time anyway, because they're MINE!


Pink freashwater pearls again - this time with silver beads added:



This pair is for my Mum, she likes coral and bought a necklace and a bracelet, but didn't have earrings to go with that:


You might have noticed that I really like Czech firepolished beads (well, I'm Czech after all, it's a matter of pride for sure), and they look really good with the weave too!


Lava Stone Earrings:


Black Peas in a Pod:


Silver Square Beads - trapped in the weave
(the beads are rounded squares sizes 4mm and 5mm):


The possibilities are limitless and by choosing different gauges of wire you can modify the look from very polished and smooth to chunky and bold.

Earrings Craze - Another Day Off!

My Mum, being my biggest fan, asked me if I could make a few pairs of earrings for her friends - just something simple and easy.
I made a bunch, so there are mixed styles and I was trying to make each of the pairs a bit different, so everyone could find something to their taste. All pictures are taken while the earrings are hanging on a string on the wall in front of a tissue paper, and now I realizing that most of them were hanging 'downhill', so some look like one earring is longer than the other - which, of course, isn't true! *Sigh* Everything is already packed in mail, so I cannot take new pictures, but hey - you get the idea what the earrings looked like...

Here they are:

Pearl Ovals
- silver-plated wire, freashwater pearls


Amber and Copper Falls
(why does one look bent??? Next time I have to post pictures before I give the produst to the postoffice...)


Light My Fire
- Czech firepolished beads (again? one looks bent...)


Pink Glass Barrel
- Indian glass beads and Czech firepolished beads (and yes, they ARE the same length)


Mellow Yellow
- two tones of yellow briolettes


Pink Bunny
- pink(ish) briolettes and silver-plated wire
This design deserves to be worked on and perfected - something is in there and can be developed!

Cross I

- pewter crosses and Czech firepolished beads

Cross II
- pewter crosses and Indian glass beads

Marsmallow Powder

- Czech firepolished beads

Ceramic Bead and Copper

I think I have to find a better way to take my pictures. It will be inportant if I open an online store one day.... until then I'll be perfecting my designs and training with the camera!