Vague

 

 

When Neil collects his sea glass there are sometimes pieces of glass that you cannot tell what they were before. And in addition to the glass he’s found pieces from pottery and crockery. He did some research and discovered from the manufacturer’s mark that one piece is from a plate dating back to the 70’s. Again you can check out his collection of sea glass on his blog. I tried very hard not to make any blue earring for this collection but I just couldn’t help it.

 

I wore this pair to church last week and I received so many compliments on them. They probably are my favorite of all the designs in this collection but honestly I don’t know what this would be if it were sea glass. It’s too blue to be a Coca-Cola bottle and too light to be a poison bottle. I suppose it would just be a random piece of glass that could have come from housewares that were discarded and made it into a drain leading to the ocean, traveled the currents and landed on a shore somewhere.

 

The light blue glass is wrapped in non-tarnish silver-plated copper wire and fitted on silver-plated kidney wires. They hang just under an inch from the ear.

£4.50 including UK shipping, $8.65 including US shipping.

Wine Bottles

Wine bottles

 

This won’t be a long post partly because it’s so late and partly because the main story I told last week.

This pair is made of green glass that if it were sea glass it would probably have been wine bottles in a previous life. This pair is rather small, they hang just under an inch from the ear. As always the findings are silver-plated and the glass is wrapped in non-tarnish silver-plated copper wire.

£4.00 including UK shipping, $8.00 including US shipping

Sea Glass - Coca-Cola

Sea Glass

I had an idea sitting at breakfast Saturday morning. My husband has collected sea glass from the beach for years possibly decades. He has quite a nice little collection of pieces of glass in various colors; you can check out one of his posts on the collection on his blog. He can date some of the glass pieces by their color. You can tell what some things are from the color. Green is wine, brown is beer, clear could be an old medicine bottle or a modern day liquor bottle, light blue glass could be old Coca-Cola bottles dating back to the 1920’s and dark blue was used for poison so if you find dark blue glass it could date back to the 1950’s.

So I asked him if he has any sea glass that he could spare. He thought about it and said that all the glass he had was sentimental picked from Cornwall or our trip from the Isle of Wight. Then I remembered I have all the lovely glass beads and some of them are frosted like Neil’s sea glass.

Well, it was frosted when I started working with them, but once my fingers ran around the beads with the wire they were a bit shinier.  I made several pairs in different colors, shapes and patterns. I tried to imitate the glass in Neil’s collection. I decided to release them by color and I made it a point not to use and blue glass since I’ve released a lot of it recently.

I think this color glass would be Coca-Cola bottles. I love this color bead; they’re clear but have a slight blue tint to them. Two pair are oval shaped and are wrapped one time with wire. The third pair are shaped slightly like barrels an even have ridges although the ridges run horizontally (parallel with the wire) not vertically. The barrel pair is wrapped three times with wire.

The beads are all glass, the wire is all non-tarnish silver plated copper and the ear fittings are silver plated as well. The barrel shaped pair hangs an inch and an eighth, the larger ovals (middle pair) hang three quarters of an inch and the smaller ovals hang exactly an inch.

£4.50 including UK shipping, $8.55 including US shipping.

 

Oh Tannenbaum

Oh Tannenbaum

I have been thinking about this design for about a year. Last year I was looking for pictures to base Christmas earrings on. I knew I wanted to a Christmas tree and I saw a Christmas tree like this and couldn’t figure out how to do it. Then this year I discovered craft wire and there you have it.

 

You might remember three weeks ago I was saying I needed a tool and some materials. I decided to make the tool instead of buying one and the materials I ordered took five weeks to arrive. Well the wire finally arrived but I had to contact the vendor and let them know I never received it. They sent out another batch. I finally buckled down to make the tool only to find that it didn’t really work the way I wanted it to. The problem with my homemade tool was that I couldn’t get the finished product off of the tool. In the end I figured it out but it took several days to get right.

I tried a few different designs until I found the one I was happy with. This is one of the trials I did. Part of the problem was I didn’t want them to be too big. I also wanted the option of adding beads for decorations if I wanted. But in the end I decided not to add them.

As I said last week the earrings I made for last Christmas took weeks to get right. Once I made them the way I wanted them I found the paint came off. So I ended up having to pretreat them all and then seal them so the paint didn’t come off. So I am determined to make this year’s designs easier for me which will be less costly for you.

I suppose this is a good time to let you all know that the journey is making another stop. This time a MacMillan  Nurses Christmas Bazaar once again at the Wraysbury village hall. It will be Saturday November 26 from 10am to noon. They will be serving coffee, tea and cakes and having a raffle. So make sure you stop by and see us. Purchases made in person save postage!

£3.75 including shipping within the UK. $8.53 including shipping to the US

Conniving

Claudette

I love watching a certain soap opera here in the UK, I’ve been watching it on and off since I was a teenager. Recently a character joined the story who I despise. She lies, she kills, and she acts like she loves her family but she just wants to control them. She wants them to be something they aren’t and doesn’t accept who they really are. She comes off as a nice caring soul but really she’s a terrible person. However, for the past three weeks she’s been wearing a killer pair of earrings! The first time I saw them I thought ‘I’ve got to make those!’

 So my first attempt came out well, the spiral is lovely but when I put it on the hook they’re ... crooked, just like Claudette.

 

I tried again and this time they did come out straight.

 

 

I tell you this craft wire is a very useful material but very tricky to work with. There is only one pair of each available.

£12.00 including UK shipping, $16.00 including US shipping

WiRed

Wired

 

A few months ago I bought some craft wire. I’ve done a few pieces with it but I hadn’t really experimented with it to see where it could go. One thing is for sure with handmade craft wire jewelry, as hard as you try the two earrings will never come out exactly the same. There will be minute differences between them. My Step mother’s birthday is next week and I wanted to make a pair of earrings to send her so I spent an afternoon playing around.

 

This is the pair I sent to her, I’m calling them Karen’s Orbit because the design made me think of something going “around the world” while I was wrapping the bead and my step-mother’s name is Karen.  They consist of a red colored bead with the craft wire swirled around it. On the bottom there is a silver (color not metal) bead with a swirl in it.

 

With this pair I was just fooling around, seeing where it would take me. It’s funny I’ve often heard artists say things like that but I never really knew what they meant by it. I ended up with these (heavy) beauties that I call Angel because to me they look a bit like angels. So the lucky lady who wears these will have an angel on each shoulder. They consist of two blue glass beads (the oblong bead gives the earring its heft), one faceted bead and one pearl bead.

As always both pair have silver plated findings and come with the backs to ensure you don’t lose them. The craft wire is also silver plated and is tarnish-free.

I’ve also had a development in the past few weeks. I had my first US purchase a few weeks ago so I can accurately gauge the prices now. I’ll go back to shipping inclusive pricing but the prices will be slightly higher to cover shipping costs.

There is one of each pair available. Karen’s Orbit Sold for UK delivery, Angel $9.30 for US delivery £7.00 for UK delivery.

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