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.

 

Azure

Azure

I hope you enjoyed your 4^th of July (if you celebrate it), we had a pretty good day too. Even though I’m not in the US anymore I have celebrated the holiday every year I’ve been here. The first year one of my friends from University had all the Americans over; she cooked and we just sat around talking all evening.  The next year Neil and I actually had a BBQ; shish kebabs, potato salad, deviled eggs, grilled corn on the cob, sangria and watermelon for dessert. That year was the best! Last year was right after the wedding and my mom was still here so we just had burgers and maybe potato salad. But this year I wanted a BBQ again, only extenuating circumstances prevented us from getting the grill out so I made everything in the kitchen. I made potato and pasta salad the day before along with some minty simple syrup for the mojitos. So yesterday all I had to do was make the deviled eggs and cook the hot dogs and burgers (all veggie). It was great! During the day (between meals) Neil watched the Tour de France and I watched American movies and TV shows on Netflix.

 

This is the last of the designs I made several weeks ago. I love the dark blue glass of these. Again, none of the bead heads were small enough to top these beads. And since these beads are flat they probably wouldn’t look right anyway. The beads hang from a short length of chain, which of course I can make as long or short for you as you’d like (or take it away all together if you’d like); that’s the advantage of handmade jewelry.

 

Each dark blue (somewhere between Navy and Royal) glass bead is half an inch long. As usual all the findings and the chain are silver plated, and the earrings can be fitted with either fish hooks, kidney wires (shown) or clip-ons (at an additional cost). Each earring will hang an inch and a third from the ear.

Well, now I need to get back to work since I no longer have a backlog to publish from. I have a few ideas in my head but they need to be worked out, which is the fun part but it’s just finding the time to play around.

 

£4.00 including UK shipping, $7.95 including US shipping. One pair left

Layers

 

Today is our first wedding anniversary! I can’t believe it. We were so busy last year getting ready for the big day that I didn’t post anything for about two months. This year has gone by in a flash and yet it seems to have taken an eternity to get here. Strange, huh? Well if you’d like you can take a look back at our wedding pics.

Years ago I bought a cheap pair of earrings from a plus sized clothing store which I used to buy all of my clothes from (hint: it’s what real women wear). I wore them all the time especially when I was wearing royal blue which a lot of my summer wardrobe is. Over the years the long kidney wires turned and they didn’t look so good, but the beads were fine so when I started making earrings I put new hook on them.

I love these earrings and I have been trying to make some similar, which is why I bought the bead heads last month. But I made this pair while I was waiting for the bead heads to arrive. Once they arrived I realized none of the heads were small enough for the top of this bead since it’s very small on top.

I love the natural tones of this bead. It looks like there are layers in the beads like the sedimentary layers you may find in exposed rock on mountains or cliff faces. But the beads are not made of stone, they are glass. All of the findings are silver plated and they can be fitted with fish hook, kidney wires (shown) or clip-ons. They earrings hang just over and inch from the ear.

 

Hopefully we have a busy day ahead of us; recreating our wedding picture, going to dinner and having the top tier of our wedding cake.

 

£4.50 including UK shipping, $8.55 including US shipping  One pair left

 

Crystal

Crystal

We are in the middle of a heat wave here in the UK, hopefully today is the last day of it. Today is the longest day of the year which to some is a sacred day – the Summer Solstice. It is a special day for Neil and I too, the first two years we were together we did fabulous things on this day. In 2014 we went to Box Hill for the evening, I took drinks and dessert and we sat on a bench on the hill eating our picnic and watching the night fall. We were even treated to fireworks going off in the distance. That night for both of us was the night we knew we were in love. The following year we went to Stonehenge, actually we went the night of the 20^th to bring in the day of the 21^st. After taking a short nap in the parking lot at Stonehenge, we spent the rest of the day going around to other sacred Druid sites like Avebury and Silbury Hill. Unfortunately last year we were too busy preparing for our wedding to do anything like that.

I have a few designs waiting to meet the public. If you follow me on Instagram you’ve seen the preview of Crystal. I thought I’d bring out the elegant one first and now that I think about it Crystal was probably a fitting design to release this week. After all, people are leaving Stonehenge this morning and heading to Glastonbury for the festival. And Glastonbury is known for its mysticism, if you ever go there are crystal shops throughout town.  

These crystals are mystic though, they’re Swarovski. They are round, almost teardrop shaped and not flat the crystals in my wedding pair from last year. Also these crystals are iridescent and not truly clear. The crystals themselves are a third of an inch but they hang from a length of silver-plated chain, making the total length 1 and a quarter inches. The finding are all silver-plated as well and the earrings can me fitted with either fish hooks (shown), kidney wire or clip-ons.

I think what I love most about this pair is that they are simple enough to wear during the day and yet elegant enough to wear with something fancy. And once again the big perk of buying earrings from me is that if you would like the chain longer or shorter I can adjust it to your liking. I have several crystals left so I can probably make three pairs. Let me know if you’d like one.

£4.50 including UK shipping, $8.38 including US shipping

Jasper Beauty

Jasper Beauty

Back to the designs I had lined up before my bead heads arrived last week. I made these a few weeks ago when I first received the large pack of glass beads. The pack has so many different color beads I figured I could find something to go with the Jasper. I’ve had these Jasper beads for a while and since they are so earthy I couldn’t think of anything to do with them. I did sneak in a pair when I had the stall at the fair in March, but I couldn’t come up with an idea for another design. You may remember I started the year off with birthstones. I made several pairs of garnet earrings, I even made a pair that has both mine and my husband’s birthstones. I bought these jasper beads to continue the birthstone theme. Jasper is a birthstone for March or October. There are many different types of Jasper, this one is called Leopardskin Jasper because of the pattern in the stone.

This pair has one burgundy glass bead about 8 or 9 mm I’d say, with a 4 mm Jasper bead on each end of it. The burgundy of the glass bead picks up the streaks of burgundy running through the Jasper. The earrings hang approximately 1 1/8 inches from the ear. The findings are all silver plated and can be fitted with kidney wire (shown), fish hook or clip-ons.

I recently started an Instagram account and thought it would be a good idea to share my designs on Instagram a day earlier. So if you’re a fan of #TDJ or just want another way to keep in touch follow me on Instagram @robyngmh_tdj where you’ll see my picture. I hope you all like these as much as I do. I enjoyed making them and enjoyed photographing them.

 

£5.00 including UK shipping, $9.15 including US shipping

 

Michelle

 

Well, I finally got the pieces I was waiting for. These are bead caps, I got them in a pack of about two hundred in various sizes and designs.  I wanted the bead caps to make certain designs, specifically one similar to a pair that I bought years ago. But these are not them.

 

I saw a similar pair to these on TV recently, possibly again on EastEnders. I think Michelle Fowler was wearing them but I could be wrong. This pair consists of a single 6mm pearl with the new bead caps, hanging from a length of chain. Since you can buy these straight from me you have your length of chain as short or as long as you like. The ones featured here hang about two inches from the ear. The chain and all the findings are silver plated.

 

£4.50 including UK shipping, $9.00 including US shipping.