Week - 22

This piece was made over yesterday and today. Actual hours work,.. I estimate to be very close to 12 solid hours. It measures 2.25″ x 1.25″ and includes faceted Rutilated Quartz, Swarovski bicones and sterling silver beads. I’m not sure what the cabochon at the bottom is,. I originally thought it was green turquoise, however I’m not so sure now. Any ideas?? I think this is my new best piece. I’m very happy with how it turned out,.. nothing like I imagined, but hey!

Ok,. I’m convinced,.. I’m definitely going to buy a light cube now and re-do these photos for my website and hopefully they will look more like they do IRL.

Week - 21

Well I think I’ve finally and definitely found a place in jewelry making, which is exactly where I want to be. This is perfect for me. Some of you will remember I left jewelry making a while back to persue watercolours again. This shift occurred because of my sheer frustration when working with wire after previously working with watercolours and coloured pencils. My belief back then was that wire had serious limitations that would not allow me to manipulate it like I could with watercolours and pencils to get freeform flowing shapes and blends of colours that I craved doing so much. Wire still has it’s limitations (well it’s not a liquid for one ;] ) however I can already see the greatest limitations are my lack of skills and not so much the wire itself. It’s hard to explain, but I feel like the doors have just opened for me after years of floundering around and not knowing where I’m going with jewelry making and I look ahead through the door and see this perfect new place to play and explore.
This piece is 2.25″ x 1.25″ and has a white opal(hard to see in photo but has green and red flashes), a faceted quartz briolette, a large faceted amethyst bead, a faceted amethyst rondell, three swarovkski bicones (grey, need to look up name), one large and ten peacock pearls and eleven SS beads. I hate to think how much wire went into this piece, but I am running out fast. It’s quite weighty and very solid as was the previous piece.

This piece took a guesstimate of about 12 solid hours to make, mostly sitting and figuring out design through the whole process. I expect this figuring will drop greatly as I become better skilled and will just be left with labour time,.. which is significant in itself.

I’ve already begun the next one with nervous excitement. I go into these with not a clue how the finished piece will turn out and just make it up as I go, which is quite fun, but a bit scary because of the wire invested in it. However, I also look forward to a time when I can know this style well enough to actually plan out a piece on paper when I want to,.. and follow it through to the finish.

I think I really do need get myself a light diffuser thingy and set up a photo shoot area, because these pics are not showing them very true to actual piece at all.

Week - 20

Before and after Liver of Sulphur (LOS) treatment.

OK, this was a cracker of a week for me,.. the planets in my solar whatchamacallit must be aligned correctly,.. or perhaps I’ve finally paid all my dues for being such a dreadful person in a previous life :] . Anyway,.. things come in threes,..and this week we have;
1. I’m posting on time - whoot!
2. I’m on theme &
3. I’m really happy with my piece and think it’s the best piece I’ve ever made.

Ok I’ll add a fourth :},..
4. It feels like I’ve finally gotten off a very long plateau in my skills/work and have begun to move again.

Week - 19

I made this mobile/cell phone dangly(minus the caged component) for a friend about a year+ ago and about last Oct she gave it back to me and asked if I could add the Herkimer diamond nugget (she wanted it in there for theraputic reasons). At the time, I hadn’t done any jewelry for many months and I tried a few designs to hold this awkwardly shaped nugget nicely, but I wasn’t happy with any of my efforts and knew I could do better, so I cut them off each time. I asked my friend if should would mind giving me some time,. until my skills have picked up again and I can give more thought to a better design that would hold the nugget very securely as much as being pretty. Anyway,. I finally sat down and thought about it again one night this week and felt more confident that I could do it now that I’m back ‘into’ jewelry making again,….and this was the result. I know it was a long wait for my friend,. but it’s free,lol and I think she will love the result. It now just needs to be popped into the tumbler to shine it all up and off it goes back to my friend. Phew,.. I’m glad I have that one off my plate now,lol.

Week - 18

It’s been a while since I’ve made a ring, and this week I had a sudden urge to make a biiiiig ring. It is made from Sterling Silver, Rose Gold and Gold Filled. Fits great and is comfortable to wear but I have to be careful not to knock myself out when I take a drink :] . I LOS’d it and I like the extra depth it has given the design. It was completed on time, however I ran out of time to photograph and post it up here because we zoomed off to Sydney last Friday for a fantastic fun weekend away with the kids (last chance to get away while hubby was still on leave)before the new school year starts. We had a blast snorkelling at one of Sydney’s best snorkelling beaches,.. absolutely awesome,. we all went waaaaaaaaay out and saw hundreds of fish, octopus, stingrays, squid, and I even got a chance to dive down amongst a school of huge blue groper fish and almost touch them wow, what a thrill it was. Oh see.. waay OT,.. that’s how fun it was,lol.
I just want to take the chance to thank everyone who has commented on my pieces in the FSOJ and apologise for my absence in commenting myself,… I wholeheartedly appreciate your comments and will be back to ‘normal’ and posting more often very soon.

week - 17

Whoot! Done,..posted on time, and in keeping with the theme this week. Can hardly believe it myself. In case you can’t see it,.. this is a leaf, lol. As soon as I decided to go with the theme this week I knew straight away I wanted to do the leaf in seed beads,.. thanks to Beadedflower who showed me how much fun seed beads can be. I never thought I’d ever use the words FUN and SEED BEADS in the same sentence. Interestingly enough, the seed bead leaf was the quickest part to make in this piece. I have been enjoying doing Leah’s (MichonDesign.com) style pendants so I decided to combine both techniques into one piece. Almost too much fun for one evening,.. I must have done something right to deserve that much quiet time having fun without having to clean something up. :]

Week - 16

Another busy week keeping 5 x 13yrs and under kids entertained. We decided to include a little ‘retail therapy’ a few times this week. While out, a couple of the girls wanted to buy earrings and I suggested they not buy any and instead they can ‘design there own’ when we get home and I’ll show them how they are made. These are the results of the four girl’s designs. My son wasn’t interested in this activity for some reason hee hee.

Week - 15

This week sees the arrival of my sister’s two oldest children from Darwin for a 10 day visit with us. They are the same ages as my two oldest which make it 5 children 13yrs and under. So a full week of activities this week and next week will be the same. I spent the entire week just playing with the kids (as well as feeding and cleaning up after them,lol and after a week of late nights to 1-2am, I’m exhausted let me just say) and one activity I’ve been doing with them quite a bit during quiet moments(quiet?? yeah right), is learning new weaves myself and teaching the kids some weaving firstly with this plastic stuff,.. then teaching them how to make simple macrame bracelets with beads. I put together the fruits of my plastic weaving labour, hee hee, for you to see. My macrame bracelets were claimed and are probably still in bed or amongst kid clutter on a bedroom floor. While I never got a moment spare to get to my workbench and this week’s FSOJ entry is not exactly made with wire,.. it soon became clear that learning new weaves was very fun and an eye opening and potentially useful experience. These weaves might eventually turn up in my jewelry some day.

Week - 14

Inspired by Dawn’s (mdmorrill) week 12 piece. I really loved Dawn’s piece and wanted to have a go at doing something that would be simple and pretty and show off a pearl. I like Dawn’s much better. Mine didn’t really turn out how I hoped, but it turned out ok I think. I liked the way Dawn’s pearl was held snug and without a wire going all the way through,.. the holes were too small to do that peg method, which brings me to the question,…Where on earth do you find pearls with holes big enough to take a16ga wire peg?? I’d like to try this again if I could work that out

Week - 13

I’ve been dying to have a play with Leah’s style of work for ages and I also needed to some pieces that would work up relatively quickly during these busy weeks. This pendant was such fun to do,.. I’m very happy with how it turned out and would wear these myself. However, I think I need some serious work on my technique because I’m almost sure, punching myself in the head is not a necessary stage in creating this style. Shhhh don’t tell anyone I punched myself in the head while making jewelry,.. it’ll make me sound stupid ;}.

Week - 12

This week I have made my a Secret Sister piece to add to my Secret Sister’s goody box. Hee hee,.. veryyyy sneeeky,.. but of course I want to keep this a surprise for my Secret Sister and I’ll post the pic as soon as she has seen it.

OK,..here it is tadaaaah!

Week - 11

This week I have made my Secret Santa pieces. I enjoyed doing these with my recipient in mind.

Week - 10

I’ve been sohh busy this week helping santa and much of my week sewing four Dance costumes for my girls (one to go, with 6 days to finish - ack). I have also been working on two bracelets for gifts for my DHs first wife and their DD29, both of whom I love dearly. This one is for the DD and I forgot to take a pic of the other one but it is very similar.

Week - 9

Yesterday I attended a PMC workshop and this is my first piece. It was waaay too much fun squashed into one afternoon and I almost felt guilty relaxing and playing with new toys for 4hrs straight. ;} It looks much nicer in real life as the photograph unfortunately doesn’t show as much detail, which btw I took sooooooh long to do,…………………………………………. ………NOT!. phrrt!

Week - 8

Well this week completely got away from me, and I expect things will only get worse from now until after Christmas. Silly me having all my children’s birthdays right before Christmas gees. Also getting my new computer and trying to Network, has managed to chew a few days out of my week so far and I still don’t have all my emails and favourites and photos over on this one yet.

Anyway,. a quick piece for me this week. This is a Moonakite cab, and very pretty in real life. I’m pretty happy with this piece because having not done these in such a long time,..and not being the organised person that I’d like to be,.. keeping measurements are not my thang and I cut the wires waay too short to make a bale. But as fate would have it, this turned out to be a good thing because I’ve never really been completely satisfied with the way I did bales on these and had to come up with a completely different and creative way to turn an error into a positive.