Hoop Crazy!

I've definitely gone a bit hoop crazy in the last few days! I bought some copper washers from eBay a while ago and fancied doing a bit of wirewrapping with them. "Bit" being the operative word - I love the elaborate swirly wirewrapped jewellery people make but I'm not sure I could manage it myself without a lot of swearing :D

Rummaging through my bead boxes in search of beads to go with the copper hoops I remembered these strangely shaped pearls I've had for years.....flat on the bottom and rounded on the top, all in pretty pale icy colours - pink, green, gold, blue, peach and a funny peacock greeny-grey which are perfect for wrapping to the copper washers.

So I was off!

I fancied adding some sterling wire to these for contrast and actually remembered to oxidise it first - I always have trouble getting sterling to oxidise well when it's in contact with copper. Then I thought I'd make some in sterling silver so I cut some discs with a slightly off centre hole and added a pink pearl......

Then I made a matching pendant.....

The copper earrings with the pink pearl also have a matching pendant which is ready and waiting for it's copper chain, currently winging it's way from the States. I just need to make a fastener for it and oxidise it and then it will be set free in my Folksy shop with the others!

Definitely going to make myself a pair of these......

Silver Filled Wire Earwires.........At Last!

I've finally done something with the silver filled wire I bought a while ago - made some basic earwires! I've just listed them in my findings shop on Folksy and my eBay shop Cinnamon Jewellery Findings (did I mention I had an eBay shop? It's a bit of an experiment really).

I had planned on making headpins too but couldn't work out why I was struggling to make a decent start to a spiral then realised the wire was half hard and I'm used to working with dead soft in sterling!

I'm finding the half hard quite hard to work with (ok for earwires though) - spirals look lumpy and when I tried to make a swirly rosette at the end of a headpin the wire actually snapped! I thought about buying some dead soft silver filled but the price plus postage would mean the end cost would be pretty close to sterling so I knocked that idea on the head.............

Anyway, I've made some hoop style and hook style earwires - nice and shiny and a pretty decent price too :D

A Bit Of A Featured Thing Going On!

There's definitely a featured thing going on at the moment - a pair of my earrings on fellow Folksy seller Linda's blog Uniquely Yours, one of the Featured Sellers on Folksy for the next two weeks (I'm thrilled about that, does it mean I've "arrived"?!) and a request for a feature on Handmade With Passon UK, a handmade directory and blog run by Crystal Clarke.


I'll have to start wearing dark glasses when I go to Sainsbury's at this rate................... :D