Twist Away - Fine Silver & Copper Balled Wire Findings

A couple of weeks ago I was asked by a fellow jewellery maker who regularly buys my handmade findings (you know who you are Lindsay!) if I could make some double ball ended silver wires like the dragonfly kisses made by The Dragonfly Company. I'll be honest I'd not heard of the website or Lynne Senior who sadly died recently, but ordered some fine silver wire and made some. My buyer wanted a particular (ish) length which I got to eventually - knowing how much wire gets eaten up when you form the ball means you can then work out what length to cut the wire

 Fine silver is best to use as it forms nice smooth balls compared to the pitted, rustic look you get with sterling silver. They are used by twisting and wrapping into designs inbetween beads and also can be twisted once and dangled from loops if so desired. I might use some myself one day! In the meantime I quickly twisted some copper wires between jade beads to use as an example in my shops

Copper and fine silver versions are available in my Etsy shop now!

10% Off In My Etsy Shop? Yes Please!

I've decided to have a 10% off event in my Etsy shop

until 31 December. That's 10% off everything including my handmade findings!

Just use the code "CINNAMON" to qualify.

I felt the need to stamp circles on metal last week. I have a thing about circles which apparently goes back to my childhood. Way back when I was three and we lived in Toronto my Mum's friend Judy always knew which child had scribbled on her apartment wall in crayon { circles : me, other things : her son }

I still love circles today and they do feature in my jewellery quite a lot in one form or another :D

Not circles but leaf vein texture using skeleton leaves and the rolling mill at college on a piece of "practise" copper sheet which found it's way home with me and turned into a pair of earrings :D

All Together Now!

After taking up Folksy's offer of their Plus account recently I've decided it makes sense to combine my two Folksy shops and move my handmade findings into my jewellery shop.
So..................after spending rather a long time (let's just say it was most of Saturday) copying and pasting descriptions from one shop to another, my new combined jewellery and findings shop is finished. I even relisted a load of jewellery too to get the front page of my shop looking like a jewellery shop again. I'm liking the Plus account very much!

As for the tediousness of doing it all I know Folksy are working on speeding up the listing process but dear God! At the same time as listing my findings/waiting for pages to load, I managed to a) edit 25 photos, b) use my Bigshot to cut out a load of mini envelopes and c) fold and glue most of said mini envelopes together.

Handmade Findings Now On Etsy!

I've finally gotten round to listing my handmade copper and sterling silver findings in my Etsy shop!

I've been making my own findings for a couple of years now and noticed the distinct lack of handmade earwires and headpins, especially in pure copper, that were available to buy in the UK. So I thought I'd start selling them............

I opened another shop on Folksy - Cinnamon Jewellery Findings in June 2011 and a findings shop on eBay about the same time and I'm pleased to say the sales from these, particularly eBay, tick over nicely keeping me busy and have made sure I've definitely got my money's worth from my torch and tumbler!

So I decided to try them out on Etsy where there's lots of US sellers selling handmade findings but not that many UK sellers. I've had several findings sales on Etsy already so fingers crossed they will prove to be popular!

Sterling Silver earwires - oxidised

Fancy antique copper headpins

Hammered antique copper discs

Folksy Featured - Handmade Supplies

A nice surprise this morning - my handmade copper headpins are featured on Folksy's homepage  in their "Handmade Supplies" Featured items!

Lots of lovely stuff to look at including some cute fabric covered buttons and handmade lampwork beads. Got to say my favourite is the ceramic raku button ♥

A New Shop On Folksy And Feeling Scared!

Now that I make the majority of my own findings to use in my jewellery I very rarely look on the internet to buy them. One of the things I did used to buy were pure copper findings before I got myself a bigger and hotter torch - a mini butane torch is just about hot enough to ball 20g copper that's if you don't mind standing there for 10 minutes waiting for it to happen!

I used to get frustrated at the lack of places online in the UK that actually sell pure copper findings - there's lots of "antique" copper, the base metal coated in an antique colour coating stuff but not that much in pure copper that's oxidised in liver of sulphur so................... I thought I'd start making and selling antique pure copper findings myself!



I've just opened my 2nd shop on Folksy called Cinnamon Jewellery Findings, selling ball headpins and earwires, fancy headpins and earwires, copper discs and dangles plus sets of 3 or 5 pairs of headpins and earwires just waiting for beads to be added! The majority are antiqued (oxidised in liver of sulphur and polished) but there's also a small selection of bright copper and rosy ball findings too.

I'm planning on making some findings using silver-filled wire too, once I've experimented with it. Apparently it's very similar to sterling wire to work with and can be hammered and oxidised, so if they look ok they will go in the shop too. I might list some pure sterling silver findings also but the price of sterling at the moment may put people off!

I'd forgotten how scary it is when you open a new shop - those big fat zeros on the right - no sales, no feedback, wondering if anyone will visit, buy, tell me I've not gone completely mad! I've SEO'd my listings to death and was pleased to see one of the first items listed already showing up on Google about three links down, when I searched for handmade antique copper findings UK earlier today ( not bad!)

Will they sell? Who knows? I know there's a market for them so we'll see. There's always eBay!