Friday, 1 April 2011

Wire Artists Gallery On The Wireworkers Guild Blog

Author of the Wireworkers Guild blog Linda Jones, wirework jewellery maker, magazine contributor and author of several jewellery books, has posted a gallery of photos of wirework jewellery made by the guild members on her blog.

It features a selection of necklaces like the one pictured on the left by Sally Pitman, bracelets, earrings, rings and tiaras. It's lovely to see the variety of wirework styles out there and also nice to see a pair of my copper earrings included too!


Sue Mason-Burns

Wendy McClean

My copper and turquoise jasper earrings now happily residing in Londonderry with Colleen of Folksy shop Clover Jewels


Tuesday, 29 March 2011

Purplelicious

Purple has been my favourite colour for as long as I can remember. When I was younger I had a dark purple carpet, purple flower curtains, lilac walls and a purple bedspread in my bedroom - I loved it!

When it comes to buying beads I'm always drawn to the purple ones and sometimes have to tell myself no. I didn't manage it when I saw these dyed purple freshwater pearls on Lima Beads though and ended up buying them! They are lovely, quite small (5mm) but a real electric purple and very shiny.

I decided they would look great with oxidised sterling silver so I made these disc earrings last week using my new larger size disc cutter, slightly thicker sheet silver than usual (the price of silver these days!) and the pearls. I cut a hole in the disc slightly off centre then texturised and domed them, added the pearls, into LOS, cleaned and polished and ready to be photographed.

I always find silver a bit tricky to photograph due to the reflection - they can turn out too bright or too grey depending on the angle but a bit of trickery with a piece of white card, which in other words means me holding said piece of white card at different angles to reflect some light onto them, normally sorts it out! I think they're rather glamourous and they will be appearing in my Folksy shop later today.


Thursday, 24 March 2011

Beaducation Giveaway - National Craft Month


Beaducation.com are having another wonderful giveaway to celebrate National Craft Month!
Included in the giveaway are copper, sterling silver and gold-filled blanks, mini nuts and bolts for cold connecting plus hole punch pliers and chain.
All you have to do is visit the Beaducation blog and leave a comment! Simple! You can also enter more than once by Twittering, facebooking and blogging about the giveaway.

The winner will be chosen at random on 28 March so there's still time to enter!
Good luck!