Jewelry--it all started with a rat in my dresser

[eridani]

After a week or so of keeping the door to the bedroom always shut, and rat poison readily available, it finally succumbed (thankfully in a drawer where we could get at it and not behind a wall somewhere), but not until it had chewed on some of my non-metal jewelry. This necessitated a major cleanup operation, during which I discovered a number of pieces that had been sitting around for many years on deteriorating thongs.

So I looked at my sister-in-law's Fire Mountain bead catalog, and ordered some items to rework the old stuff. Then I started getting the sale notices, and thought wotthehell, why not try making some new stuff?

I'm using regular beads with beading thread and wire, macrame, polymer clay, wire work, acrylic resin, leather, origami paper and that fake dichroic glass resin (which, contrary to advertising, looks nothing like the real thing, although you can get some interesting effects with it). I see a few glassworkers in the group--maybe they'd be willing to cut their DU pals a good deal on focal pieces occasionally?

After a career as a chemist that will come to an end with retirement in a few years, I have come around to understanding why I never went for the management track--I just have never been able to get too far away from doing things with my own hands. Pursuing this craft into retirement will help fill that need, though I'm going to have to brush up on my inorganic knowledge.

[Longhorn]

1. Cool story! How did everyone else get started?

I grew up in a time when girls were required to take home ec in 7th and 8th grade so I learned to sew and cook. At some point, my grandmother taught me to knit but I just made one hot pad. Later, my mother taught me to crochet but, again, it didn't take. A few years later, I decided to crochet my husband a sweater. Oh, my! The sweet man actually wore it but it was really awful -- I mean, it was made correctly but it was navy blue with orange "plaid" stripes and very heavy yarn. He looked like he was wearing an afghan! :D

Over the years, I began making Christmas presents to save money. One year, it was stuffed wreaths in the shape of the state of Texas -- white polka dots on a green background and three stuffed satin candy canes held to the wreath with a ribbon passing through two big buttonholes. I didn't make one for me but the ones I made for my grandmothers have come back to me after they died. I sent one to my son who is a Marine in Japan and couldn't come home for Christmas this year.

I've made fabric picture frames, beaded jewelry, cross-stitched placemats, an embroidered family tree, (on which I kept having to add the grandkids as my siblings and I popped them out!) satin flags for my daughter's high school flag ensemble, embossed or stenciled calendars, photo calendars, and now I'm into afghans and other crochet projects.

The funny thing is, I don't consider myself a creative person! :shrug:

[eridani]

2. Everybody is creative in some way or another

I never thought of myself as visually creative--mostly I've done music (nutz about filking and other parody genres), until I tried this. I can't help but think of a story a visiting African singer told at Folklife Festival. He asked one of the organizers to join his group on the stage and sing along, but the organizer tried to back out because he said he couldn't sing. The African musician was really startled by this, and said "Everybody can sing, just like everybody can walk."

True, there are ranges of talent, and you have to invest much more time and work to get saleable stuff or to have shows in galleries, but I think we all have that basic instinct to imagine and create new things.

[Lugnut]

3. Ah!

Home ec class brings back memories. My teacher was into ceramics which worked for me. There was a kiln in the home ec room so, between my sister and me, our mother ended up with quite a collection of ceramic pieces. I spent my entire senior year completing a twelve piece Nativity set. Today the only fond memories that set holds for me is remembering the friends who painted some of the figurines so I'd get it done before I graduated.

[eridani]

4. Some examples--

Wax cast silver memento of grad school love dodecahedron, rescued from rotting thong and enhanced with laser-cut silver and carved bone beads.



Souvenir of college trip to Mexico, rescued from rotting string and enhanced with African "jade" chips (cheaper than the real thing), and carved bone beads.



Leaded glass made by a friend for the 1967 March On Washington. Replaced stiff old leather thong with macrame and glass beads.


And what the heck--as long as I was doing macrame, I experimented with soft tie-dyed tainbow hemp and acrylic beads.



What can be done with cheap sandblasted beach glass (sold in $4 bags for aquariums), brass hardware store wire, and the tubular wire mesh sold by Rings 'n' Things. The large-hole spacer beads are lead-free antiqued pewter.

[Le Taz Hot]

21. What wonderful work!

My best friend has just begun getting into beading (so far necklaces and bracelets) and I'm really anxious to show her your work. Your use of aquarium rocks and decorative wire is fascinating.

[eridani]

5. When I had gotten tired of the hardware store brass and steel wire--

--I got the more expensive copper, silver and gold stuff.

About 15 years ago, my husband got me a couple of polished fossils, which I kept in the jewelry drawer until the rat inspired me to gry to do something with them. The first one is in copper, with a suede leather thong.



The second one I wrapped in silver wire, and added regular black obsidian and snowflake obsidian beads. Blew the extra money for sterling spacer beads instead of just the plate.



Last summer at a local craft fair, I met an amateur geologist who had gotten into lapidary work and had a really nice selection of focal pieces from $5 to $8. He also had necklaces that he had made for sale, mostly with Swarovski crystal. To me the stones said "earthy", not "sparkly," so I stuck with the focal pieces. I used a couple of types of jasper with the gold-wrapped picture stone.



Also gold-wrapped the tigereye stone, and used black tigereye beads and yellow tigereye chips for the necklace.

[lies and propaganda]

8. OMG! I love your wire work...

that is the next level i need to get to! and i love the green beach glass necklace!

[musette_sf]

13. i quite like your stuff...

you have a good eye.

for myself, i've bought a lot of beads on eBay. also like to pick up beads from a local vendor of Asian stuff, who regularly has a booth at many of the jewelry shows and collectibles shows in the area.

as far as hand-done stuff, i've bought some very nice glasswork beads from a DUer who sells on eBay. she has beads available often - i just checked and it looks like she just sold through her most recent batches not too long ago. she doesn't have anything at the moment, but she's worth checking every week or so. here is a recent auction with her "zen" design which is very nice, and which she also does in different color schemes:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200066752673

i too have ordered from FM, i think they are good for some things but not as good for other things. i tend to buy most of my stuff on eBay. eBay has also been a source of some good multi-national locally made items. i found some cool beads and silver items from Afghanistan a few years ago.

hello to the sorority of DU beaders!

[Nite Owl]

17. These are all quite nice

I love the way you wrap the wire, it isn't just wrapped around but a design in itself.

Did you solder any of it or is it just held together with the wrapping?

[eridani]

20. No solder involved

The wraps seem to be holding up fine by themselves so far. With the tigereye piece I used 24 gauge on the piece itself--the others feature a technique I found online, using 24 gauge to wrap two pieces of 22 gauge in several spots. The two heavier wires are then spread on the edges of the stones, with two of the wires being bent for a bail, one or two of the others for securing the bail in place, and all extra tails either curved and worked into the design or snipped off. At first I was skeptical that this would actually hold a comparatively flat stone and not slip all over the place, but when you tighten the design by twisting angles into the wire, it firms up very nicely.

I've seen this done with twisted, square or half-round wire also, but I've found those a little harder to handle and haven't quite mastered them yet.

[eridani]

22. Tansy Gold has no trouble with the various types of wire

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=390x548

I'm not there yet, but she's where I'd like to be someday.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

6. Fire Mountain is a great starting point. When I started to sell commercially

I searched out wholesale sources. BTW..an excellent place to buy at wholesale prices is eBay.

[eridani]

10. Do they explicily say wholesale?

Do you need to submit a business license or something of the sort?

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

11. On eBay, no, they don't but you can tell that the prices are wholesale. Look up beads that

you buy from FM and do an eBay search. You will see the difference in price and very often quantity. ie, if you do seed beading, you will buy vials on FM and on eBay you can buy hanks for near the same price.

[lies and propaganda]

7. on deteriorating thongs!!!!

HA!
Isnt that everyones story ;)

FM catalogs are like drugs round my house, and we have a war on them currently.

So do you work with the polymer and resin yourself? I think they are bothe pretty interesting mediums, especially the resin, but i know nothing about either. Well, i dont lampwork beads, but my glass cabochons can easily be turned into beads. I can fire them with fiberpaper in them, creating a ready made hole, or you can affix bails to them hang them from necklaces or earrings.

And I am always down for bartering,trading,hooking up, etc. I love wearing peoples art and knowing they are wearing mine somewhere.
if you ever have a specific something in mind, just give me a shout!

[eridani]

9. Still trying to think which of my pieces I can live without

--for the trading thing. I'm working with the polymer clay myself--first tries with keychain fobs still have sort of a rough technique, but I'm getting better. I've found that for straight decoupage (leaving the paper on the clay while baking) ink jet works better, but for doing transfers to the transfer gel you pretty much have to use laser printing. The Sculpey "translucent" gel is not actually translucent, and looks nothing like stained glass. Probably can be used on its own for a different effect, though.



I've been trying to cast leaves and flowers in reasin like the ones I saw in the FM catalog. All I've found out so far is that Envirotex doesn't cut it for this purpose. I finally broke down and ordered one of the "enhanced" leaves from FM, and strung it with Aurora Borealis glass chips.

[Morgana LaFey]

12. Deals? Most certainly. What are you interested in?

I need to get some of my beads up on Etsy -- and more of my jewelry up. Darn, where's the time? One thing holding me back is that I really need to re-photo everything, and ... not my favorite activity.

But let me know if you have anything in mind, or particular colors, etc.

[eridani]

14. I'm always on the lookout for interesting focal pieces

I'm not likely to get set up for glass anytime soon, or serious lapidary work.

[Morgana LaFey]

16. Okay -- here's a link

Let me know if you see any focals you want from the sets listed. Today I took some photos of a few focals we've got (mostly made by DH) and will try to get them listed. But I'm happy to either break sets OR whip up a twin if someone sees something they like in a set I've got.

http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5062009

[eridani]

18. Do you sell the focal pieces by themselves?

The necklaces are lovely, but if they're already made, I don't get to make them. :)

[Morgana LaFey]

19. Yes ---

I only have a few pieces of jewelry up (necklaces and earrings), and more bead sets at the moment. The bead sets are strung just on cheap wire. As I say in each listing -- if you see something you like, I'll be glad to break up the set and sell the bead(s) separately. While no two beads are ever truly "alike," we can still make more that are darned close. So it's no biggie.

Most of our jewelry only has a couple of the lampworked beads -- they tend to drive the price up, and we enjoy working with the semi-precious gemstones anyhow.

[Pugee]

15. Wow! I love looking at all the pics of everyone's work!

[Alamom]

23. I just found this forum. WOW ! I'm a novice and very interested in

what everyone is doing. The wirework is beautiful. I haven't tried that. I also haven't taken any pictures.

My best two were made with brooches that belonged to my grandmother. I had 2 and they were very old. I made necklaces and gave them to my sisters for their birthdays.

I now only make jewelry for fun (for me and gifts for family). I would like to do more.


Glad I found this group.


edsp