But still, back to school is and should be celebrated with new things – new clothes, new school supplies, new shoes, so why not treat yourself to something new, too. I thought I’d make it a bit easier by offering a “Back to School” special – in my ArtFire shop only. From now, through the end of the Labour Day Long weekend (September 6^th, 2010), I am offering 10% off anything in the ArtFire shop. The prices have already been reduced. Come over and take a peek!!!

I also make these in a couple of other variations. There’s one that’s slightly larger than my standard size and that houses a glass marble in the centre and then there’s the dainty little sphere that I’ve created in colourful combinations as cell phone charms and in sterling silver, sometimes mixed with colourful anodized niobium as delicate little pendants on a much shorter sterling silver chain.

See you at Portobello West next Sunday!!!!

In preparation for scorching sunshine, I photographed some of my earrings that make me think summer sun in blazing reds, yellows and oranges.  Fun, No?

Blazing Sun Shaggy Loops Earrings

The Blazing Sun Shaggy Loops earrings are made from enameled copper rings in bright and shiny colours.  Shaggy loops is such a fun weave.  There’s structure and there’s chaos and these will look fabulous with your dog days of summer casual outfits.  I’m looking forward to being more laid back and just chilling out a bit.

And in similar colourways, are another version of my jingly scale maille earrings.  I love, love, love this colour combination.

Warm Scale Maille

Back to work for me tomorrow after a nice 4-day Canada Day weekend.  I wish I had found more time to do a bit more chain weaving but at the same time, it’s been fun hanging with the kids and the hubby.  Have an awesome week!!!

This pink and stainless steel double barrel anklet will be on show at Sunday’s Portobello West Market. I have a few styles of anklets ready to go but the double barrel weave is my favourite of them all.

Since I’m on a bit of a pink streak, just for today, I’d also like to introduce another piece in my new “scale maille” line. These metal scales are fun!!! They are made from anodized aluminum which makes them super light weight and these earrings jingle just a bit when you walk around or shake your head. I can make these up in lots of colour combinations, not only pink and silver. I had thought that this style of jewelry has potential for belly dancers and I actually ended up selling a fun pair of longer style rainbow scale maille earrings to a young lady at my last show who wanted them for belly dancing. Too cool!!!

My hours leading up to the market are crazy busy right now but I’m so excited about Sunday. I have lots of little things I’d like to add to my show inventory before Sunday but I’m not sure how that will all work out since there aren’t many more free minutes available. Somehow, between, the last dance weekend of the school year for my daughter tomorrow and my wonderful plans to sit and prep some more goodies, a trip out to the inlaws was snuck into my weekend plans.

Have a great first weekend of summer!!!

On the heels of Fab Fair, which was a nice event, I had a lot of visions and plans of the things I wanted to design and create next but I decided to take a bit of a break the first few days after Fab Fair. I had worked so hard getting ready for it that I needed a bit of time to de-stress and to just take a bit of a breather from the pliers and the rings. The hard thing for me is that when I have all my stuff out to work on, I work on it all the time. When it’s all neatly put away and organized, I struggle pulling it out. In the mean time, I have had many, many ideas swirling around in my head.

Fast forward to a few days after Fab Fair when I’m ready to put some of those ideas into reality and poof, life happens. Work has been super busy and life as well. Now, though, the end of the school year is in sight and it’s hard to believe that the big year end dance show is over, too. My little tap dance group (this year named the Circus Cougars) finished off the year with a couple of great performances on stage. Of course, it was my daughter who stole all of our hearts as her hard work and determination this year really showed off on stage. It was a proud Mama moment and I wouldn’t change a thing, not even the countless hours of driving to, picking up from and waiting at the dance studio for her to finish yet another practice or another picture shoot or whatever else there was at any given moment. And there was that final curtain call after the curtain closed for the last time this past weekend and we were going out on stage to take our bows…. And here is my little girl, too embarrassed to hold her Mom’s hand running across the stage for our final bow… I’ll never forget that. Maybe next year, I won’t try to embarrass her by making her go out on stage with her old Mom.

Now that this is all done and school is almost finished for the year and life will hopefully adopt a bit slower pace, even if just for a few weeks, I’m settling back into my creative routine. There are things that I want to do this summer: Crating lots of great new chainmaille pieces is at the top of my list. Dyeing yarn and fibre in the backyard ranks a close second (I just finished up a course in yarn dyeing and I’m in love) and of course, I will try to spend some good quality time with the kids and husband during our “staycation” in August.

Up next is Portobello West on June 27 and I’m more than excited at showcasing my jewelry at this most wonderful market. One of the many pieces you’ll find me displaying at the show is my Chainmaille Star Flower, currently one of my favourite pendants.

See you there!!!

I really enjoyed creating this necklace over the course of last weekend, a long weekend, no less. The weave I used is called “captive inverted round” and the captive part refers to the beads that are captive inside the rope like structure. I had no idea what ring size to use to make this work but trial and error helped me find the right size to work with these beads I had at hand. I have seen the captive part be other things than beads such as more rings, for example, rings of a contrasting colour. I will experiment with that concept at some point in time as well.

This particular necklace is fairly long at over 26″ and I haven’t used a clasp. It’s one continuous loop and easily slides over my head (and I have a pretty big one). I kept contemplating, as I was working on this piece, whether I should make it a short choker style necklace or a longer one and the long style won out. I do have plans though to make another one that’s a whole lot shorter with sparkly Swarovski crystals inside the cage. I already have the crystals at home. I just need to sit down and make it.

Speaking of making it, Fab Fair is coming up in just another short week and I have some great new pieces ready to go as well as tons of earrings. However, I’ve fallen prey to a bit of procrastinating. I have several bracelets and necklaces half finished and quite a few lonely earrings – earrings that are either just missing the ear wire or lonely earrings that don’t have a partner yet. Before getting too much more creative with new ideas, I need to sit down and finish what’s waiting for me to be finished. In the sock knitting world (which I’m deeply entrenched in – I try to knit at least one pair of socks a month), we call this sort of thing the second sock syndrome when you knit one sock and then lose interest in making the sock’s buddy. I guess I’m suffering second earring syndrome…. I think.

Aside from creating jewelry, I am currently in the middle of a yarn/fibre dyeing workshop. We started last night and are continuing tomorrow. I will blog about my yarn dyeing experience over on my “other blog” when the workshop is done.  Tomorrow I will spend the day learning to dye up 108 little hanks of silk (little hanks that I spent countless days winding) in the full spectrum of the colours. I just wish the weather would coordinate. On Sunday, I’ll get back to the jewelry!!! Enjoy the weekend!

Early on, I started using copper and loved the feel of working with the metal. I never made a whole lot of copper pieces, however, because I was always worried about disappointing my customers if the copper, over time tarnishes. Some love the look that copper develops into after some time of wear and exposure to oxygen and others prefer it to stay like a clean, shiny penny. When you see one of my copper pieces, they will be as shiny and sparkly as a shiny penny because I tumble my pieces in my tumbler which polishes them beautifully. Now, of course, not everyone has a tumbler at hand once they bring a piece of copper jewelry home but there are several ways to bring copper back to that shiny glow. The easiest I have experimented with is just a bath in some lemon juice or some vinegar, water and a pinch of salt. I haven’t tried it but some people swear by putting their copper in ketchup…. Yes, ketchup. It’s all about the acid. I think I must go and try the Ketchup trick myself to see if I can support the claim. I have tried a commercial tarnish remover that said it was good on copper but I didn’t enjoy the results. Right now, I’ve got about 3 copper pieces in various stages of completeness but this one is all finished, shiny and bright:

Now, stainless steel is not a first for me. I LOVE stainless steel. I think it’s cool. It’s kind of industrial looking, not as shiny as bright aluminum or sterling silver but it’s a work horse of a material. It does not tarnish and gets shinier with lots of wear. It’s also very strong. I’ve been wearing a basic Byzantine bracelet, one of my first creations when I first was learning, pretty much 24/7 for several years and it’s as good as new. That’s so boring, I know, but I love that bracelet and I love seeing how it stands the test of time. The novelty of the bracelet I’m about to show off is that I have never made a double spiral using 18 gauge rings before. I love how this bracelet turned out. It’s like a thick, heavy rope and would look great on a girl as well as a guy. Here it is:

And last but not least, I was enamoured with these little metal scales. I picked some sterling silver ones up and then also some made from anodized aluminum. They are so much fun to play with and I’ve made a bunch of earrings from them. They are not huge, maybe about 1″ in length and I have them in many bright colours. If you combine more than one scale in an earring, they will jingle softly.

Aren’t they fun? Maybe I’ll play with the sterling silver ones tonight. I’m not sure how I’ll use them as I don’t have many. I bought those for experimenting.

I have some necklace designs in my head, too. I drew them out on scrap paper yesterday so I just have to play and experiment with those.

On Wednesday nights (tonight), I spend time waiting for my daughter, sitting in a highschool cafeteria. I used to have a chatting partner (one of the other Moms) but she had other commitments to tend to so for the last few weeks, I’ve been solo. It’s a good time for me though. I can tune out the world, nobody is talking to me or wanting something from me, I put the i-pod on and listen to something good (usually podcasts of some nature) and I play with rings. I love it. I’ll have to think about what box of rings to take tonight. I think I need some more anklets.

Until next time…………….

We enjoyed a warm day with lots of sunshine. My kids came by a couple of times during the day and had fun with the bouncy castle and my boy especially enjoyed meeting the firemen and having a good climb in the fire truck. All in all, it was a great family event. Not necessarily the right market for my pieces but the day really did give me the chance to look over my finished jewelry inventory as it was all out in front of me and I managed to play with my set-up and all those things are important as I move along in the season. Take a look at my casual earring stand……. It’s full of fun and simple goodness – while, at the same time, I really saw that I need to fill out my inventory of the earrings made from the precious metals.

My centre pieces are my sterling silver necklaces – I love my focal pieces:

Last week I received an enormous amount of new rings (and I still managed to forget some critical sizes on my order). I received sterling silver, titanium, stainless steel, anodized aluminum, enamelled copper, pure copper, bright aluminum and niobium – these rings are really getting my creative juices flowing and I’ve just been scribbling out a new necklace design.

Next up is Fab Fair in Vancouver on Main Street at Heritage Hall. This event takes place on June 5^th and 6^th. Until then, I’ll keep plugging away with the new (and the old) rings and hopefully have a whole bunch of new things on hand.

I listed them in my Etsy shop. Until I get more beads, this is the only pair of these earrings I’ve got.

I’m looking forward to a creative weekend, among all the other stuff that’s the norm for me on a weekend. There will be all the normal weekend things plus Mother’s Day activities. I figure spring and summer will arrive at some point soon (it feels really quite cool for May 5^th where I am right now) so my next creative focus will be some new anklet designs. I look forward to experimenting and creating.

I Love Purple Earrings

Today’s pair of  earrings are made from light weight bright aluminum and display a fun purple spade shaped bead as the design feature at the bottom.  These earrings are casual and fun.  The dangle is woven in the box chain weave.

They are now listed in my Etsy shop.