The Smart Bird

Bead Stashes In The News

I saw this article yesterday about a great new archeological find on Saint Catherines island, off the Georgia coast.  Archaelogists have been excavating around an old mission there, and have uncovered thousands upon thousands of ancient beads!  The beads are from all over the world, including China, France, Italy (Venetian crystal, sigh), the Netherlands, India, "Bohemia," Spain and some of Baltic origin (amber).  Wow!  All in all, they say they've uncovered about 70,000 beads.  Now that's a stash that would make any bead collector swoon.

I found it touching that more than half of the beads recovered were buried with small children.  I wonder what the significance of that is...

New Jack...Jeweler?!?!

Do you ever have one of those days when you feel like a character in a 1990's movie about drug dealers in the 'hood?  You know how it goes.  You come home from the post office after picking up the latest shipment, then you sit at the kitchen table and unpack the goods. 

Once everything is unrolled and unwrapped, you sort each piece into individual baggies, occasionally checking measurements to make sure everything is calibrated the way you thought it would be. 



In the end, you do all this to enlarge and maintain your stash.  And, if you ever find you have too much product on your hands, you sell it off to fellow users like yourself (does that make me a pusher as well as a user, I wonder?). 

And if all of that sounds sketchy, remember: that's just the materials side of jewelry-making.  The other side of jewelry-making involves all of the vaguely dangerous- and criminal-sounding paraphernalia us jewelers/metalsmiths like to keep on hand.  There are the saws, files, sandpaper, drills.  The hammers, stakes, vises, pliers.  The masks, goggles, gloves, aprons.  The Boric acid, hydrochloric acid, potassium fluoroborate, epoxy.  The torches, grinders, anvils, and...wait a minute.  I've got it all wrong!  I'm not some criminal mastermind.  I'm really just a character in a Road Runner cartoon!  Obviously.

If there were an Acme Jewelry Supply Company, my account statement might look something like this (give or take a few vintage Japanese cabochons):

New Pretties

Here are few pictures of my most recent work.  The popular Kimono earrings, now in green and pink tourmaline. 

  

   

And the Golightly necklace, with a stunning pink tourmaline drop and a handmade (by me, of course!) 18K gold headpin. 

  



All are now available in my shop.  I hope you like these pieces as much as I do. 
Happy Friday!

A Few New Goodies

I've been really into working with gems and glass cabochons lately.  I have quite a stash of vintage Japanese glass beads and cabochons I've been hoarding, and I've decided it's okay to use them now :-)  Here's a ring I recently added to my shop:

And here are some earrings that take advantage of my collection of gemstones in unique shapes (another weakness of mine):

Aquamarine


Ruby


They are all available here.  Enjoy!

Why, Yes, I *Do* Make Jewelry!

I've been so carried away with other topics - especially great finds on Etsy, apparently - that I've neglected to post any pictures of my recent work. Which is odd, since I'm especially proud of my newest pieces. In reverse chronological order, here are the most recent additions to my shop. Enjoy!

Plumaged earrings:
Peacock feathers interpreted in metal and gemstones

I hand formed and forged the teardrop shapes, and hand stamped them with a swirly pattern designed to mimic a feather-y texture.



Peacock-colored gemstones include neon blue apatite, emerald and peridot.



Shakti Bracelet:
Lotus petals in silver


Each link is hand formed and forged from round wire. I especially like the hook clasp; I think that came out beautifully.



Shakti Earrings:


Origins Earrings:
Shakti earrings with chrysoprase drops and lightly oxidized


Refuge Earrings:
Buddha charms and Padparadscha sapphire


Stamped Disc Charm Bracelet:
My own plum blossom stamp, in what is becoming my signature pattern




Blossom Shower Earrings:

Bangle Mania

I've been making a lot of bangles lately.  Some, like these, are for custom orders:

Others, like these, are new designs:





Sunburst hand-stamped charm & citrine gem:

I'm especially fond of the skull charm bangle.  I call her LuLu.  I had the charm cast in sterling silver, from a vintage (circa 1960) Hindu charm that I modified slightly.  I'm very proud of my little LuLu.  She looks just "skully" enough, without being creepy.  Let's have a big huzzah for the bangle: perfect in form, graceful when worn, lovely to behold.  HUZZAH!

The Organization, Part 1

I'm planning to write a few posts about how I organize my workspace: the gems and findings, tools, shipping materials, etc.  I'll start with gems and findings.  Well, mainly gems.  I guess findings will have to be yet another post, as I'm currently in the midst of getting them organized.   It took me a while to come up with my current system; I used to just keep most everything in baggies in assorted larger boxes.  The rest, the stones and findings I used most frequently, I kept in clear plastic containers in varying shapes and sizes that I used to get by the shopping-bagful at Tokyo Hands. 

(I still have some remnants of this older system, but now I use these old jewelry boxes for findings, mostly.  And, yes, I used to ship my jewelry in pink boxes.  Really.  But I had a good reason: the color went with the plum blossom theme of my original business name, Double Blossom Designs.  Now I use kraft boxes tied with hand dyed silk ribbon to add color, which I like because I can switch out the ribbon depending on what colors I'm currently favoring).

But after a couple of years of regular gemstone...ahem...acquisition (read: non-stop buying), well, the baggies just didn't cut it any more.  So I switched over to little drawers, in which I sort stones by gem and shape.  I also have some larger drawers, where I sort by stone only. 

For example, I have a lot of emerald gems in different shapes and sizes.  But I may only have one strand of one shape, or even a handful of stones in a certain cut, so it would be wasteful to take up individual little drawers for each variation.  So in those cases, I do put the gems in individual baggies, but then I aggregate the baggies in larger drawers.  It works very well for me.  These pictures show about half of my gemstone drawer units.  The others are in a bit of disarray, as I'm reorganizing my workspace.  But once they're ship-shape, I'll post pictures of them, too.

I just want to add that I think one of the reasons I get so many custom orders is that when someone writes and says, "I'm thinking of a necklace with blue stones....", I can pull gems in numerous shapes, sizes and colors and offer a lot of choices.  It's something I don't take for granted, though.  It took me years of collecting gemstones to get to this point.  And organizing and keeping track of everything takes a lot of time, obviously.  But I enjoy being the sole curator of my precious collection.  And if there's something special you're looking for, no matter how improbable - a polished ruby nugget in the shape of a teardrop?  A Tahitian pearl?  A leaf carved from emerald?  A prehnite pyramid?  An ancient Roman glass seed bead the color of the Aegean sea? - chances are I've got it.  Lucky you!

Couplets!

You know how sonnets always end in a couplet?  Two final lines that kind of sum up and restate?  Well, that's the idea behind my new Couplets series.  Two gems - and only two gems - paired together to make dainty earrings.  Think of them as the finishing touch on your outfit; a little color and sparkle to pull everything together.  I'll be introducing them in a wide range of color combinations over the next couple of weeks.  Here are the first 3 pairs.  I just love these, and hope you will, too!  Available in my shop.

Summery

I guess thoughts of summer, and missing the seashore, have finally caught up with me.  Our last trip to the beach was last year when I was about 5 months pregnant.  We went to Sanibel Island in Florida.  It's a wonderful little island, and I miss it.  I'm already dreaming of our next visit.  Until then, I've made a couple of pieces that have a summery-beachy-seaglass feel.  Available now in my shop.  Enjoy!

Totally Tabular

I recently received two packages from Africa.  One from Ghana, and one from Kenya.  They contained these gorgeous tabular brass trade beads that I ordered, along with some lovely glass beads thrown in for good measure.  They're made using the lost wax method: each bead is made from wax (looks to me like they used those really thin wax sticks), then set in a mold.  Molten brass is poured in, replacing the wax with brass, and the bead is left to cool.  After a while, you break open the mold and, voilà!  A tabular bead.

Of course I'm just chomping at the bit to make something with them.  I've got lots of ideas swirling around, as usual (for some reason, the rich brass makes me think of amethyst, so there may be some purple in my future).  It's just a matter of finding the time, amid all the other ideas I'm working on bringing to life.  For now I guess I'll just have to stare lovingly at these beauties and know that good times are coming.  *Sigh*