Green Ice

Another commission I've finished recently - a pair of my rose earrings. This colour inspiration came from a variety of mini roses with naturally pale green flowers. A Green Ice rose made with green gems: Hessonite Garnet, Peridot and juicy orange Carnelians.

Summer SALE

I decided to mark down some of my old designs and have a sale :) It starts with these earrings that are now only £30 - just follow the link below the photos.

Green Feathers earrings

Rose Fuchsias earrings

More dreams

Here are the two other bracelets from the last Sweet Dreams line: one is with Amber and one with Rose Quartz. Both with Polish Banded Flint :)

and this is how they all look together.

Sweet Dreams

For some time before the Craft Fair in Cromarty (that I attended last weekend) I had been creating new pieces. I wanted to use Polish gemstones such as the unique Polish Banded Flint and, of course, Amber and arrange them with stones and colours they usually are not mixed in mainstream jewellery. Here is the first one I created with Banded Flint and Turquoise with a little embelishment shaped in Sterling Silver and adorned with the tiniest Hematites I've ever used (approx 1mm in diameter!).

Fresh from the studio

It's been quiet here for a while - it's because I've been very busy with new orders and new designs and still there are a few waiting in line on my desk!Yesterday I finished a pendant with a stone I just adore: an amazing Moonstone, flashing with strong blues.

Touch of Frost necklace

Before that it was a custom made bracelet, an old design but refreshed with some new details, featuring the unique Polish Banded Flint.

 Pearls and Greys 2 bracelet

And the earring of course! I finished them some time ago but then they got lost in the middle of other stones in my studio. Finally they are listed on my Blue Almonds website too.

Whisper of The Ancient Rome earrings

Calla Lily - the hand weaved flower

This was the craziest project I've done so far - it took 11 hours of work and meters and meters of the thinnest Fine Silver wire. This pendant is an incarnation of my love to flowers and was created with a company of a little Calla Lily plant sitting on my work table. The wire was weaved on a hand shaped sterling silver frame to form light and airy petal embracing softly its heart - the amazing sparkling Lemon Quartz briolette.

The process

I wrote about my designing and creating process looks like: that sometimes I let my fingers play with wire to  follow the flow of a certain stone and other times I put my design on paper first. Since that post I had people asking me for photos of the sketched designs so today I present you my latest work, this afternoon drawing. From the top there are: Kyanite, Turquoise and natural Lemon Jaspe. All three of them are pretty big stones, with the Turquoise being the largest: almost 6cm long. The first two are cabochons, they have no holes drilled and need carefull thought how to set them securely with wire only. That is why I need to put my idea on the paper first, it's almost ingeneering work. Also, I don't want to waste any milimeter of the Silver (considering its high price recently!) so before I begin playing with wire I will measure what I need and cut the desired lengths. After that it's only fun: hours of wire wrapping, oxydising, polishing and buffing - all in my quiet attic studio :)

Back from holiday

I just came back from short holidays and realised I hadn't written here for long time! So, to make up for all that peace and quiet, I present you my newest ring, fresh from the workshop, just finished. A big, organic coctail ring, something for a confident woman :)

Thunder In a Jar of Honey with rough natural Amber nugget and two Blue Sapphires. All metal is Sterling Silver. It will be listed soon.

I have some more pieces I haven't mentioned them here yet and I will write about them soon. I promiss!

Coffee addict...

I must confess: I LOVE coffee. Not only to drink it but I particularly love its aroma, especially first thing in the morning. And I love it the Italian way and it must be espresso with a heaped teaspoon of sugar. Only sometimes I have coffee with cream. When I was little I wanted to have my own coffee plant and to grow it at home in a pot but... couldn't find a coffee plant in any flower shops in the city. I also like the colour of cofffee - that earthy black or sometimes deep chocolatey brown....
I'm not a huge fan of black clothes, though. I don't like and don't have in my wardrobe the traditional "must have" little black dress so working with black stones was not really my dream... but one of my lovely customers wanted a big black ring. I searched for a while for the right stone and when I found it, when it arrived and I saw the amazing clear black-and-white of Sardonyx I fall in love with it! It was like the spirit of coffee was magically turned in to a stone. Only the aroma is lacking ;) Hence the names of my recent pieces are coffee-themed. I created that ring with joy and after I finished it I picked Sardonyx again to make earrings. I'm presenting Espresso Macchiato (ring) and Espresso Doppio (earrings):

New Year's changes and SALES!

This year I want to spend as much of my time with my baby son as possible and I just realised that having to manage THREE online jewellery outlets is way too time consuming! It's because I need to edit the photos into three different sizes, write descriptions, then convert prices from Pound Sterling to US Dollars, convert measurements from metric to that imperial one... and then it's the uploading all of that to three websites... My New Year's resolution then is to minimise the time I have to spend with computer and to concentrate on my own website only. That is why for some unspecified time I'm closing my Artfire and Etsy shops.

But before I will do so I will have a BIG SALE in each one of them :) The first one to go is the Artfire Studio with 30% OFF on all jewellery. It's till the end of January only. Happy shopping and Happy New Year!

Special Promotion!

I decided to have a special sale for my Facebook Fans :) If you'd like to know more and if you'd like to get 20% discount on any of my jewellery pieces go to http://www.facebook.com/blue.almonds and "Like" the page :) Offer ends on 1st December 2010!

Dragon

Inspired by the stone itself this delicate necklace features a natural moss Green Jasper. I picked this unique hand cut cabochon for its rare deep green colour which. It somehow brought to my mind an image of a Chinese dragon. I set the stone in Goldfill wire and added some Tourmalines and one Grossular Garnet briolette - they glitter like tiny fire sparkes. There are two more Tourmalines at the handmade clasp and the bail is adorned with one small Peridot. The pendant is 4.5cm long in total and 1.7cm wide at the widest place. The chain is 41cm long. All metal is Goldfill.

Five Sisters

Inspired by Autumn golden hues and one of my favourite places in the Highlands: "Five Sisters" is a limited edition of simple Amber pendants. They can be worn on both sides: one showing the swirls or the other one with little flower. Every pendant is adorned with a tiny gem hidden in the base of a bail. Perfect for everyday use :)

I will be listing them tomorrow - with a special price of £50 only till the end of October!

Waiting for Godot

Some month ago we were impatiently waiting for our first baby to be born. We didn't know whether it was a boy or a girl, it was to ba a surprise. The due date had came... and it passed... and still nothing happened! To kill the time I sat one day in my studio and started creating a new necklace for myself. My hands would choose only delicate hues: soft pinks and roses, pearls and yellows and we started laughing that it must be a girl we were expecting and that it was her telling me the colours. Then a week later and... we welcomed our baby son! Well, one day I'll give him a very special necklace with a story to tell his fiancé ;)

Featured in Vogue!!!

I'm thrilled to announce that my jewellery is featured in the October issue of Vogue (the UK edition)! Look at my Midsummer Sky ring - at the first page of the jewellery section themed Beautifully Bespoke :)

Grand opening!

My beautiful re-vamped website www.blue-almonds.eu is now officially open and working :) It not only has new smarter design but most important: it has a cart so you can buy more than one item at a time! Tempting :)

Nephele and clouds

This ring used all my patience... it's all gone for some time. It was used during the process of creating this newest ring. The citrine cabochon is oval and very tall, and its all surface is hand cut beautifully. In one word - a masterpiece . I wanted to show off not only the flat top surface but also the stone sides and I had a certain idea in my mind. It took however about 4 weeks and one ring (I created Anna Karenina when I couldn't set the Citrin in the first time) to finally achieve my dream. I started weaving for the second time and I decided this time I'd make it! The construction was slightly different than my other rings - this time I made the band and the stone setting as two separate parts joined together half way through. This design allows seeing the stone sides and makes the ring look very delicate and airy when also being a safe and sturdy enclosure for the cabochon. I added three Freshwater pearls and oxidised the ring a little. Then for about two hours I was polishing and buffing, polishing and buffing... The result is almost white, fresh silver but with intriguing depth, almost like the patina which old jewellery can have.
I named the ring Nephele which is a name of a Greek nimph of cloud and mist. Why? This is the view that inspired me this morning:

Joy of the Season

Last year I made three or four rings in a certain style and I called them Rings Of Joy for I was very happy creating them. Picking the different little stones of all the vibrant colours, matching them in sets, then playing with the wire wrapping bands - I enjoyed every single moment of the process. I think it was the joy of Christmas one can start experiencing in December that made my Muse to follow that design again. The first one came up in - surprise, surprise! - in a green and burgundy combination.The second one - sweet like the icing on English Christmas cake. The third one - blue and golden like the blue and clear sky I enjoyed today when I went for a walk in the fields. I don't have names for them yet...

Why Water, why Fire?

I 'm not sure why I keep creating jewellery in those colour schemes... maybe it's the waters that surround me here, the rains and mists and the view from my studio towards Cromarty Firth... that could have been the inspiration to create the Deep Water earrings with Water Sapphires (Iolite) and Lapis Lazuli. My latest dream about winter evenings spent near fire and watching the flames in silence must have lead my eyes and hands to pick the warm saffron orange of Carnelian and the joyful fanta-orange of Hessonite Garnet to create Fire Earrings. This dream is not just a wish though - we are having a wood burning stove installed in our house before Christmas! I can't wait for it!

The round focals are crocheted with Sterling Silver wire and wire wrapped. Both pairs are in the Special Free Worldwide shipping offer till 10 December.

Special offer in my shops!

I decided to have SPECIAL OFFERS in my shops between 26 November and 10 December:

In my Artfire shop you get FREE RECORDED AND INSURED DELIVERY to all countries for all my jewellery pieces. And that's not everything: I also decided to have a 10% SALE in Polish Gold and Pure Luxury Collections :)

For my Etsy users I'm offering FREE RECORDED AND INSURED DELIVERY to all countries for all my jewellery pieces.

Happy shopping and happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate it!!!