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 :)

Little gift

A little gift for a friend: large Rhyolite flat drop adorned only with simple Art Nouveau style design and one tiny Freshwater Pearl. Heavily oxidised and delicately polished to keep the black and shiny patina.

My preciousssss....

It was a great day at the Scottish Bead Fair despite the terrential rain during our journey all the way down to Perth. We arrived just in time to watch Emma Baird's demonstration on how to use and work with Precious Metal Clay - very inspiring! I'm now actually seriously thinking of learning that jewellery making method in the future :)
And yes - I did get that Mystic Topaz trio!!! Thank you very much to Dawn from Precious Sparkle Beads for bringing them along to show how beautiful they are in reality! I'm also proud that I stuck to my budget limit and still got what I wanted most:from the top: Mystic Topaz, Sodalite, Blue Topaz, Labradorite, Peridot

Now when I cleared the workshop table (yep, as it gets messy soooo quickly!) I only need to put the beads in they boxes and I'll be ready to start new Spring projects!