Good Gracious Gifts in Vernon

I should have posted about this much sooner, but this time of the year is crazy for craftspeople, so I did not.  Sorry, devoted Vernon readers! (Hi Mom!)

I am very pleased to announce that since October I have pieces for sale at Good Gracious Gifts in downtown Vernon.  Assuming they haven't all sold already.  But you should all go check it out anyway, because it is an absolutely beautiful store.

Without further ado, here is the collection I dropped off at Good Gracious:

Remember that you can click to enlarge.  That being said, fear not, there are closeups of each section.

First up a shot of the various glass pearl and seed bead necklaces and bracelets:

It's a collection of my best-loved colours from the cool tones of silver and white, dove and iris, and classic harlequin to the warmer tones of cream and dark gold, and brown and caramel.  There's also the sultry and sophisticated design with crimson pearls and hematite-tone beads, and in bracelets for those who want a splash more colour there's icy blue and white, copper and navy, and gold-core green with violet.

There's also a wide selection of freeform coil earrings that go beautifully with these pearl necklaces and bracelets.  Many of them are in familiar colours, including the greyscale ombre one depicted here:

For people who want earrings that are a bit more delicate, I also dropped off three pairs of my drop earring design.  The first two feature genuine freshwater pearls.

These ones have golden brass wire and beautiful drop-shaped freshwater pearls in a delicate rose.  I completely love this particular combo and made myself some to keep.

The next pair features silver-plated wire and oval-shaped white freshwater pearls for a cool and wintry elegance:

The last pair is a bit different.  It features faceted tiger's eye gemstones on silver plate:

I also dropped off a nice selection of sea glass pieces at Good Gracious.  I won't post pictures of all of them, but I will put up shots of some of my favourites.  All of the pendants I dropped off come with a black cotton cord with a clasp in matching metal so they are ready to wear.

I'll start with the silver-plated ones.  The first one features sweeping smooth lines on a piece of white sea glass:

The next is on a piece of deep brown sea glass and features pairs of crimped lines pinning down paired spirals.  It's pretty different from many of my other designs, and I'm rather fond of it.

The next piece features a cute little clam shell charm in a simple framing wrap on a diamond-shaped piece of sea glass:

I also dropped off some brass pieces.  The first one features a fun curlicue design with four spirals for a more elaborate aesthetic than the previous pieces:

The next features one of those beautiful large starfish charms on a rippling freeform wrap in brass wire on white sea glass:

The final stand-alone sea glass pendant I'll feature here is sweeping lines of copper on white sea glass:

I say stand-alone, because I also dropped off three sets of sea glass pendant and earring combos.

I'll show you the silver-plate on white first.  It also features white freshwater pearls:

The brass set is something new for me because the pendant features a drop with Swarovski crystal bicone and freswater pearl dangling from the bottom just like the earrings:

The copper set is in a more familiar design, featuring indigo freshwater pearls:

Eagle-eyed readers with excellent memories will have noticed and recalled there was also a donut wrap in this collection.  It features gunmetal brass, Swarovski crystal bicones, and glass beads, and is also ready to wear on a black cotton cord:

That's it for jewellery for this post, but I feel I should give a photographic shout-out to my faithful assistant while I finished off these pieces during my visit at my parents' house: Jackie the craft-cat.  There she is helping out by keeping my spot warm:

And here she is helpfully lying down on my supplies and inventory sheet, and keeping a paw ready on my pliers:

Craft Cat is much better than Grumpycat in my opinion.  Shall we make her into an internet sensation?  She certainly deserves some recognition after wanting to bat at my wire and being sternly told that she would have to bat at cotton cord instead since the wire might hurt her.  (Seriously, she was crazy keen on hunting down that wire.  I had to be really careful.)

That's it for today, folks.  I'll post again soon about my final venue for the season.

Some Odds and Ends

It's been a while since my last entry, so I figured I should share some new photos with you.

I'll start off with what could be considered a continuation of my last post -- some beach glass earrings.

These first ones are not available as I gave them away as a gift, but I'll post them so you have an idea of the kind of design I'm working on.  These feature smallish pieces of white/clear beach glass, fresh water pearls, icy blue seed beads, and silver-plated copper wire.

As you can see, I kept the wrap simple so as to showcase the beach glass.

This next pair is $39.  It makes use of the same materials, minus the seed beads, but the design is very different.  I used a lighter gauge of wire and made the wrap a bit more complex.

That's it for beach glass.  Next up are a pair of earrings I made for my mom for Mother's Day.  Obviously, these particular ones are not for sale, but if people like them I can make similar ones using the same or different stones.  These are made with faceted tiger's eye beads.  One nice thing about these earrings is they are super light weight.

My next two pieces are not actually jewellery.  I had a request to make some wine glass identifiers/personalizers, so I made a couple prototypes for the person who made the request to test out.  Currently they are in the testing phase to see how they hold up to use.

The first type is a clip type.  You just "snap" it around the stem of your wine glass (or in the case of my quick photos, my super cheap made-in-China plastic martini glass) and then if needed pinch it closed a little again so it won't slip right off.  The goal was to get the wire so it is sort of springy and "closes" on its own again.  We'll see how it holds up after use, but here's the general design.

The next type is a spiral type.  I made this with a heavier gauge of wire.  For this one you feed the stem of the wine glass through the spiral until it gets to the center.

I have quite a few ideas for charms for these (though I was pleasantly surprised at how nice these little plastic tulip ones looked), so I hope at least one type holds up pretty well and I can make a few sets.

That's it for today.  More photos to come soon.

The Gifts for Myself and Others show is happening this weekend!

As mentioned in the title of this post, the Gifts for Myself and Others Christmas crafts fair is happening this Friday through Sunday (details can be found here) and I've been working hard to make some new inventory for it.  As a result, I've neglected posting in this blog over the past few days, so I'm going to make up for it now by including a whole pile of pictures of my work.

I'll start with a couple more pictures of bracelets.  This first batch is a set of what I call my "beaded bangles" which are fun, colourful, slender bracelets which can be worn alone or mixed and matched as a series of bangles, or twisted and braided together, or anything else you can come up with.  I should have a few new colours at the show.  (Seed beads and bugle beads)

The next set of bracelets are more of the same type as the harlequin bracelet I posted before.  I also make these in all sorts of colours.  (Seed beads and glass pearls)

I also have some of that design in necklace lengths.  Here are two of the ones in rich, warm tones.  Please note the lovely home-made stand my boyfriend and I put together for the Bastion Square Market this summer. (seed beads and glass pearls)

I believe I mentioned at some point that in addition to bead threading I've also recently gotten into wire-wrapping.  Here's an example of one of my donut wraps with a simple beaded chain made to match.  Unfortunately, I didn't write down the type of stone when I bought it, so I've no idea what it is.  I do know it did not cost enough for it to be turquoise, so I would guess maybe some kind of agate.  If anyone has any ideas, let me know.  (chain: seed beads and e beads.  pendant: stone donut, silver-plated copper wire,  e beads, swarovski bicones)

And last but not least, there are earrings.  I've been spending most of the last few days making earrings, and I'm quite excited about them.

The first pair I'll show you is meant to match my harlequin set.  (seed beads and glass pearls)

The next set are some fun and colourful tassel earrings I made over the summer.  Sorry about the red strings in the photo, but I took it at a market and those are my price tags.  (seed beads, bugle beads, various metal caps)

And this last set are the earrings I've been working on for the last little bit.  They're a really fun freeform coil wire technique.  Here's a shot of the full set that I've made up so far: (silver or gold plated copper wire, copper wire, glass pearls, tiger's eye, various beads)

Here's a closeup of the ones with glass pearls.  They'd go nicely with my harlequin sets, or just look really snazzy with a little black dress.

And last but not least, here's a closeup of the two pairs I made with those neat beads that sort of look like they have two layers to them.  My camera had a bit of trouble with them, so you will just have to come to the show to see them in person.  The light blue ones look like little drops of ice with their silver spirals around them, and the red ones look beautifully festive for Christmas, trimmed in gold.

And that is all for today.  Hopefully tomorrow I'll have some new pictures to post.  If not, I'll definitely post some images from the Gifts show.