Long Time! Some Commissions Unveiled

Hello faithful readers and new visitors!  It's been a long time since I posted last. 

The Christmas season with Gifts for Myself and Others and the Gifts and Wishes show at the Coast Collective was a delightful whirl of activity, and the winter months thereafter were a quiet time to review my inventory and begin work on new projects.

I'm working on building an exciting exciting light box before I photograph any of my new projects, so those will be posted some time in the weeks to come.  For now though, I'd like to share with you some photos of commissioned work, now that it has been safely gifted.

First up is a necklace I was commissioned to make using a wolf's tooth.  My client had found a lovely freshwater pearl and shell necklace she wanted it attached to, and she wanted me to echo the spiral/helix in the shell in my wire wrap.  She also wanted me to incorporate a second freshwater pearl and to work with sterling silver wire, which was a somewhat challenging experience as the sterling wire behaves quite differently from the silver-plated copper I am used to working with.  In the end, I managed to find a pearl that echoed the one in the necklace quite nicely, and to come up with a design the customer was happy with.

Here's a picture of the full necklace:

Attaching the pearl and wolf tooth pendant to the original necklace proved a bit challenging, but I was able to wrap silver wire around the two loops at the top of the shell, and add a bit of the more organic twisted metal to the sides there to help unify the design between the smooth setting of the top part and the wrapped wire of the bottom.  Here's a side view:

Another commission I worked on was for a set of wine glass personalizers.  I sent out the the prototypes for different ways of attaching them to wine glasses, and my customer told me she liked the clip on style rather than the spiral style.  I doubled up the wire to add to the strength and durability and made a set of clips.  So then the task was to figure out how to make a set of 6 memorable "tags".  I opted for a set of visual puns using double charms.  The double charms worked out really well as the weight pulls the open end of the clip down away from the stem so it's even less likely to fall off. 

But "What are these visual puns?" you ask.  Without further ado, I introduce you to...

A starfish:

A goldfish:

A catfish:

A bluebird:

A blackbird:

And a bullfrog:

(Studies have shown that we remember funny things better than bland facts like "mine is the green one" and puns are totally funny, right?)

The final commission I have to show you is more in my usual vein.  I had an Etsy customer request a sea glass pendant with a dolphin charm.  Voila!  (Now it's in Australia. How cool is that?)

And that is it for this post.  Hopefully I will have assembled my light box soon and will have exciting new pictures of new pieces for you to admire.  Until then, keep an eye out, because spring as arrived and I may have news about shows and markets coming up.

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.