Some of my older pieces

I often concentrate so much on the new things I have in my studio and what I am working on next that I forget about all the things in my studio that have been around a while. When I started wire work, I originally started out stringing beads onto wire and making a sort of beaded chain. It was a good, simple way to get familiar with the wire tools and learn how wire sometimes can have a mind of its own. Today I would like to show you one of my oldest pieces. I made this adorable little necklace with simple czech glass beads and copper wire. It features lady bugs in a deep purple color and accented with some pink and teal beads. I have always wanted this necklace to go to a good home, maybe for a little girl to enjoy.

Featured studio peice 3-6-10

Today's featured piece from the Fools and Jewels studio on http://www.artfire.com/ is a pendant called Spring Surprise. It is made from copper wire, twisted into a spiral pattern and pounded to add a little texture. Its then wrapped with a smaller gauge copper wire and adorned with pink chalcedony briolettes, jade rounds and freshwater pearls. I then added an antiqued copper chain to it. It is for sale in my artfire studio for $45.

Featured Studio Piece 3-5-10

I have decided since I now have a seperate page for my Artfire entries on this blog, everday I should have a featured piece from my artfire studio. Today's piece is called The Undressing. It is a piece that was inspired by a Brian Froud painting called "The Undressing of a Salad" and features fairies, pixies, and sprites passing drops of dew back and forth, as if they are removing or adding the dew to a salad as dressing. The dew drops in the picture look like little orbs, just like the round beads on this necklace. The rounds look like they are being passed back and forth across the wire from one side to another.

This piece is made from sterling silver wire and uses amethyst and peridot round gemstone beads. It comes on a silver plated chain. The cost of this piece is $50.

A stone for longevity

Of course I'm talking about Jade. This gemstone is a favorite of mine. I love the different colors that Jade comes in but none so much as the earth green of Nephrite Jade.

However, Jade comes in many varieties and its often hard to keep them all straight. The colors of each variety also are extremely varied.

African Jade tends to be bright green with naturally occuring lighter veining or spots.

Black Jade is as the title states, jet black.

Peace Jade is a pale grey with white veining and spots that can occur.

Mountain Jade is often dyed and can come in MANY colors, purple, blue and red just to name a few.

Nephrite Jade, my personal favorite, is a semi translucent earthy green color and can have black flecks in it as well.

This doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the Jade varieties available on the market today.

Jade has been used not just in jewelry making over the centuries, but also in the making of instruments. When it is carved and struck it produces a tone.

Jade is also said to bring longevity to its wearer. This makes it a sacred stone for the Chinese as well as many other cultures. It is also said to bring healing and feelings of peace and calm.

In leaving you contemplating this lovely gemstone, I will share with you a jewelry piece that I made for myself. It was inspired by the designs I saw in the Lord of the Rings movies. I used sterling silver and allowed it to naturally oxidize. The picture shows it before it fully oxidized. The Jade offers a calming green that perfectly compliments the silver and makes the piece look as though it may have been a long lost relic of middle earth.

A Classic

To me, there's nothing quite like a pearl. A string of pearls completes many of my outfits, whether they are faux, freshwater, or swaovski crystallized. It's a classic look that speaks of elegance and sophistication. I adore pearls... and therefor use LOTS of them in my work.

One of my favorite things to do is to take a string of vintage pearls and either re-string them or re-imagine them into a new piece. I have lots of vintage pieces waiting to be remade into something new. I am terribly behind in this area but I do have one slightly steamy completed piece of this variety (pictured here).

Faux pearls can offer a nice option if you want the look of uniform pearls without the aging that often comes with vintage beads. Swarovski also makes a crystallized faux pearl that has a LOT more of that natural pearl flash at an affordable price. These have become a big trend as of late, especially in bridal jewelry.

I also love working with freshwater pearls. They offer an organic look that I love and can come in all kinds of dyed colors. This widens my pearls pallet a bit. I also can't afford genuine saltwater sea pearls (like so many others I know). Freshwater pearls also combine with gemstone briolettes to create a lot of flash and sophisticated sparkle.

However you choose to use them, pearls really can give a piece or even an outfit a sense of understated class and elegance.

I -heart- Artfire!

I recently set up a studio on http://www.artfire.com/ and I have to take a moment to express how much I am pleased with this website.
I heard about Artfire through a friend I met on Etsy. I had been on Etsy for a few years and had done marginal business on the site. But I was depressed that my sales had all but dropped off the chart there and I was constantly being charged a percentage, mind you a small one, for any sales I was making. When you compound the sale percentage (3.5%) by the listing fees ($.20 per listing) it can really add up after a while. Etsy also encourages their sellers to keep their items "current" in the search engine there by relisting. Their feed is based on recency and not relevance.
I went to Artfire upon hearing tell of it and found a wonderfully set up site. Lots of color, user friendly, and fairly inexpensive. I discovered that Artfire is a "free" site. This means, there is NO listing fees and NO percentage taken for sales made. WOW. I was impressed. I signed up for a "Basic" studio right away and got started. I upgraded my account to a "Pro" account after a week for $12 a month. I was paying mroe than that on Etsy to list items and keep them current. A Pro account allowed me to do EVERYTHING a seller could want to promote my studio. I have a blog right on my studio page, am kept in the rotation of front pages regularily, can track my views easily, find my things in google searches almost immediately, and am seeing double the traffic in my little shop than I had in Etsy in the first month.

Which brings me to my next point. Artfire seems to be a fairly "undiscovered" site. Etsy has been around longer and has more face value to the public. Case in point, this article from the LA Times. www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-smallbiz-crafts1-2010mar01,0,7104482.story
Now, I agree that all press is good press but it seems a little one-sided. And it doesn't seem to sound like the article is really all for Etsy either. I am happy to see them feature a real live artist though.
So in conclusion, this blog post is kind of my plug for Artfire. I feels its a much more user friendly website, offers for sellers and buyers more options and deserves as much if not MORE press than Etsy. Please take a look at http://www.artfire.com/ and give another handmade website a chance!

Breaking the ice.

I have decided, after lots of Facebook plugging and some research.... that the best way to entice people to host a jewelry party featuring my jewelry is to throw the first party myself in my own home. I can then show the ladies how I put together certain kind of pieces (not give away all my secrets but give them a taste), explain how I do custom orders, let them paw through my supplies and current stock and also explain to them how I intend to run my "jewelry parties". I think this might entice some of them to offer to host parties for me. I am also hoping to get on my laptop while they are here and show them around the Artfire site. This will help not just my studio but Artfire in general. I bet most of them have no idea exactly what Artfire is. Its a win/win situation. So next Tuesday I'm hoping that there will be a small flock of ladies in my house pawing through my things. Guess we'll wait and see.