Coin Pearl Earrings

It feels good to have the time to make some jewelry again. Using some more of those gorgeous coin pearls and some of these luscious rubie rondelles wrapped with gold filled wire. *Congratulations and have a great summer Darcy!*

New Work

Well, not really new work - this is actually a bracelet I made for my mother for Mothers Day. (*note to Mom - here's your new bracelet - sorry it's so late*) Gorgeous wine fluorite rondelles (from Magpie Gemstones, of course), some small (3mm) round gold filled beads....Wonderfully lusterous coin pearls with a nice easy to close ball and hitch clasp.

I had a request for a "silver ring with a light green stone in it - something cute" - so I used an oval peridot gemstone in a simple silver setting.

While making the custom order, I also made this ring - mostly because I really like emerald cut stones. Once again, emerald cut peridot gemstone in a simple silver setting. Tres chic!

A mothers bracelet - of sorts

I got an order for a "typewriter key bracelet" for a woman who wanted the piece to have the first initial of each family member. In addition to the antique typewriter keys, I used 19 gauge stainless steel to create the coil components............
the spiraled "S" clasp, and the jumprings.

I used 22 gauge stainless steel to wrap the gy-normous and gorgeous Amazonite rounds (I got them at Magpie Gemstones, of course!)

All together a very funky, different sort of mothers bracelet!

New Photo of Copper Patinaed Romanov

I received a comment on the last post and realized that the pictures didn't really clearly show the difference between the natural vs the patinaed bracelet. I am using a new photo editor that is far superior to my old software - and I am still learning how to use it. I took another photo of the patinaed piece, and here it is:
*sigh* - photography of jewelry is a never ending lesson!

Experimenting with Patina

I recently created a Romanov chain maille weave using copper wire and some amazonite rounds. ( see below). I loved how it came out...I admit I am a real fan of keeping the metal as natural as possible......but the jewelry I make is not for me (well, not ALL of it!) and more often than not, I see buyers are more attracted to the aged, patinaed wire in the pieces. I resisted for a while but tried the hard boiled egg approach to darkening copper. Well, it didn't work for me, and rather than order some liver of sulphur, I decided to try a different approach after reading a conversation on one of the wire wrap groups. Sherry - aka Dancingfeather - spoke about using Gun Blue (read the Wikipedia story here ) in place of the liver of sulphur. After searching high and low, I finally found it at the hardware store in town. So this is the bracelet with no patina on it.


I dipped the whole bracelet in the Gun Blue - I was a little leery of dipping the stone in the solution, but I threw caution to the wind and dipped the entire bracelet into a jar (old fancy jelly jar with a strong twist on lid)and left it there for a few minutes since I really had no idea of how fast it would work - (and now is the time to tell you that before I used the patina on it, I cleaned the whole piece in a lemon juice and salt mixture - that takes off all surface dirt and oil) but just those few minutes was long enough for the piece to darken considerably.


Close up of a link with no patina:And here's the link after the patina was added.



The "after" picture is a bit washed out, but you can see the difference. I like the darker tone the copper has taken on - makes the amazonite rounds really pop!
Would be interested in hearing about your experiments with adding patina to your pieces....what do you use? how long do you leave a piece in the solution? what do you use to wipe it down and clean it up further? I used a sunshine cloth - and then a soft clean rag to finish it off. Has anybody used a tumbler? Would love to know how that works!