Green Trefoil Pendant & Green Leaves Earrings

Another trefoil pendant with co-ordinating earrings... this time with beautiful swirl glass beads made by Jenn of Kanna Glass Studios.

I am really enjoying 'drawing' with my wire at the moment and love watching the wire spread out when I hammer it. These beauties are now on sale in my online stores (please click on the photos for more details).

New Listings on Etsy and Folksy

As promised, I have listed some of my recent jewellery pieces in my Etsy and Folksy shop including these pieces:

Purple Swirl Glass Bead & Sterling Silver Flower Pendant - featuring a lovely bead from Kanna Glass Studios and using my Wire Flower design

(NOW SOLD as I was writing this blog post!)

Fluorite Spiral Adorned Sterling Silver Earrings - these are like my Dive In earrings but this time the fluorite has a delicate purple and green colour and is adorned with a hammered spiral.

Blue Swirl Glass Bead & Sterling Silver Teardrop Pendant and Earrings - a repeated design based on my Green Swirl Bead & Sterling Silver Teardrop Pendant and Earrings and featuring more swirl beads from Kanna Glass Studios

Back to the norm

Finally I am feeling normal again (with regards to my jewellery anyway!). My mojo has returned and at last I am creating again. I am going to bed thinking about my jewellery and waking up thinking about my jewellery. Last weekend I completed 4 commission pieces and as soon as I had finished the last one I got straight on to making some new pieces. Then today (when I should have be packing for our family holiday!) I thought 'I'll just make a quick bracelet first'.

'Quick' was not really what happened as I fiddled around for a long while. I had wanted a 6 petal flower so thought I could follow my Wire Flower tutorial and just add in an extra petal. That didn't work out so I had to make do with a 5 petal flower.

I had difficulties again coiling around 2 pieces of wire which kept slipping over each other. I think next time I will use thinner wire for the coiling. The swirl glass beads and purple glass disc bead came from Jenn at Kanna Glass Studios.

Designer challenge - Tuscan Bead Coiled Bangle Bracelet

At the beginning of this month I blogged about the Tuscan Bead Set I won from Jenn at Kanna Glass. She challenged me and another lucky winner to design something from a similar set of beads. The beads said 'bracelet' to me and here is my Tuscan Bead Coiled Bangle Bracelet.

This is the first kind of coiled bangle I have ever made and I have to say my coiling is not perfect. This technique will certainly take practice. I did make a trial version with silver plated wire but with finer wire for the coiling. I used thicker sterling silver wire for the final piece which has certainly made it more sturdy (and more expensive!). The best thing about this kind of bangle bracelet is that it sits nicely on your wrist and doesn't swivel round.

Thank you to Jenn for the lovely beads and the challenge. It was great fun and certainly helped my inspiration to come back.

You must check out Kanna Glass Studios

Ooo... it's been a while since I blogged. June/July are always very busy months for me with lots going on including many birthdays, family holidays and last weekend was Glastonbury Festival. My tenth year of going and this year was one of the best for me. We had the obligatory rain/mud but it soon dried out and I still managed to come home with a suntan having seen and done so much.

Anyway, I wanted to tell you about Jenn from Kanna Glass Studios and urge you to check her out. Back in April I won her blog giveaway of some beautiful green swirl beads from which I made teardrop earrings and a teardrop pendant. I loved these beads so much I immediately commissioned her to make me more in different colours and here's what arrived.

Her packaging and attention to detail is outstanding. It felt like my birthday as I opened up the beautiful little pillow boxes to find the lovely beads inside.

Then, very soon after that, I won another of her giveaways with a twist. To fit in with her Blooming in June theme, she sent me and another lucky winner a set of similar beads and has challenged us to create something with them and post our creation. I won this stunning Tuscan Bead Set with a fab swirly flower.


The colours are HOT, HOT, HOT (just like the weather here today) and the bead collection says 'bracelet' to me (might even manage a pair of earrings too). I have a few ideas swimming around in my head but I'm not sure whether they will work.

Thank you so much Jenn for all the goodies. I think you have helped me find my inspiration (it's been such a long time, I was thinking it had gone for good!). Watch this space...

Teardrops and raindrops

Regular readers of my blog will remember the gorgeous green swirly beads I won from lovely Jenn of Kanna Glass last month. Yesterday I decided I had been looking at the beads for long enough and was ready to make something with them. I knew I wanted to design something quite simple as the beads would be the main focus but I also wanted to feel there was a bit of 'me' in the design. Here are my Teardrop Earrings.



I took the above photo in my garden but believe me it wasn't easy as the weather has been very changeable today and I was running in and out of the house trying to dodge the raindrops! Then whilst I was waiting for the rain to stop I made this matching Teardrop Pendant.




Both earrings and pendant are now for sale in my Etsy shop.

Hooray - I'm a winner! Kanna Glass Studios

Yay, I won a blog giveaway and I am delighted. Here are the beautiful beads I won from Jenn at Kanna Glass Studios.

I am SO lucky - they look fantastic in her picture. This is what Jenn says about the beads:

"this is a really nice set of 18 (yes, eighteen) small beads. They range in size from 7-9mm by 4-5 mm. Kiwi is a delightful bright, green transparent. It fooled me the first time I used it because it's transparent sheathed in opaque. But that combo creates the above deliciously swirled green beadberries. There are enough to create a beautiful necklace and earrings...and if you space them just right you could stretch the beads into a bracelet as well!

Quality assurance: These are my first-rate beads! I quality check them to make sure they are well-balanced, have proper dimples, are round, and no smokey or scummed glass. I spin them, touch them, and look at them carefully. Any that don't past muster are sent to the seconds jar. I also guarantee my beads...if any don't pass your muster, I will fix it!"

Jenn has recently launched her own website at http://www.kannaglassstudios.com/ which has links to her blog , her Artfire shop and her Flickr pages where you can see some of her beautiful handmade lampwork beads and the lovely pieces of jewellery she has made using her designs. (I only hope I can do her beads justice when I receive them).