It's been a while...

Yet again I find myself in a position where I've failed to post for several months. The last 5 posts don't really count as I just did them and backdated - they're copied over from my personal blog. I have however been a busy bunny over the last year. My Stardust and Sparkles jewellery and art website has been massively updated and is a lot more alive than it was previously.

I took up encaustic art (painting with hot wax) around Christmastime and have had a lot of fun with it - check out my encaustic art work on my website. I'm in love with the colours and that you don't need to be able to draw particularly well to produce really rather pretty paintings. I'm just about at the stage where I'm feeling confident talking about it. I've never been much good as an artist so it took a while to get rid of the mindset that anyone looking at my art would be laughing at the juvenileness of it all.



I've also set up a facebook page for Stardust and Sparkles. Its new and still at the stage where I'm overjoyed with any new 'Likes' so click on the box and like me, like me, like me! I promise not to post on it more than a couple of times a week, max and its great for keeping up with new and cool shiny things á la Stephie :o).



I'm also currently loving deviantart although it's been sadly neglected of late, and the wonderful Eni Oken's Jewelry Lessons site where I'm hoping to write tutorials. I enjoy writing them, I'm pretty good at it but I do prefer writing for cash.

Speaking of lessons, I'm in Creative Jewellery magazine and Stringing magazine this summer - the first with a necklace tutorial, the second with a pair of earrings. I've got tutorials coming up in Creative Beads & Jewellery magazine here in the UK as well - not entirely certain when - this year - but it was done in my capacity as designer for www.madcowbeads.com and Georgie, the business owner was handling the mag submissions. So I know I've got one - I think two but I'm uncertain - coming up soonish, along with a bracelet in the winter issue of Stringing.

Anyway... with any luck, the next thing you hear from me will be an update on the 52 weeks project. It's become abundantly clear that with craft fair bookings and small children, I don't have a chance in hell of managing one every week. I've started Week 6 - Bezel Settings but have yet to get to a stage where I feel I've accomplished much. I can set a stone in a plain bezel. Kinda. Thats not spectacular enough for me to be ready to post about it just yet :o)

Finally, I'm in the process of running down the beads-and-findings side of my business. There's still a few bargains to be picked up at my Princess Jewellery website and the main bulk of my stock is on ebay at my Princess Jewellery eBay Store. Postage is free for UK buyers and cheap for international buyers so don't miss out.

Until later!
Stephie

52 Weeks: Week 2 - Friendly Plastic

So... what is friendly plastic?

It's a craft-specific material that comes in plastic strips (and pellets but I'm not using them at the minute) which is malleable when heated. It comes in a wide range of metallic and foiled finishes. See the picture below.

Friendly Plastic & tools.


Having spent a couple of hours getting a feel for the material and heat required I needed more. Specifically, its a product I don't have any literature on, anywhere. After a couple of hours I also came to the conclusion that this particular material would benefit greatly from the use of some bezel settings although sadly I don't have any.

Early Efforts


Early efforts kinda look like a 5 year old has went mental with modelling clay and metallic paint. So some refining neccessary...

Completed componants


I did a fair amount more. It's not growing on me particularly. It's kinda like a very limited version of polymer clay (which is all kinds of awesome). Sure it has a speed advantage - poly clay needs to be over baked - but while polymer clay is incredibly versatile, friendly plastic just isn't. You're stuck with the colours it comes in, EVERYTHING sticks to it when it's hot and needs coating in oil to prevent this - which also means after it needs washing in soapy water, it's thinness means making items with embedded components (like loops to form drops or pendants) isn't terribly practical - you'd need to double up sticks and relatively speaking that works out rather costly.

Textured and made into a brooch


Also you can texture it - it does take textures nicely, subject to coating everything with oil - but the minute you need to heat it up again (I've found that late heating for re-cutting and for adding a backpiece are both frequently neccessary) you lose the bloody texture. Silicone stamps / texture plates work well, plastic ones do not - even with the oil as a release agent they stick.

What can I say about it that's nice...? The colours are cool and it makes nice brooches and it IS pretty fast to work with. I might have found it more palatable if I had some bezel settings which I suspect would work very well with it.

Finished Jewellery - Other Brooches






Ring



Pendants & Necklace











Either way, it's reasonably well suited to jewellery and so jewellery is what I turned the shiny bits into and I think my main problem is that Friendly Plastic is, well, plastic. It feels cheap and from the back, at least, looks cheap. Polymer clay is plastic as well but doesn't have that cheap & nasty feel to it (and poly clay can imitate just about any material that isn't transparent).

Cheap-looking back


While I've made these bits into jewellery, I actually see me having more use for it incorporating bits into mixed media artwork which among other things, firmly hides the back (as would the bezel settings I wished for earlier).

So all in all this week was disappointing. Next week... fabric fusing. Largely a mixed media art experiment although I'm curious about the necklace / bracelet making potential as well.

From Concept to Completion: Making Jewellery

Ever wondered how jewellery designers come up with their ideas? What design factors are taken into account (and what commercial limitations there are in place)? Here I aim to give you an idea of my concept-to-product process. A sunny afternoon in late July is not really the setting one might expect a winter jewellery collection to be conceptualised in but that’s exactly what I was doing this summer. July is the perfect time for me. Summer is slow on the jewellery components and beads side and I like to stocktake over the summer to ensure everything is ready for the September rush on jewellery making customers. So I close my online shops in late July, take everything I want to use to make jewellery and then frantically make as much as possible for a month before stocktaking and re-opening my shops in September. This lets me get a wide range of items designed and made before my manic sales of the final four months of the year start. I was sitting outside one very clear morning in July and the clouds were like little fragmented puffs of ice. My ‘Winter Fantasy’ collection is based around those beautifully crisp, clear mornings in winter where the dawn lights up the entire sky in barely-there shades of pink, blue, lilac and lemon with dotted white clouds. Think the morning after snowfall when the sun is glinting off bright white snow and frozen icicles. The ‘Fantasy’ part comes from my love of the magical and whimsical. About half of my collection features unicorns, pegusi, fairies, stars, moons and the like. Moving from the concept to actual jewellery is a careful process. First I look at the colours and pick out appropriate shades in Swarovski crystal and occasionally, glass beads. I’ve used a lot of crystal AB, light sapphire, aquamarine, light rose, rosewater opal and violet opal among others. Then I look at my Sterling silver components. I sell components in various finishes of silver from very dark antiqued to the bright, almost white silver of very highly polished findings. It was the latter which were incorporated into this range. Next is design and make. It’s important to get a balance between artistry and retail savviness if you’re depending on sales for a living. I do make art pieces which take many, many hours, but when designing a retail collection there has to be a trade-off between time spent and rewards available (i.e. how much I can sell them for). So a lot of my retail collection are both beautifully simple and relatively quick to make which in turn allows me to keep prices at an affordable level. I tend to design 2 or three pieces, sort out the quantities I will need to make duplicates and then make up multiples of them. Again, this is a simple matter of economic sense, particularly as all my jewellery is sold through my eBay store. eBay implemented changes for business sellers earlier this year which make selling multiple quantities of the same item far more cost effective and likely to succeed than selling individual items. So most items are made with between 3 and 10 pieces of the same item. My jewellery ranges tend to centre around necklaces, bracelets and earrings and often I’ll make up matching ranges of necklace, bracelet and earring so a customer can buy a whole set if they wish. I make an average of 20 pieces a day for around 4 weeks. That’s over 500 pieces, all carefully hand crafted in my studio in South Gloucestershire, England. My jewellery is available online exclusively through my ebay store at www.stores.ebay.co.uk/princess-jewellery. I also sell a large range of beads and findings, many of which went into my current collection, both through my ebay store and through my website at www.princess-jewellery.net. Gallery Sterling silver necklace with Swarovski Crystal in shades of blue, green and teal. Sterling silver earrings with fairy drops and Swarovski crystal hanging from delicate rose-shaped post earrings. 9 Carat yellow gold earrings with 9ct glitter beads and aquamarine Swarovski crystal. Sterling silver charm bracelet with Swarovski Crystal beads, glass lampwork beads and a beautiful fairy charm.

Where does the time go!

It has been an embarrassingly long stretch since I last posted. Partly that was due to breaking two of my fingers in July (ooops!) but mainly it was due to being terribly distracted due to the kids summer break.

I've had a fun 6 weeks or so (distracting children aside!) with lots of drawing, painting and claying but for now I'll simply leave you with my latest tutorials available on my website.

First up we have this beautifully delicate silver filigree bracelet with rose Swarovski crystal. Deceptively easy to make, its a sure hit with anyone and can be made in any number of colour combinations.



I've also made matching earrings to compliment the above bracelet. For this quick and easy tutorial, click the image.



Finally, this cute and whimsical mermaid necklace is great for summer!



That's all for now - I'll be back with a claying post later in the week!

Stephie

A New Necklace Tutorial

Its turning out to be quite a busy week so far. Nothing major - just lots of little things needing doing. My ad for the UK's Bead Magazine was sent to them yesterday for the professional treatment (I sent a fairly basic layout of what I want, along with the jewellery I want featured in it for them to photograph and produce properly). The magazine comes out in August and of course, by then I really need to have the stock levels upped a bit (particularly on anything I'm featuring in a tutorial!).

More tutorials are on the agenda this week. Haven't quite decided what but I think I'm looking at the lovely bright white silver componants I sell at www.princess-jewellery.net with some pastel shades in crystal. I also want a techniques tutorial done for the art of fitting pinch bails. I want a good selection of tutorials available in a relatively short space of time which means getting a few done every week for the next couple of months.

Speaking of tutorials, there is now a matching necklace for the Summer's End series. I hope you enjoy (click on the picture).

A plethora of pretty things!

Shame 'plethora' is such an ugly sounding word or that title woulda worked better...

For all you jewellery lovers out there I have a tasty feast of eye candy today. Plus some stuff that I made :p

First off - I still haven't sanded & polished the weekend's lentil beads and realistically I can't see it happening before Friday now so here they are in their unfinished form.

First off - the best of the bunch





The beads I made out of the remainder of the red mix




Best of the blue/pink/silver



And the remainder



And these were made out of the scrappy leftovers from the previous 2 mixes (believe it or now, quite a lot of creamy gold went onto the red ones!)




Now... the Scheherazade necklace and earrings set - slightly better picture although blue goldstone is an absolute bitch to photograph. Its a little chunky for my personal taste.



And the first of the necklace connecters to go with the previously made red pendant (not yet finished)



And finally, these turned up today. I almost never use gemstones, partially because I sell Swarovski crystal for a living and so have lots of it lying around and partially because I'm not really an earth-tones kinda gel, however I've been looking for this stuff for ages - its titanium coated druzy (druzy is a generic name for the tiny little quartz crystals that sometimes form within rocks) and the titanium coating means it comes in a whole range of completely non-natural shades :p They're gorgeous. Far better than expected, I was absolutely blown away by this lot.













The druzy came from www.druzygems.com