Thursday, November 20, 2008

New sterling silver jewelry

sterling silver hoop earrings jewelry etsyJust thought I'd share a couple of new pieces in my shop. Both were made this week

The first are these Hoops Within Hoops. (It's my temporary name, so please forgive it. If you want to suggest a better one, I'd appreciate it.)

If you're a regular reader of my blog, you'll know that I recently learned how to solder. And I've been having lots of fun since. These earrings are the result of me having fun soldering rings of sterling wire.

Instead of just single rings of sterling for each hoop, I wanted to have multiples.

The earrings turned out almost exactly like I envisioned them. Except for one thing:

I originally planned to have the rings be perfectly smooth circles. But when I made the earrings that way, I thought it was boring. You can buy slickly manufactured earrings at any kiosk at a mall. I wanted to make sure that there was a human element in these earrings. I handmade them, they should have my stamp!

So using my ballpeen hammer, I hammered them dozens of times (although it seemed like hundreds and may well have been!) to give them a more personalized look.

In the process, I found that the textured silver really reflected the light, making these earrings sparkle with every movement.

The send pair uses gemstones from the Bead Porn purchase I recently made.

These facetted natural citrine briolettes are the color of warmed honey. They look great all on their own - on my own custom earwires.

And I suddenly realized that they happen to be the November birthstones. I call them "Warm Gold and Cool Silver".

Now what I haven't shown you, is a 3rd pair of earrings I made this week that were a FAILURE. They, of course, haven't been listed in my shop.

As it's been said, the good comes with the bad. You can't expect designs to go right every time. And I'm planning to show you those -and what went wrong with them- in a future post.

Perhaps you'll be able to learn from my errors. Or at least laugh at them.





Check back with me tomorrow. I'll be having my weekly feature: Crafts, Tutorial, and More! It's my opportunity to share with you the best (and oddest) things I've found on the web in the past week!

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9 Comments:

  1. jelveh Designs said...
    pretty...
    Barbra said...
    I won't laugh at your boo-boos if you don't laugh at mine!!
    Barbra said...
    I'm also on gozabo.com, silfair.com and madeitmyself.com
    So far etsy is the best but also check this out:

    http://shinyadornments.com/wordpress/?p=205
    Anonymous said...
    lot's of cool stuff here. Did you buy them all? where?
    Contrariwise said...
    No. I made them. You can find my jewelry at my shop www.contrariwise.etsy.com
    My Inspired Reality said...
    Love your creativity and the hammered look too:) Very beautiful citrine drops. Looking forward to tomorrow:)
    Tammy's Treasure Chest said...
    I love the new earrings! I was just shopping at Etsy for briolettes, so I could make these type earrings. Awesome color!
    Robin@creations-anew.com said...
    They are both stunning...I love the simplicity of them
    Robin
    CreationsAnew
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