Less Than Two Weeks Until Christmas!

I can't believe Christmas is almost here! While I love Christmas, I relish the anticipation of the day. It is so depressing when it is over. The months after the holidays (Halloween through New Years) seem to dark and drab. All the decorations are put away and there is nothing but the rest of the cold winter to look forward to. I think I will have to come up with some exciting jewelry ideas to make those dark days brighter. In the meantime, I am still making some fun jewelry for the season. Today I made three fun pieces. One a red and white faux pearl wire woven bracelet, the second is a white and silver bracelet I call my winter bracelet, and the third is a fun sparkly blue crystal bracelet.

Christmas is getting closer and closer!

I can't believe it is only a few weeks until Christmas! How the time has flown! I have been working on promoting my items as much as possible on Facebook, and also making new items. I sold one of my copper bracelets, I hope the recipient enjoys it very much!

I have also been working on a variety of bracelets woven with wire and similar to the one above but silver tone.

 I think these bracelets really pop on your wrist and draw people's attention. I think they would make great gifts, hope I get some sales on these.

Christmas is Coming!

Time sure has flown by! I have been lax in posting anything lately, busy getting ready for the holidays! I have made many pretty items and have even taken pictures of them with a holiday theme!

I will also be offering free gift wrapping through Christmas.

I love gift wrapping, so it will be fun for me too! I am looking forward to Christmas and hope to have some good sales!

http://playfulkittenjewelry.artfire.com/

I am also selling Avon too, so crossing my fingers for sales! 

http://www.youravon.com/lindabohm

87 degrees and Snowing!

I am watching the weather channel. I can't believe how fast the temperatures are going from massive heat waves to snow in some areas. I think the weather may be a little bipolar! My mind may be a little bipolar too! I am sitting here in shorts, but I am thinking about winter and snow. I was walking around the craft store last week, and noticed that they are already putting out their Christmas items; decorations, craft items, etc. I could not resist picking up a few items to play with. I came across the cutest little snowflakes, and it gave me an idea to create a necklace using them and some light blue swarovski crystals to create icicles. I am really pleased with the way it turned out.

I also made a couple of pairs of earrings using other small decorations that I purchased.

I think I will be heading back to the craft store this week to see what other fun decorations I can find to work with. When I had been in the craft store previously, they had only just started setting up their Christmas aisles. I am sure they are finished with set up at this point, and I will have a much wider selection to shop.

I love holidays! There is nothing I enjoy more than creating holiday themed jewelry. I can really let my imagination run wild and create some fun pieces.

Mission Complete

I mentioned in my last post that I had seen all the new colors for fall while walking through Macy's. I have created two new pieces to complement the new color palette. In the first piece, I decided to use the Aventurine that I had purchased in Julian to make a purple and red necklace. Since I only had 7 pieces of the Aventurine, I spaced them out so that they would lay in an equidistant pattern. I bracketed the Aventurine with red beads and lay some chain pieces between them to make the connections. Here is the finished design.

I really love how the red really brings out the purple color of the Aventurine. It is a striking combination!

For the next design, I decided that I would work with teal and black. I laid them out alternately, but realized that I needed something extra for a little variety for the eye. I decided to alternate silver plated spacers between the beads. I really like the way the necklace came out. It is bright yet conservative looking depending on what you would wear it with.

September...Fall is coming soon!

I went to Julian today with some friends. We were supposed to go to a grape stomping festival, and we did get there, but it was a really lame festival...on top of that it was so hot I could feel my feet burning.  We decided to leave and head into the town of Julian to find someplace air conditioned to have some lunch. Unfortunately, the food was not exactly the best, but it was cooler than being outside. My friend did pick up some apple pies from the Julian bakery. Wow, these apple pies are amazingly good. Fresh picked apples in those pies. On the way home we stopped at a place where you could pick your own raspberries. Too hot for me in the sun, but my friend picked a quart. At this point we were all ready to head home, so we got in the car and started for home. We were getting close to home when we decided that we should stop for dinner. We had some kids with us and they wanted ice cream, so we found a place nearby called Farrell's. The restaurant was located in a mall in Mission Viejo, so we found the mall and parked the car. Of course, we parked at the complete other side of the mall from our goal. Sigh...always seems to happen that way. We parked near Macy's, so we walked through the store on the way into the mall and our goal.  Now you are probably wondering why I am telling you this story when I usually write about the jewelry I make. Well hold on! There is a point to this story! As I walked through Macy's I noticed that they had their fall items out...the color palette is so bold! Reds, Purples and Teals! Beautiful and vibrant colors! I am so excited, I want to start working on some pieces that will focus on these colors! Even better, I just picked up these lovely purple aventurine beads which will work perfectly in either a necklace or bracelet! Check back soon, I hope to have some beautiful new items to show you!

Creating a New Piece

I decided to create another necklace with Autumn colors. I have such wonderful beads and they are calling me to use them! I'm going to walk through the creation of a necklace step by step. Since this is going to be an Autumn themed necklace I decided to use a chocolate color chain. The first step was to decide how ling I wanted the necklace to be. I have decided to use chain draping, so I want the main part of the necklace to be relatively short. Almost a choker length, but nor quite that short, I decided on 17 inches in length. I added a chocolate clasp and connector ring to close the necklace. Since I want to attach draping chains, I measured out the distance that I wanted the chains to be from each other. I put the main connector directly opposite from the clasp. I then decided on adding two more connectors on each side of the clasp....after measuring the length, 3 inches apart was the correct length.

When you are done connecting your rings to the chain you should have 5 rings at three inches apart. Now the next step is to get the beads ready to be connected to the chain connectors. I decided to use some burgundy colored beads. I used five headpins, on four of them I used one 8mm bead and two 4mm beads; on the Fifth headpin I used one 10mm bead an 8mm bead and a 6mm bead. I made a loop to connect the headpins to my connector links.

I connected the headpin with the 10mm bead on the connector directly across from my clasp. The remaining headpins were connected to the connectors surrounding those beads.

Now you have all the beads connected to your chain, it is now time to start adding the draping chains. I measured out a good length of chain that would connect to the first two connectors surrounding the main bead piece, while leaving enough room for the main bead to hang within the loop.

Once this step was complete, I measured out four more chain lengths that were equal to be the draping cross chains. Two of the chains would connect from the last two connectors to the main bead and the other two chains would connect from the first two connectors to the clasp.

Here is the finished product!

Waiting...

I think they worst part about wanting to try a new idea when you don't have the supplies you need is the waiting....  I am waiting right now for some new jump rings to arrive. My hands are itching to try the new design I have found, but I don't have the correct ring sizes.  I find it hard to even start another design when I have something particular in mind. Nothing looks right or seems to be coming out right. I guess I will just have to wait and hope FedEx brings them today!!

Let me try to describe the piece I want to make. It is chain maille, it looks like metal lace in a wavy pattern. Kind of like a metal lace snake. I hope the rings I ordered work with this design, or I will have to scrap it.

I have to start thinking more about fall designs too. August is almost half way over, kids are going back to school and the fall items are out in the stores. I have some really pretty focal pieces to make some lovely necklace designs. I also have some beautiful fall color beads, greens and oranges, browns and burgundy. Such wonderful fall colors, I need to decide how best to incorporate them into my designs.

Of course Halloween is coming too, so I want to make some more fun designs using polymer clay. I love the fall, it is my favorite season. I grew up in New York, but live in California now. That is the one thing I really miss, the changing colors of fall. That's why I am so excited about making some new designs for fall. It will be my little piece of fall right here!

Chain Maille Complete!

The bracelet is finished! I am really happy with it!! I am amazed at how easily it came together. I would usually put something like this in my shop right away, but I love it so much that I will keep this one for me! 

Now that I know that I can do this kind of weave without any problems, I will surely be incorporating it into my jewelry. Fun!  I really look forward to trying this in many different ways. I did also play around with those chain maille earrings, and was able to fix the problems I was having by changing them up a little.

Here is the before earring and the earrings after I made some changes. I still need to shorten the crystal a little in that right earring, but this design seems to work a little better than the other. I have ordered some new rings and am waiting impatiently for them to arrive so I can play! :D  The problem with chain maille is that you need the rings to be specific sizes relative to each other for the design to work. I have a design pattern that is so pretty, but I don't have the correct ring sizes for it to hold together tightly enough to create the pattern I need. I have ordered some different size rings and hope to be able to create the pattern with them. Size is everything!

Chain Maille

I started thinking about working in chain maille again today. I first started working in chain maille about a year ago. I had tried to do something a little more complicated than just a basic weave, but I had not developed the skills to really do it well. I guess working with all sorts of other techniques this year from beading to working with    wire have really improved my skills. I brought out my chain maille supplies yesterday and at first attempted something easy. I made an earring design that I had seen in Classic Chain Mail Jewelry by Sue Ripsch. It is a cute design, but the earring keeps flipping around so that it doesn't sit the way it is supposed to.  I need to see if I can play around with it so that the rings stay in the right formation.

After I finished the earrings I decided to try to make a bracelet that I had attempted a long time ago.  It also comes from the same book. I was a little apprehensive about trying the design again, but I really liked it a lot, so decided to give it a shot. Amazingly the bracelet is coming together so smoothly! I am so excited!  I am half way finished with it now, and should finish it some time today. I will post a pic of it once I have it finished...

Is is Fall yet?

Fall is my favorite time of the year. I really start looking forward to it during the hot and humid summer days. I begin to think about the cooler days and wearing warm, soft flannel. The beautiful colors of fall, the dark reds and oranges and browns make me think of caramel apples and candy corn. Best of all Fall begins all my favorite holidays; Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.  I love the food and the decorations and spending time with family and friends. The holidays are the feel good time of the year.  Since I was thinking about Fall, I decided to make a few Halloween items.  I had a lot of fun playing with polymer clay and made some iconic Halloween jewelry.

First I made some candy corn earrings. I shaped progressively smaller balls of polymer clay and formed them into the candy corn shape. I baked them with a metal loop inserted so it would be easier to hang them. I played with my Thing-a-ma-jig and made my own earwires for these earrings. 

After the candy corn I decided to make some cute pumpkins. I rolled two small orange balls with brown stems and inserted wire loops. After I baked them I painted a jack o'lantern face on them and attached them to earwires. 

Halloween is not complete without some cute ghosts! I shaped two white balls of clay into a ghost shape. I then rolled some black clay to make the eyes and mouth and green clay for a cute bowtie. Since these are flatter than the other pieces I made a hole in the top of the ghost and once they were ready I looped some green wire through the ghost and attached to earwires.

Finally I made a black clay cat with an orange bowtie. I attached it to a gunmetal chain and attached looping chains to orange and black beads.

I still have so many different ideas of Fall items I want to make...I will keep you posted when I do! :D

Still Thinking About Christmas

I was still continuing with my Christmas theme this week...Christmas is my favorite time of year. I am always counting the minutes until I can decorate my house. Working on Christmas jewelry gives me a taste of Christmas even though it is still far away.

I had purchased a Thing-a-ma-Jig earlier this year, but have not had time to experiment with it. As I was looking at some patterns on various websites, I came across the cutest Christmas Tree earrings using wire. The pattern was free and designed by Natalie Trinh. I made the tree according to her design, but added small jingle bells at the bottom.

I love the jingle bells, and decided that I would also make some Jingle Bell earrings. I attached jingle bells to earwires using some eyehooks. The jingle bells are varying heights to make them interesting.

Of course what Christmas project is complete without some pretty green and red beads. I made a set of beads out of polymer clay. I will probably be making them into a bracelet eventually.

Once I was finished with these fun Christmas projects I decided I needed to make something for Halloween too. I have a cat push mold, so made a black cat and added some embellishments to him, green eyes, pink nose and a cute orange bow. He came out ok for a first attempt, but I will make sure to cool the clay before removing him from the mold next time.