USB flowers

Your humble blogger is currently learning how to solder and make bezels. This doesn't make for great photography-filled blog posts for several reasons. First, the torch I was using was running out of gas and wasn't very hot. Somehow, this led to me eventually melting through one of my bezels because I got bored of swirling the flame around the ring and must have kept it in place for too long. It was not pretty.

At that point, I wanted to ask my teacher for help, but she was assisting her assistant, who had accidentally spilled fifties or hundreds of dollars worth of silver grain onto the floor. Eventually, I started asking people who looked bored for assistance. One very helpful person became a little too helpful and then finished my bezel for me. That could have been worthy of photographing, but even though I did part of the soldering, I didn't feel like I had actually made the bezel. I put it in the pickle to clean it up, and then forgot it there. Oops. Thus, no photos.

On the other hand, holiday shopping and fear of absurdly luxurious and/or crowded shopping areas has led me to a lot of online window shopping. I like gardening a lot, so I think this tulip USB hub is quite cute. I'm not sure it would be as cute with things actually plugged into the ports, but I guess that's another issue altogether.

lace leaf droplet necklace

I'm trying to make new items for the shop, so I can update it daily. This has proven to be pretty challenging, but still kind of gratifying. I seem to find that every new piece becomes my new favorite! Fickle, I know.

I had this silver crochet leaf lounging about for awhile. I had thought that I would somehow combine it with the sapphire beads from the mobile earrings below, but it didn't seem quite right. After a month or so of hanging out, the leaf started to lightly oxidize and became copper-colored on the edges. I thought it matched nicely with these chalcedony briolettes, so I put this necklace together.

prototypes

A few months ago, I decided that I wanted to make earrings that were like tiny mobiles. I set about making a prototype and ended up with the mobile above. It was a little too long and with a little bit too many elements, but was still cute. I hung it from a potted plant on top of my dresser and let it marinate for awhile.

Recently, I decided to work on them again. I used sterling silver wire, substituted out the glass beads for tiny cut sapphires, and worked on the balance. I came up with the tiny mobile earrings at left, and am thinking about other styles. I think it would be cute to use different beads to hang from the mobile arms, like heart shaped briolettes or ovals, or weld on shapes cut from sheet metal.

I have pretty short hair, but I'm guessing if you have long hair, you might want to wear it up with these earrings unless you want to end up with a mobile tangle.

coordinating leaves

I always kind of like the idea of matching jewelry sets, even though I don't really own any. It's like, if you wanted to, you could be all coordinated! Haha. With this in mind, I created these new crochet sparkling leaf earrings to match the necklaces that I have had up in the shop for a little while.

These days, I have to clear away the fallen leaves from the plants on my tiny patio garden, or one huge leaf could cover an entire plant, so this set is seasonally appropriate. I may live in California, where the leaves don't change color as dramatically, but they still fall.

tiny mobiles

I just updated the shop with a couple more items. I'm particularly fond of these tiny mobile earrings:

aloha

And now for something completely different... (or not)


I've been intrigued by ribbon leis for awhile. My friend in high school used to dance hula and would make leis and dresses for dance performances. Years later, when I was working in a theatrical costume shop, I was going through the bin of trims and found these coils of rickrack that I eventually figured out were hand-sewn ribbon leis.

What can I say? I like crafts where ordinary materials are transformed into something different and take on new shapes and textures. I just attended a wedding in Maui and made these leis for the soon-to-be married couple. I was kind of worried that they wouldn't get done in time, but I was still on some alternate time zone and popped out of bed at 7 a.m. (rare for me) to finish these on the patio of the hotel room. I had a view of the ocean! The sun rose above the mountains and I had to move my chair to hide from the sun. We all suffer for our craft... hahaha.



I hope they are enjoyed.

Lace in Translation

Lace in Translation is an exhibit currently going on at the Design Center at Philadelphia University inspired by lace, which features work by Demakersvan, Cal Lane and Tord Boontje. My favorite is probably this chain mesh lace fence. It's industrial and beautiful in a way that the two are not usually combined.


The website for the exhibition also has a part where viewers can submit their own work related to or inspired by Lace in Translation. I posted a piece that I made there. Please go check it out and vote for it. = )