A Wonderful Move!

I'm pleased to announce that My Aphrodite jewelry is moving to new digs at http://www.myaphroditejewelry.com!

Please adjust your blogrolls accordingly! :)

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Thought I'd take some time to catch up on other happenings...

The Etsy UK Swap was a great success for everyone! I was all kinds of pleased to receive this lovely necklace and earring set from Lazy Giraffe as well as a super yummy batch of oaty biscuits to dunk in tea. Of course, it would be foolish to think that either me or the Mr. could be asked to wait for a cup of tea to boil when there were biscuits to be eaten. So we munched into the super crunchy sweetness and munched away until our jaws hurt, grinning like idiots. I debuted the necklace at the Hard Rock Calling festival on Saturday.

I'm now looking forward to the upcoming Cake Off/Bake Off that I've let myself in for. I'm fairly handy in the kitchen, although I have to work harder at baking than at day to day cooking. I must wait to see whom I am paired with, but I have a few ideas for baked goodness including:

-Shoo Fly Pie
-Some manner of hugely fattening cupcakes
-Grandma's Super Secret Sugar Cookie recipe

In happy promotional news, I've been chosen for a feature over on Maternal Spark! The feature will coincide with a blog giveaway that I'm planning in the near future, so be on the look out for both of those!

Happenings

I've been woefully neglectful of blogging my crafty capers of late, so I thought I'd catch up.

I had some serious good fortune in the last few weeks to have not one but TWO items on Etsy Front Pages thanks to treasury goddesses 3s and Lazy Giraffe which lead to an avalanche of hearts for which I am most grateful. Lazy's lovely orange and pink treasury features my Pining for Goshen pendant and 3's pinks and blues features my White Vinyard earrings. Here's hoping for more features in the future!

I've been spending a lot of time in creative mode lately as well. The gorgeous cabs and beads that I've bought from the Rock and Gem Show have been burning holes in their little storage bins, so I've done my best to rescue them from their plastic prison and get them into pieces. As you can see, in the previously mentioned "Envy" piece, the tourmaline and peridot beads have been encorperated and my new "White Lotus" pendants with marquis cut rainbow moonstone cabochons have emerged out of some of my show finds! Stones often inspire the shape of a piece, especially in the case of White Lotus; the marquis shape lends itself to long, elegant shapes.

Since receiving a heapin' helpin of beads in the post recently, I've been trying to decide how to use them to maximum effect and have come up with an earring style that can showcase a number of beautiful beads all at the same time.

Although it saves a fair amount of cash, I often have to pay import fees from American suppliers, so I spent a lot of time having to run out to the local sorting office to retrieve parcels being held for ransom by customs and excise. This week, I finally got a much needed shipment of beads and silver. Some of these beautiful garnet and garnet briolette beads made it into "The Temptation of Proserpine"; a luscious red pair of earrings representing the 6 pomegranate seeds that doomed Persephone to 6 months as year as the queen of the underworld with her abductor, Hades. I absolutely love how these turned out. I'm a bit of a garnet monkey, to be honest, so seeing this much garnety goodness in one place got me all hot and bothered.

On a slightly smaller scale, I wanted to show off some of the stunning citrine beads from my collection, so the "Limoncello" earrings were born. I often forget about citrine when creating; it's color is kind of pale and is easy to overlook when faced with a pile of vibrant beads all screaming, "PICK ME!", but put together in a cluster like this, they creates a cheerful, yet understated mood. They make me think of the drink who's name they share, which is completely scrummy, especially in the summertime. I am terribly tempted to make a pair of these for myself, but there is MUCH to be done before I can think about personal adornment!

I was really pleased to have also made a sale in the last week! My "Bombay Bride" earrings are now trundling their way across the country towards their new home. This sale edges me closer to my milestone 10th sale! The 10th customer, will of course, get a little extra treat with their purchase, so if anyone cares for a bit of shopping, please check out the shop.

Copper Madness

I've always been a silver girl but recently, my new surge of creativity has taken me in new directions, not to mention my own personal style as well.

I order my supplies from all over the damn place, so I often have to wait a small eternity for them to turn up on my doorstep. Of course, the worst thing for a silver smith to run out of is silver, so I decided to take my newfound love for big and relatively simple shapes into the realm of copper, which I can get easily and cheaply and can have a play with without worrying about ruining something potentially expensive.

My "Buzz, Buzz, Buttercup" pendant is one of the first large bits of copper that I've played with. Copper is a fairly friendly material to work with, especially while cutting. I can hardly describe it at anything but slightly more "powdery" than silver under the blade. Cuts are quicker.

I'm also finding uses for a massive reel of copper wire that I've had since my student days. It's just the right thickness for thin, hammered discs, which I love with the beautiful tear-drop amber beads that I've acquired. The color of these "Sundance" earrings is just fantastic.

Check them all out in the shop!

UK Challenge June-Seven Deadly Sins

I've been looking forward to this challenge for a while; big primal concepts like lust, greed and wrath make great and fertile pickings for jewelry design with a lot of choices for great stones and beads

I ended up choosing Envy as a subject matter because I was dying to use some of the gorgeous, green tourmaline cabs and peridot beads that I acquired at the rock and gem show.

I modified a "leaf" pattern that I've used on previous occasions to make it more angular, like a scowling brow. I liked the shape so much, I wanted to make a matching pair of earrings, so I came up with an internal shape that would look beautiful while dangling from a lovely earlobe.

Have also enjoyed seeing the other entries trickle in. I am definitely enamored and impressed with Paisley Chainsaw's magnificent and sinful bag.

The Pursuit of Shiny

Since reading His Dark Materials, I’ve invested a significant amount of thought into what the nature of my daemon might be. Everyone, I imagine, would like to think that they’d have an impressive physical manifestation of their true self but the truth is that some people are wormy. Or froggy. Or platypus like. As much as I’d like to think that my soul is cuddly and warm, the truth is that I believe that my daemon would probably be a magpie. I don’t mean to imply that I have a Sex in the City type obsession with the material, whether it be shoes, clothes or designer men, but I love beautiful things, colorful language and shiny ideas and want to gather them around me.

I got my chance to cast my beady eyes around a glut of shiny this weekend at a rock and gem fair near Kingston, where I spent far too much on things that didn’t take up all that much room in my purse.

Part of my motivation for going was obviously to pick up some much needed supplies. Ordering stones on-line, while convenient, is a little bit of a crap shoot; you can never be sure of what fire or lustre that you’ll end up with. Being able to pick up a stone or strand of beads and watch what happens when the light hits it is a real luxury.

The other incentive to make the trek was to meet the lovely 3’s of Etsy fame who’s equally beady of eye when it comes to stones and beads.

After meeting up with 3’s , The Rock Star (who is actually a living saint in the getting-dragged-around-to-boring-shit department) generously became Prawn Bitch for the afternoon and toddled off after our daughter and tried to make sure she didn’t either steal or destroy anything, leaving 3’s and I free to peruse the staggering mountain of shiny glinting seductively, “come-and-buy” at all and sundry.

The people watching at an event such as this is always a good time. A gem show can draw professionals, enthusiastic amateurs and those that fit into the category of “other”. (I realized, while standing at a booth, that the woman next to me was holding a crystal in each hand while chanting and swaying. People watching is always slightly more interesting when minor celebrity enters the mix, so we were kind of surprised when a voice from behind us informed us that we “couldn’t get out” of the door that we were determinedly pushing on that we were face to face with none other than Rolf Harris.

US readers most likely would not know the inimitable Mr. Harris from a hole in the ground, but he’s a minor legend here in the UK for just being one of those guys who’s just always been a nice guy on TV for as long as anyone can remember. He was reclining on a couch, apparently taking a break from the show floor. He told 3’s that she looked “dramatic”. (3’s is a very tall, lovely girl with bright orange hair, so he wasn’t too far off in his assessment.)

Peppering this post are pictures of the shiny that I brought home with me. I’m looking very much forward to playing with all of the beautiful cabs and beads that have taken their place in my collection!

Mooching Towards Greatness

My most used design process of late is sitting down with a sheet of silver and my computer, seeing what shapes I can come up with, making a pattern, cutting it out, putting it on the metal, cutting THAT out and away we go. I've been trying new things recently; moving away from slightly more fiddly pieces with lots of joins and stones and into larger, bold shapes. The views of these pieces have been letting me know that I'm headed in the right direction.

I do tend to plan things out ahead of time if they happen to be fiddly, however. This mock up is a plan for an undertaking that may be some time in completion. It's called "Twelve Dancing Princesses" and is based on an illustration by the incomparable Kinuko Craft. I have a slight advantage in the process due to the fact that I have actually already made it once, before I knew what I was doing, especially in relation to soldering. Recently, due to my former ineptitude, I was able to pry almost all of the stones from the former piece and sadly consign rather a lot of silver to my growing pile of scrap that I am at a loss to know what to do with. When I receive my newest batch of silver sheet, I'll start on the second incarnation of this piece.

My husband and I have odd conversations sometimes. The other day he remarked,

"Have you ever wondered if you do really everyday things the same way as everyone else? Like going to the bathroom? Since you can't ASK anyone if you're doing it right, do you ever wonder if everyone else, like, stands on their head or something?"

That he asks questions like this is largely the reason why I married him in the first place.

I feel that way about silversmithing. For fear of someone looking at me like I crawled out from under a pile of silver shavings, I've never really ASKED anyone how to do things, I've just always done what works for me. Are there easier or better ways to do what I do? Probably. But having built my skill by trial and error, I've always been a little hesitant to ask others in my profession about their creative process lest I find that I'm a complete disaster.

I suppose the process isn't as important as the end result.

A Sale!- Here Lie Sleeping Dragons (coral)

After a bit of a lull in business, I was pleased to sell these smokin' little beauties!

After finally getting a dedicated work space for my jewelry as well as a storage cabinet, I was able to finally clear out my aging and groaning toolbox. At the bottom, I discovered an extremely large coil of heavy sterling silver wire that I'd completely forgotten about that was just ITCHING to be used in all manner of lovlies.

I found that it was especially suitable for hammering into beautiful organic shapes, hence the Here Lie Sleeping Dragons series.

These coral beauties are on their way to their new home!

Digging For Treasuries

Treasuries on Etsy are rather like busses. You won't find yourself in one for AGES, and then your lovelies will turn up in three at once! Many thanks again to Kanka, Paisley and Cerra for including me in their beautiful lists.

As well as being featured, I managed to snag my own Treasury West. (The main Treasury seems to be terminally crowded these days.)

The Garden Under My Skin

Sometimes I get pretty excited about pieces that I churn out.

A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I went to get some new ink. I'm going to be that mother at PTA meetings that all of the other mothers talk behind their hands about. Well, I can still make brownies, bitches, having a big descending swallow on my back isn't going to change that. At any rate, I added a new flower tattoo on my ankle in the shape of a traditional cherry blossom with some added scrolly bits and leaves thrown into the bargain.

Since making a bird pendant earlier in the week, I felt like going for another big, bold shape and thought my tat would be a great pattern to work from.

My daughter obliged with a long-ish nap this afternoon allowing me to get the whole piece almost entirely finished except for the polishing, which, unfortunately, I have to complete in my in-law's garage so that I don't splatter the walls of our first floor flat with incredibly stain-y polishing rouge. It turned out so lovely and shiny, I was tickled as pink as the coral bead.

Check it out here.

Drilling For Common Sense

Let's face it; tools are pretty boring. I grew up in a house with a father who was adept at using all manner of frightening implements that he used to build miraculous things, like our house. But the weekly trips to lumber yards or home centres had me looking around for ways to kill myself. However, tools become a good deal less boring when one has need of them, so a few weeks ago, I bought my first power tool, a Proxxon Precision Drill/Grinder FBS 240/E.

What that means, I'm not totally sure. I can't give you specs, because I don't know them. All that I care about it that it drills very small holes, which it what I need it to do. It might have the capability of doing my taxes too, but hole drilling is all I'm really interested in.

I invested in the drill first, sensibly deciding to wait until next pay period to order the stand that it fits in. But, having a new toy in a box without playing with it became too great a temptation this morning and I set about testing the thing out.

I thought, "Who needs a bloody drill stand anyhow?"

Well, apparently /I/ do. After the fine drill bit that I knew in my heart was a bad choice for free hand drilling broke off and pinged across the garage into the unknown, taking the piece of silver I'd be drilling with it, I trudged upstairs, went back to the Proxxon site and sheepishly ordered the drill stand and a replacement bit.

It seems that my Proxxon Precision Drill/Grinder FBS 240/E is not the only tool in the house.

Excuse My Dust

I've been lucky enough in the past week or so to get not one, but TWO lovely treasuries.

The first, entitled, "The Book Thief" in homage to one of my new favorite reads, featured book and text themed items of all sorts.



The second was to feature some of the lovely ladies of the UK Sellers group and their items in "the Secret Life of Flowers".



Rather than working on new items during The Prawn's morning nap, I had a play with my new light box that I spent Saturday morning building. The light is much more diffuse and not as harsh, allowing for much better and more controlled photography. I haven't tried yet with artificial lighting, but it definitely makes photographing in glorious sunlight MUCH easier!

In addition I've been trying to implement some of the fixes that folks kind enough to critique my shop have recommended, including photography, re-listing and changes to my banner and avatar, so there's still a bit of dust around and more still to come, but I'm hoping the work will pay off in sales!

Tempest in a Teapot Necklaces

Four new necklaces have just popped up in the shop in time for the warm weather and increasingly barer necks and shoulders!

At the moment, I'm working on the Etsy UK Team's May challenge, which is "Space", so expect some celestial creations in the near future!

A Few New Arrivals

Just a few new bits now available in the shop.



A green version of the Monsoon (Night) necklace that's already in the shop. Sterling silver with Chinese turquoise, Emerald and labradorite accents.



One of two matte/polished pairs of earrings that I've finished. Perfect for summer; Sterling silver with labradorite beads.



I think the lustre of garnet is really striking; especially complimented with freshwater pearl. Sterling silver with garnet, garnet beads and freshwater pearl.



The second pair of summery matte/polished earring with peacock pearls.

The White Vinyard Earrings

I'm not really into stone lore so much. It's kind of a language, like the old Victorian system of truly "saying it with flowers". Floriography enabled people to send coded messages to one another by way of colorful vegitation. For example, an arrangement of Bird's Foot Trefoil, White Carnation and Lobelia meant that you might want to think again before walking down that dark alley. Whereas a bouquet of coriander and lime blossom meant that you were TOTALLY going to get some.

Stones don't have quite the same specific meanings, although obviously some people put a great deal of stock in their benefits. I've often heard that a stone that you connect with is YOUR stone, so if I have a stone, I suppose that it's the White moonstone. I'm not sure if I like it because it seems to have an inner glow or that it goes with absolutely everything in my wardrobe, but I've always felt drawn to it and use it often in my jewelry.

The White Vineyard earrings came from a dream where I was walking through an entirely white landscape, complete with white fruit on the vines. These earrings feature moonstone AND freshwater pearls, which compliment eachother so nicely; the opacity of pearls sets off the luminosity of the moonstones. Check them out here.

Ladies in Lavender- A Sale!

I was hugely pleased to sell this pair of earrings only hours after listing them! Ladies in Lavender are traditional Egyptian twist earrings with two different shades of amethyst beads dangling from them.

I haven't done much wire work recently; I've been concentrating more on sheet silver. But it was refreshing to get out the pliers and twist away.

Many thanks to my lovely customer! They're in the post today.

This Shining Earth Earrings

A few years ago, I had a part time job at a small jewelry shop. It wasn't a gold and diamonds affair, but rather baubles made in Mexico or India from silver and semi-precious stones. It was, by all accounts, a cushy job, albeit rather lonely most of the time on slow days. However, I was often joined by my employer, the owner of the establishment.

And she was bat-shit crazy.

In the field of business acumen, her lack of common sense was quite literally breathtaking. She kept all of the takings from the shop in paper bags in a box in the basement, shoved in between old cardstock and rubbish. The justification? "Safes are expensive and would put up my insurance premiums." However, this self-same mad woman who didn't wish to pay higher insurance premiums took the rather unusual step of taking out TERRORISM INSURANCE at a cost of £50 a month. I'm sorry? One has to wonder what silver-tongued salesman serpent managed to convince her that her tiny jewelry shop in the middle of a small town was IN ANY WAY at risk from the forces of Al-Quaida. That guy must have smelled the insanity a mile away. She also paid FAR above what any retail worker could consider minimum wage, so for someone who wanted desperately to hang on to cash, she was awfully good at throwing it down the toilet.

Personally, she was also seven different flavors of odd. She could sometimes be creepily empathetic, taking your own problems far too personally; even weeping at bad news that you yourself had received. But, at other moments, she could be stunningly rude and unreasonable. After she'd chased off the 4th manager in less than a year with a barrage of insults, I let her have it with both barrels, fully expecting to be dismissed myself. Instead, she practically crumbled into a pile of dust and slunk out of the shop in a fit of self doubt and loathing.

The only thing that I had in common with this bizarre woman was an undying love of smoky quartz. She traveled twice a year to Mexico to buy from local artisans for ridiculously low prices which she would mark up more than 200% upon return, so her profit margin was pretty healthy. It was rare that she came back with smoky quartz pieces, but when she did, she always made a point to show them to me before they were sent to be hallmarked. One such piece is now a part of my jewelry box. (I got a 33% discount, so I only paid about twice what it was worth instead of three times.)

I don't tend to work with faceted stones, but when I saw these smoky quartz briolette beads, I knew that I had to have them. I love the teardrop shape, it's facets and how it compliments the matte finish of the sterling silver circles. This Shining Earth earrings are simple enough for jeans and a t-shirt or elegant enough for a night out. (I'm already planning to make a pair for myself.) Check them out here.

Circe Necklace

Like most floaty folk-chick types, during my time in college oh those many years ago, I developed an obsession with the Pre-Raphaelites and JW Waterhouse in particular. I wanted everyone to know that I was a sensitive soul that cherished love and beauty. The truth is, I liked listening to "Jagged Little Pill" over and over, drinking beer, playing naked soccer at 2 in the morning and trying to make time with sensitive theatre boys who had long hair and cried easily. There was a girl on the dorm floor that inhabited who actually LOOKED like Waterhouse's "Wildflowers", so naturally, we all really WANTED to hate her, but she was too cute and friendly, so we all tried to keep our simmering resentment on the back burner while she tossed her long, flowing, dark, pre-raphaelite locks.

Waterhouse's paintings have stayed with me though the years, however; "Circe Individosa", depicting the famous seducer of Odysseus poisoning the sea, in particular due to it's exceptionally beautiful blues and greens. I could never find a print of it, although other more popular paintings of his adorned my walls, such as "Hylas and the Nymphs", "The Lady of Shallot", "Ophelia", "La Belle de sans Merci" and "Destiny". In listing these prints, it occurs to me that I owned quite a few more than that; not an insignificant investment in art that ended up stuck to dorm room walls with blu-tack. Do I know the whereabouts of any of those prints at present? I do not.

Bar none, my favorite stone to work with is Labradorite. The play of color inside a particularly nice cabochon is enough to keep me visually occupied for ages. I've made two Circes, but have found that it's difficult to get ahold of the particular teardrop cabs needed to make more. I peruse eBay often in hopes of finding something, but often come up empty-handed. The smaller tear-drop cabs are even MORE difficult to find and came from a company in Thailand that unfortunately no longer exists.

This is the remaining Circe; it's partner was sold at Christmastime. Have a gander at her and her lovely friends in the shop.

Welcome

I'd like to say that metal always called to me, but it didn't. I wasn't born with silver in my veins. I got into jewelry because I wanted to spend a spring semester goofing off and I was fortunate enough to attend a liberal arts college that allowed me to do just that.

There was rather a lot of melting in the beginning. And burns. And swearing. And saw bites. And firescale. But little by little, I've got the hang of bending Sterling to my will and coming out with a nice finished product.

What influences the jewelry?. Fantastical stories in particular. My shelves are crammed with lush, illustrated faerie tales and sweeping epic trilogies like Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials , Lord of the Rings , and Garth Nix's The Old Kingdom . It's the love of stories such as this that drove me to want to adorn myself with them. To make jewelry as potent and sumptuous as the stories that inspire me. I hope they'll inspire you too.

Thanks for taking the time to stop by.