Focus on Ocean Jasper Pendant

Feature Designer

Outi, a Finnish jewelry artisan was one of the earliest designers I featured on this blog. I liked her simple and elegant style of designing jewelry and shared her love of beautiful gemstones. Shown here is one of her many creations - a wire wrapped ocean jasper pendant necklace.

Although I couldn't read a word of Finnish, pictures are worth a thousand words. Her blog, Helmetti and her website show her skilled versatility but above all the quality of her products and attention to detail. Her sites show her preference for clean, uncluttered lines.

What really impressed me in my early days of struggling with jewelry photography, was how well she photographed her work. She is truly an inspiration. As many people have been asking her how she takes her photos, she recently took pictures of her worktable/studio and posted it on her blog and on Flickr.

As you can see below, she has a fantastic worktable as it is right by a window - perfect for jewelry designing and for taking photos on the spot. As I myself learnt the hard way, you don't need a light box. Natural light works very well. Outi has " a pretty decent camera" as she puts it but even a good point and shoot camera works. Just make sure you have the white balance set to daylight and cloudy/indoors.

The camera also must have a macro function for close ups otherwise everything will be fuzzy. If you have a steady hand, you can omit the tripod. I sometimes use a tiny tripod right on the table or brace my elbows against my body. One great tip from Outi is the use of a white background - a folded piece of white paper or card to reflect the outside light. Nothing fancy and minimum effort!





Related Post
13 Things I Learnt About Jewelry Photography
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The Eco Jewelry of Mana Bernandes

Feature Designer

Mana Bernandes is a Brazilian eco jewelry designer who shows us visually stunning jewelry can be made by using recycled materials. Like I said before, it's not what you use but how you use it that really distinguishes inspirational designs.

She is part of the design collective called TOUCH which is all about "creating hand-made products, rather than mass produced." Hear, hear. The group also says, "Our goal is not only to make products that are beautiful, but good for the environment and those who make them." This gold and black necklace is just gorgeous, reminiscent of Egyptian collars and it was cleverly made from bobby pins!



Tons of used phone cards must get tossed everyday and yet, in this designer's hands, they make colourful "beads" in an illusion style necklace. A great way to reduce landfill waste!



Where Bernandes really stands out in terms of creativity is in her recycled PET jewelry (below) made from beverage and water containers. If I didn't tell you what they were made of, I bet you wouldn't have guessed. She cut up small pieces and built up her clever designs from them. There are Swarovski crystals somewhere but I can't see them. She used long bamboo toothpicks and pearls for her earring design.






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One Glorious Cloisonne Bracelet

Some people just have a natural flair for colours, such as Natasha, a first time beader. She was confident about what she liked - Chinese cloisonne beads and she successfully mixed large oval red ones with small turquoise round ones. She also mixed silver and gold tone rondelle beads. Natasha just instinctively knew what goes well together.



Her beautiful design worked because she had contrasts - different shapes, cool and warm colours, big and small. Yet, there were elements that tied everything together -the coloured beads were all cloisonne and all the beads were metallic. Good job, Natasha!

Beader Design #: 424
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The Incomparable Diamond at the Royal Ontario Museum

Incomparable? With a name like that, I just had to find out the scoop on this famous diamond. For a start, it is currently on display at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada and will remain there until next March 22 as part of the museum's The Nature of Diamonds exhibit in the Garfield Weston Hall.

It is the world's third largest faceted diamond. It earned its name not just because it is huge but because it is a flawless fancy diamond.



The 809 carat rough diamond was apparently found in the 1980's by a little girl in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire)whilst playing on a pile of rejected rocks from a nearby diamond mine. She gave it to her uncle who then sold it and was eventually bought jointly by Marvin Samuels (Premier Gem Corp) and Louis Glick (Rose Trading). I do wonder what that little girl and her family got for the diamond and whether they are still poor or not.

It took Samuels, a master cutter 4 years to study and cut the gemstone down to its present 407 carat size. 14 other satellite diamonds cut from the rest of the rough diamond are also on display. The whole faceting process was tricky because the gem was so irregular in shape. Samuels tried to cut away as little as possible because they wanted it to be bigger than the Cullinan I aka The Star of Africa - the second largest cut diamond in the world. But they decided to just concentrate on eliminating the inclusions or flaws. The resulting kite shape generated a new term - a triolette.

The Incomparable was offered for sale in the late 1980's but no one reached the seller's reserve price of $20 million. It was apparently put on eBay in November 2002 with a reserve of ~$15 million but still did not sell. It goes to show people will try anything on eBay!

Reference
Famous Diamonds

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Button Jewelry

Buttons were first used as ornaments as long ago as circa 2800 BC in India and were also used by the Ancient Chinese and the Romans. Buttons did not become fasteners with buttonholes until the 13th century in Germany. We've come full circle now as buttons are wonderful accent pieces in jewelry. There are so many gorgeous types to choose from and many ways to incorporate them into jewelry. So here are a few examples to get your creative juices going.

Millie of the Bead Sisterhood made this lovely chain maille bracelet linking in the antique- look two-hole buttons with jump rings.



Craftlog has a great tutorial layering mother of pearl shell buttons using embroidery thread to build up the graduated design. Lengths of chain were attached on either side of this fantastic focal piece.



Another way to attach the buttons is with wire. Bayou Bags's easy brooch tutorial shows you how to wire the buttons to the pin finding. It's really easy even if you're not into wire work.



If you are indeed inspired, then check out Sara Withers' book : Button Jewelry: Over 25 Original Designs for Necklaces, Earrings, Bracelets and More. To save you a trip to your local library, check out Google Books' Review of her book for some fabulous pictures.



Beader Design # : 423
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Stylishly Contemporary Mother of Pearl Jewelry Set

Sometimes beaders start with one piece and when they are on a roll, like Natalie, they keep going!

Natalie started with the pendant. As she prefers the simplicity of contemporary design, she put just three square grey mother of pearl beads in a row separated with clear seed beads. The little wire squiggle was an afterthought.

Then she progressed to making her bracelet and once that was complete, she had to have the earrings to match to complete her set.

A lot of artisan jewelry particularly wire worked pieces are amazingly intricate and ornate. But let's not forget people like Natalie who favor contemporary styles which calls for uncluttered, simple lines in neutral colours.





Beader Design #: 421
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2000 Year Old Pearl and Emerald Earring

The Israel Antiquities Authority recently released this amazing photo of a well preserved 2000-year-old earring found in a Jerusalem archaeological dig. It was located underneath a parking lot near the walls of the Old City in the ruins of a burnt down Byzantine building.

The gold earring has a large pearl with two dangles carrying emeralds and smaller pearls. The emeralds' gold setting looks a little worse for wear but the pearls are in great shape considering how long they have been buried. What's more, the design is just as wearable today as it was 2000 years ago.

Jewelry dating back centuries in general are rare because the items were usually taken apart, melted down and remade. The Antiquities Authority said in their press release, "Finds from the Roman period are rare in Jerusalem, because the city was destroyed by the Roman Empire in the first century A.D." The earring was dated by comparing the style to funerary portraits from Roman-era Egypt (see my past post - The Roman Obsession for Pearls).

This earring clearly belonged to a wealthy woman. It's a pity we have no idea who she was or what she looked like. Or even how she came to lose it.

Just think, if you lost one of your earrings today, perhaps someone 2000 years from now might find it and wonder about the person who dropped it!!

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