Clear Drop of Water Jewelry
Part 2 of 2
I know some readers out there are lamp work artisans so they can appreciate the craftsmanship of this designer better than the rest of us who don't make glass beads. The simple hand blown glass pendant on leather cord shown here is the work of Swedish artisan, Karl-Oskar . It looks simple but I am sure it is not easy to handle the molten glass just so it forms a drop like water does.
3 Euros from every sale of the "CLEAR DROP OF WATER" necklace goes to the UNICEF (United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund)'s water project in Ethiopia which strives to provide good water and sanitation to the people there. Good water is something we take so much for granted. Diseases caused by bad water kill 4,000 children worldwide - every single day.
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Jewelry Inspired by Food
Part 1 of 2
Don't you wish there could be a fairer share of the world's food resources? Some people have too much to eat and many more don't have enough.
Designer Kali Arulpragasam took molds of staple grains such as rice, beans, sweet corn, nuts, black bean, lentils, chick peas, wheat and edible seeds to cast them into solid silver beads, some of which are plated with gold. The designs range from bold Egyptian style collars to delicate pendant pieces.
The jewelry collection, appropriately called HUNGER was designed specifically to raise awareness of the current world food crisis. Rising grain prices combined with the credit crunch problems mean that many poor people will no longer be able to afford to buy food. Part of the profits from the jewelry sales will go to Oxfam International which originally approached the designer about a collaborative project. The entire collection can be viewed here as a pdf file. For sales contact stacey@superfertile.com
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Original Post by THE BEADING GEM
Jewelry Making Tips - Jewelry Business Tips
Pretty Wire Crochet Bracelet
Virtually none of the women who have tried out this technique at our workshops have ever done wire crochet before. What's more, every single design has been different. It's not that difficult to make your own one of a kind crochet jewelry. If this convinces you to try out wire crochet, then check out my past tutorial post - Knit and Crochet Wire Jewelry Tutorial and Books.
Beader Design #: 458
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ARTFIRE - A New Alternative to ETSY
As with anything, there is always something new sooner or later which delivers what people want. That something is ArtFire. It is an Arizona based start-up.
This new online artisan marketplace is somewhat similar to Etsy but with a couple of significant differences in their payment system. You pay them a set sum per month no matter how many items you have for sale and there is no commisson. They are currently offering $7/month (for life) for the first 5000 accounts. According to their website, they have 1500 signed up already. They also plant a tree for every person who signs up! (Update: Note Artfire allows you to have a free store but you won't have access to certain features. The current rate is now $12/month)
Let's compare ArtFire with Etsy with simplified scenarios. For $7, you get to list 35 items on Etsy which you have to pay again if they don't sell after 4 months. You pay ArtFire $7 a month, every month irregardless of how many items you have for as long as you like. For the sake of comparison, let's say you have 35 items in ArtFire too. To make the math easy, let's say every single item in both stores costs $10.
If you sold everything you had in one month in both stores :
On Etsy :you will make $10 x 35 =$350. They charge a commission of 3.5% so your take home is actually $350-12.25 = $337.75. Take away the listing fee, you are left with $330.75.
On ArtFire : you get $350 minus the $7 monthly fee leaving you with $343.
If you sold everything you had only in the 4th month in both stores :
On Etsy : As you've already paid the listing fee for four months when you first listed, your take home is the same as above $330.75. (ie you didn't have to pay for relisting yet)
On ArtFire : Now that monthly fee comes into play. Four months of listing, that's $7 x 4 = $28. So your take home is $322.
In real life it is actually more complex than that but I would say Etsy is a better bet if your stuff sells slowly and you only have a small shop. But if you are a prolific producer and your creations sell quickly, then ArtFire may be the way to go. There's also nothing wrong with having two stores too!
At the moment Etsy is the better known site so there is more buying traffic there. Is ArtFire less competitive for jewelry artisans? I don't think so. Even at this young stage, there are already about 13,000 jewelry items up for sale. The nearest categories below that are Accessories and Craft Supplies, each with about 2000 items for sale.
Does anyone have anything to add about their personal ArtFire experience? I know some readers have ArtFire stores.
For more tutorials check out my Jewelry Making Tips
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Organic Chemistry Jewelry
Their designs are a modern day alchemy mix of resin, dyes and sometimes gold leaf. Their hand poured polyester resin jewelry range from coloured chunks which resemble crystals to carbon ring inspired necklaces. Their approach includes trial and error experimentation to get their ideas to come to life.
Would you believe they actually ditched science part way through college to study fashion? Jewelry is their first collection. They hope to eventually launch their own clothing line. Small baby steps lead to big steps! Their jewelry can be bought directly from their website.
The use of gold leaf in their creations is inspired! Their work reminds me of alchemists long ago. These early chemists tried to create the legendary "Philosopher's stone" which they thought could transmute base metal into precious ones like gold and silver. The ultimate goal was less so for riches but an elixir of life which could cure all ills and impart immortality. Nicolas Flamel (featured in the first Harry Potter book) and his wife Perenelle, were real 15th century alchemists, best known for the alleged creation of the Philosopher's stone. The couple were wealthy and people naturally thought the source of their riches came from their alchemy experiments. Both were definitely mortal.
Although alchemy is no longer a proper scientific discipline, it was seriously studied centuries ago. One of the world's greatest physicists, Isaac Newton (1642-1726), who defined gravity, actually spent half his time obsessed with alchemy! Imagine what he could have accomplished if he spent ALL his time on physics.
Perhaps we can consider ourselves alchemists in a way as we are in pursuit of transmuting base materials into precious jewelry!
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The Lemonade Award!
So to live up to her words, in an "attitude of gratitude", I select the following blogs for the same award.
Here are the rules for the award:
1.Put the logo on your blog or post
2.Nominate blogs that show great Gratitude and/or Attitude and link to your post.
3. Let them know they have received this award by leaving a comment on their blog.
Bev's Jewelry
Bev has both gratitude and attitude in spades. First of all, she is a cancer survivor. She knows too well what a horrid disease this is so she created a jewelry line on her online shop called Lexie's Jewelry where $10 from each purchase goes to cancer research. The jewelry collection is named in honour of a 10 year old girl who developed a brain tumor when she was just a tiny baby and has endured much in her young life. Bev truly has a heart of gold - some of her blog posts touch on the plight of people less fortunate than us. I do hope Bev has plenty of forgiveness too for I think I forgot to acknowledge a similar sort of award she gave me a while ago!
A Bead A Day
BetteJo willingly shares her life, both the ups and downs with her many readers - a life enriched by her two grown children, her four cats and a sense of humour. Her Maxine Monday cartoons are guaranteed to put a smile on your face. She stumbled onto my blog back in 2007 and I am grateful she did. Not only has she taken the time to leave many, many comments, one early comment in particular on my past post, 16th century Elizabethan Metrosexual and His Jewelry, encouraged me to develop what is now a reader favourite, jewelry related mini-bios of famous people from history or as one reader puts it the "wacky bygone generations!"
Kokopelli Design
Dagmar who hails from Germany deserves this award for her can do attitude. Her passion is Native American bead and quill work. When she realised many of the beading community only communicated in English, she made sure they could read her blog by publishing it in two languages! Although I don't read or speak German, there are recognisable words like "und" for "and", "kollektion" for "collection". This is not surprising for Old English was the language of the Germanic tribes collectively known as the Anglo-Saxons who invaded and began settling Britain from the 5th century AD. So I am grateful for Dagmar for her linguistic lessons with every blog post and of course, finding out what she has been up to.
Creative Potential on Etsy
Pamela Vale is a multi-talented artist who lives up to the name of her shop and blog for she is just a-bubbling with lots of ideas. Like me, she also believes you can make great jewelry from unusual materials such as a bracelet a clear plastic tubing stuffed with pretty yarns. Dipping into her past posts, you can find off-centred wire worked bails, trompe l'oeil paintings, artwork, home decor and a series of antique store finds such as this jewelry display. Her artistic eye also results in some clever jewelry photography ideas such as using scrapbook props (not paper). Her floating earring photo shoot was really cool! She does indeed see potential in everything around her. So thank you for inspiring us all.
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Chasing Butterflies Jewelry
For the accompanying earrings, Grace didn't use the butterflies, just the purple glass pearls she had for the necklace. She incorporated matte pale purple hearts instead because the jewelry was made with a lot of love!
Beader Design #: 457
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Plumbing for a Woman's Lost $70,000 Diamond Ring
She sent my brother, sister and I outside to where the drain outlet emptied into a large open drain. We had a fun time poking around with sticks but didn't find anything as the heavy gold mounted earring was actually still in the drain U-bend.
If you drop your jewelry down the toilet, you may not be so lucky as Allison Berry found out earlier this month. Her 7 carat $70,000 wedding diamond ring fell off her hand as she was flushing the toilet in the bathroom of the Black Bear Diner in Phoenix, Arizona. The force of the water carried the ring away. City workers tried to flush it out but failed.
Mr Rooter, a plumbing franchise, came to the rescue. Using a small video camera, the ring was spotted 3 feet down and 5 feet along from the toilet. They then jackhammered for 1.5 hours, removed the pipe and finally recovered the ring 8 hrs after Allison Berry lost it. The picture taken by Mike Roberts from Mr Rooter shows the plumber holding the ring. Roberts said "They always say diamonds are a girl's best friend. In this case, a plumber is a girl's best friend."
She and her husband were so grateful, they tipped Roberts and his technician $400 each. The diner employee got $200 also for staying late. The cost of the special plumbing job and presumably the repair? $5,200. The bill from the city? $1,000. The look of joy on her teary face when the ring was found - priceless.
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Original Post by THE BEADING GEM
Jewelry Making Tips - Jewelry Business Tips
Plaincraft Lets You Pick the Best Jewelry Design
Have you ever wondered, deep down, if your jewelry designs were really, really good? Your friends and family may gush over your creations but perhaps the one way to know for sure if your jewelry has broadbased appeal is if you got a whole bunch of total strangers to judge your jewelry purely on its merits. A fabulous design doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be wildly popular.
Plaincraft is a new website where you can get crowdsourced ratings on handmade creations. Just upload your design (with your online shop link) and viewers can rate it on a scale of 1-20. Everyday, the top 10 are displayed on their front page. Below are my favourites from yesterday's top 10.
As they said on Plaincraft's Twitter - "No frills, no fees, it's free!" It's an easy way to get exposure for your work. Yep, free advertising. You got to like that.
Exotic Paisley Necklace by JoslinJewels
Sheridan Joslin is a fantastic wire work artisan from Bainbridge Island, WA. I didn't know until after I stumbled on Plaincraft that she reads my blog too!
The Vision Chain Maille Earrings by IkowDesigns
Chris from North Carolina is a passionate jewelry artisan who fell in love with chain maille and it shows.
Nouveau Blue by JoslinJewels
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Delicious Food Jewelry
Her images are so good, the jewelry looks delicious enough to want to eat it! You can't get any fresher than her strawberry pendant. I wonder if Beth realised she created a jewelry pun when she made her pear earrings. Pear-shaped gems - get it?
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Diagonally Drilled Pearls
Chris who adores pearls also loved the diagonally drilled pink pearls from my gemstone collection just as they were. She transferred them from their temporary string onto beading wire following the same order of pearls. She saved some for her earrings which looked especially fun and funky. This necklace will look beautiful against her favourite black outfits.
Beader Design #:456
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How to Use Vernier Calipers
If you have many types of rings as I do, this chore can be a headache. So vernier calipers come in handy to check for the internal diameter of the rings. Vernier scales and calipers are used by scientists like me but if you are not familiar with them, perhaps I should explain.
As you can see, there are actually four scales - two each for metric and imperial measurements. The pincers are used for either internal or external measurements. I placed a ring on the internal pincers and moved the sliding scales until the ring was just held - the little geared wheel helps me shift them.
First you read the main measurement along the inch scale (second scale from the top). Now find any line along the top scale which sits exactly along any line on the second scale. In this example, the "0" mark on the top scale is pretty well close to the 1/4" mark making this ring a 1/4" id (internal diameter) one.
For the metric measurement, do the same. The main centimetre scale shows it is just beyond 0.6 cm or 6 mm. The matching mark on the lowest scale is 2 so this ring is 6.2mm id.
I only paid a few dollars for this cheap plastic vernier calipers. It's manual and not that precise. The marks will also eventually wear away.
Metal calipers are more durable. If, like me, your eyesight isn't as good as it used to be, digital calipers like this one are the way to go!!
Disclosure
I do receive a small fee for any products purchased through affiliate links. This goes towards the support of this blog and to provide resource information to readers. The opinions expressed are solely my own. They would be the same whether or not I receive any compensation.
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Original Post by THE BEADING GEM
Jewelry Making Tips - Jewelry Business Tips
Kate Cusack's Amazing Zipper Jewelry
I was particularly taken with what she said, "In art school, I realized that once you allow yourself to use materials in unconventional ways, then, just about anything is possible." She is living proof we should expand our horizons to do something different. Why make jewelry like everyone else does?
Kate is not only a jewelry designer but a costumer and wig maker. Hers is a hectic life which could see her working in her studio or shuttling around NYC shopping for her next show. She is also a most inventive window dresser - she made huge Marie Antoinette style wigs from plastic wrap for Tiffany & Co.'s 5th Avenue store.
Her jewelry can be purchased from select shops and museum galleries or her Etsy store. She also maintains a blog so her fans can keep up with her myriad activities.
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Related Posts
Tina Echterholter's Zipper Jewelry
Outi Pyy's Zipper Jewelry
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