New Designs & What I've Been Up To

I took some time today to make some new things:

Green agate & pearl: the inspiration for this one came from the vintage art nouveau necklace on the left

Blue agate, mother of pearl, pearl & jade: I was going for a bit of a layering effect. This was actually created by making a 'flower' of the dark blue agate and using very thin wire to wrap other beads around and around the flower base.

The only issue I have with these designs is that I love them. So I'm going to keep them for myself! This has been a bit of an issue overall lately .... so if you see me wearing a lot of jewellery, this is why!

What else I've been up to:

• my jewellery is now in a store in Bloor West Village, Toronto (www.periwinkleonbloor.com)
• my jewellery will also be on display outside the Inforum (my faculty's library) along with other iSchool artists
  

Midnight Sunsitara

Midnight Sunsitara Orbit Earrings

I've always loved this type of bead. It's a dark blue, almost black, with hundreds of little sparkles (Yes, I am a magpie). I recently learned that they're actually a glass bead - also called goldstone, it is created by melting soda-lime glass containing copper salts in a reducing (oxygen depleted) environment, converting the copper salts to metallic copper, and thus creating sparkles!
This process was developed in the seventeenth century in Venice by the Miotti family. As Venice is also famous for its' glassmaking, particularly Murano, this is hardly a surprise!

Silver Earthsea Set

So a friend of mine really liked the Earthsea Earrings & Necklace, but preferred silver for herself:



I really like how the new pendant turned out. I am always a big fan of the blue and silver colour combination.

Making Earrings

Welcome to the first ever video post!
It's pretty straightforward - click here to watch a video of me putting together a pair of my favourite jumble earrings. This pair is silver wire with silver glass beads.



The finished product!

Silver and Bead Jumble Earrings

BIG on Bloor

Big on Bloor was a lot of fun! It's a great community event. This year we got rained out a little bit - but most of us kept on going, and the rain went away from about 4-6 so we had a good time in there.

friends at the festival

my mom and my sister came and helped out

despite the rain!

vendors living it up with hula hoops!

BIG on Bloor this Saturday!

Sunfire Necklace: I love these bright, summery colours! They have really nice matching earrings too!

BIG on Bloor is coming up fast, so I hope all of you in the Toronto area are planning on coming out!
I'm very excited to be a part of it this year - a 2km section of Bloor St. W is being shut down from Christie Pitts to Lansdowne for a great big craft and food festival, and of course performers!
The festival runs this Saturday from 1-9, and I look forward to seeing you there!

June Goals

Grape Bunch Earrings: are so much fun! I even have my own pair.

Let's see how I did this past month:

1)Apply to be a part of the Wychwood Market I am! Come by July 25, Sept. 19 or 26!
2)Experiment with product photography (create a lightbox or take photos outside). I've re-added this because I still want to do more with it. And see above about it counting. I've been taking all my pictures outside recently. Can't beat natural light.
3)write out my business plan. This goes back to the strategic goals - I think I'd like to have a map somewhere.
4) Get my accounts in order for 2009. I just did my 2008 taxes. There was swearing.

Not so much on the last two. I think the business plan might become a July goal for when my summer class and so on is finished! Onto the June Goals:

1)Get my accounts in order for 2009.
2)Make two new necklace and earring designs (I have some Art Deco designs that I'm dying to try out!)
3)Keep blogging and posting one item a week.

The number of goals seems to be going down as the months pass. I'm not sure if that's because they're bigger goals, I'm just lazy, or I'm being more realistic about my time. I guess we'll see in a month!

*also, I'll be posting photos soon from the Alt's Midnight Market! It was a great time.