Pink and Lilac

Pink and lilac are a match made in heaven. Or so I think with my bluey-purpley-pinky palette. This is another one of my 'Saturn' lentils, made with extreme patience and love! These take a long time to make as each one is carefully built up in layers, you have to estimate the exact amount of glass - too much and it overflows the press, too little and it doesn't press to the right shape - and you only get one shot at it!

This one is made up of a core rolled in pinky-lilac frit, gravity swirled, then built up in layers, with each layer enclosing some latticino, some silvered ivory or some silver mesh, and then pressed. Precision and patience is required, but if you get it right, the sense of achievement makes it worthwhile!

This is available at my Etsy shop - www.etsy.com/shop/JoopyAndSmith if you would like to own it.

What's this then?

I don't know what this is but a few weeks ago, the tree at the end of our garden dropped all of its leaves (seemed like a funny time of year for it, but there you are) and then bloomed. Amazing, big, red waxy flowers. This is quite a deceptive picture actually, because I must have taken it on the only day in the past 6 weeks when the sun was shining; otherwise it's been rainy and cloudy.

More tortoiseshell...

This is similar to the previous tortoiseshell beads, but with a nice whirlpool in the middle of the beads. These beads, are rolled in silver foil, then half-rolled in frit before being pressed into a lentil shape, or 'oblate spheroid' as my friend Steve would have it. They are then heated in the middle and the swirl created. I love mixing glass with silver because you never know what will happen. Here the frit has pushed the silver to the edges, which has created a lovely silvery rim around the frit. This frit mix is actually a pinky-purple.... but when you add silver in, this is what you get!

Beads available from Etsy if you would like them - http://www.etsy.com/shop/JoopyAndSmith

Tortoiseshell or peacock, or something like that...

I really like these. Mixing silver and glass, you're never quite sure what you're going to get. These are made of pink glass wrapped in silver foil, then rolled in a frit mix from Val Cox. It's created this amazing tortoiseshell effect, with added blues and pinks. The frit has pushed the silver foil aside so there's also a really cool mosaic effect. I really like these...and I'm offering a set of seven (5 tortoishell plus two co-0rdinating golden lentils, also wrapped in silver foil) over in my Etsy shop - http://www.etsy.com/shop/JoopyAndSmith . Loads of scope for all sorts of jewellery; I can see the large one (3cm in size) as a pendant, and the two little ones would make really nice earrings.

Beads versus jewellery...

I tussled with this one for a long time; whether to make jewellery from my own beads and sell that or whether to just sell beads. The thing is, more people want to buy beads than jewellery, I think, and once people start muttering that they want to buy your necklaces just to 'get at' the beads, one has to bow to the inevitable, I feel...! So here are a few of my offerings, available via Etsy at the moment and we'll just see how it goes. I will be keeping the beads I use for my own jewellery different from those I sell.

Have a Craftgawk!

This is my latest ring - blue Chalcedony set in a silver band; an interesting combination of matt and high shine textures. Plus it is being featured on www.craftgawker.com !

Mega-bling

Well, I never thought I'd grow weary of the sight of diamonds, but after trooping round the Hong Kong jewellery fair, I'd had my fill! Diamonds in great heaping, shimmering piles; great big flashy rocks in rings; cascades of diamonds in waterfall necklaces. Thousands upon thousands of stalls; I never knew there were so many diamonds in the world!