kattitudes

I just love the simplicity of a gift like this. And when I say simplicity, I mean wow. Wow, this takes a few minutes and the ability to install a snap in a ribbon.

This is a watch face that can be purchased at a thousand different craft or jewelry supply stores online or at your local malls or shopping areas. You can find the watch face findings literally in every craft supply store under the sun. Every one, bar none. And the same with the eyelet snap (and for the record, if you like the jeweled part, you will be looking for a rhinestone snap).

That is all this is.

A beautiful velvet ribbon this time.

An eyelet snap.

A watch face.

As an interesting variation, a second piece of velvet ribbon was used to make a bow, and then sewn onto the first ribbon as a permanent decoration. If you liked the idea, you could sew it on using regular thread, or if you were not sure, you could sew it on using a snap which means you could take it off or leave it on according to how you felt that day.

If you decided to use a snap, I would provide a decorative button or something along those lines with an additional snap on it to cover the empty snap on the ribbon, if that makes sense to you. Something so as not to just leave an empty snap sitting on the velvet ribbon all day.

Anyway, it would not take that long to put together some really spectacular watches for gifts for all your girlfriends. You could make a gift of one watch face with multiple ribbon watchbands so that your friend could change the band as her mood changes.

What a neat idea for a friend that changes her clothes as often as she changes her mind! And since you only need enough ribbon to go around a wrist, the cost would be minimal, which is perfect for our budget conscious Christmas plans.

If you are gifting jewelry for Christmas this year, so many searches have happened on my blog for wire wrapping briolettes. I think that the briolettes are starting to get a little dated, and that is perfectly fine. They are still gorgeous stones without a doubt, but I also think that it is time to start expanding a little from the standard single briolette on a strand and hold the catsup, no mustard, if you know what I mean.

Even this minor variation is a nice change. The three briolettes are in the same color family, but vary enough in the size to make the visual punch capture your eye immediately.

One other distinction about this particular piece is that the wire wrap is not obsessively neat. There is an artistic messiness to the wrap job, as if to emphasis that a real live person or artist did this work, rather than a machine in the outbacks of some factory somewhere.

So, do not be afraid of making your jewelry look a little funky and a little off the track unusual. It is that unusual look that makes your pieces memorable and makes people really search through the jewelry box to find that “really neat piece that Cousin Susie made for me that one year”.

The Christmas gathering for one side of the family is this Sunday. That means that by noon on this Sunday, I have some twelve (is it twelve? I have to count now…nope, it is thirteen) handmade gifts done and ready.

Amazingly, as of tonight, I think I am about ready. This is an extraordinary year. This year, I made my choice that I was going to make everything. And I pushed my envelope with a number of items. I worked into the jewelry arena in areas I had not explored previously and I am honestly just thrilled how they turned out.

Come Monday, I will post the photos of what I did and the final result, since by that time the gifts will have already been gifted. At that point, I have to work on my other mother in law (very important to make her a wonderful piece of jewelry as she has been through a lot and I want her to have something very nice) and I get to work on gifts for my sister and my husband. Those are always my favorite gifts to work on, as they can be as outlandish as we want. The two of them are always wonderful sports and are willing to put up with wild craziness all in the name of creativity.

Oh, I love Christmas! I love getting to be creative and getting to share that creativity with others! I cannot wait to post photos of the gifts I made on Monday. I want to share what I have done and hopefully inspire some of you to do the same.

Best wishes. I am off to finish some of the detail work on a few of the gifts. Lots of detail work yet to go, so busy busy work tonight!

Isn’t this lovely? And such a simple construction, but it ends looking so complex. The bracelet is just a single strand of beadalon, with the main focus of large beads of rose quartz capped with antiqued silver bead caps. These are set off with alternating garnet and moonstone rondelles. The smaller size really serves to contrast against the bulk of the rose quartz stones.

The beadalon is finished with a few silver beads to tidy up and a simple crimp bead to keep everything in place. And with the size and weight of the rose quartz stones, the heft of the bracelet is certainly enough to safely support a toggle clasp.

This would make a fantastic Christmas present (but the focus on Christmas is because we are quickly walking up to the holiday here). In reality, this bracelet would make a lovely reminder of how much you love someone for any number of occasions. Birthdays, anniversaries, christenings, really - any type of celebration. I need pretty much no excuse to make a piece of jewelry.

Having said that, I will admit that this week is wearing me thin. I am going to a Christmas party this upcoming weekend and I am trying to finish about twelve handmade gifts before Sunday. For the most part, I have a handle on them (most are jewelry, of course), but still… nothing like pressure to get things done, you know?

For those that are looking for how to wrap a briolette stone, consider using something like this instead. Rather than a briolette, a top drilled pearl has been used in place.

Top drilled pearls are becoming quite easy to find, particularly in my favorite supply place: eBay. Yes, I have much better supply places as a bench jeweler, but for the most part, I do pick up so many of my supplies there.

The more expensive pieces and the higher quality pieces I generally purchase at my jewelers supply houses, but for the most part, so many of the parts that I buy, I can purchase cheaper in bulk on eBay. Keep that in mind if you are making jewelry as gifts this Christmas. I am and I just stocked up on new bits and bobs, parts and pieces for all my planned pieces. Now I have little bits of jewelry parts spread all through the different parts of the house as I walk around working on my Christmas gifts.

Anyway, back to this piece. Briolettes are slowly getting played out. Not to say they are not still beautiful, because they are definitely still that. It is just that it is time to expand beyond just a briolette.

This pearl is a great beginning. It is the same style as the gorgeous single briolette pendant, down to the wire wrap and everything. But instead of the briolette, the pearl has been drilled in the style of a briolette (top drilled) and hung as if it were a briolette stone. Nicely done.

If you cannot find a top drilled pearl, you can actually purchase an undrilled pearl and take it to your local jeweler and ask the bench jeweler to top drill the pearl. Make sure to specify to top drill so that they know not to center drill. If you feel like you might not explain it well, simply print out this picture and take that in to show the jeweler. The drilling is an extremely simple thing, and should cost you next to nothing. There should only be a minimal charge for time. And most jewelry stores will sell single pearls too, so if you want to get your hands on a nice quality single pearl to make a pendant necklace like this, you could make it a single stop shopping trip.

The wire that you use to wrap and create the loops (making basic rosary loops) is always available in different diameters, in addition to different metals (gold, silver, copper, all types of base metals and even platinum if you have the chump change for that at almost $1,500 an ounce these days) so you can easily find the right wire to fit the drilled hole. If you feel like it, there are even different color base metal wires available at the craft stores now. You could have a lot of fun mixing and matching colors pearls and colored wires for some amazingly different pendants.

After the Thanksgiving holiday, most homes turn to pulling out those Christmas decorations and start planning on putting up the Christmas trees (if you have not already).

Putting up the tree always makes us review the ornaments and consider how many more ornaments can we put on or put up before the tree is officially considered overloaded. Apparently my Mister and my baby sister are in cahoots, trying to convince me that it is time to upgrade to a larger tree. I prefer a smaller overloaded look.

As part of that ornament review, the search is on for inexpensive ways to decorate the tree with handmade or inexpensive Christmas tree ornaments. I can understand why, as I absolutely love to wander the aisles of the Christmas decoration shops. However, the sticker shock I experience always reinforces my decision to make as many of my own ornaments as I possibly can. The prices I see out there are just insane!

These ornaments are an extremely simple construction, using beads threaded on a straight wire. The wonderful thing about these ornaments is that you can shop the extreme budget section of your craft shop for the absolute bargain bin bags of beads. Those bags full of multi-sized multi-colored multi-shaped oddities that are always left over at the end of the season for pennies are perfect to scoop up for ornaments like these. The different colors and shapes fit in perfectly with this construction.

Feel free to throw different colors and shapes together or follow the general construction as shown here. The basic idea here is to imitate icicles, but really, the wonderful thing about Christmas trees is that you can put any color, shape or combination on there that floats your boat and it works. Christmas trees are just magic that way.

This is my new favorite cut. Rondelles. Oh, for some reason I am so in love with them. And fortunately, they are hot and getting hotter so it is becoming quite easy to find. I guarantee you that you will start seeing them on more and more pieces - even replacing the ubiquitous briolette soon.

Rondelles are faceted in the same manner as briolettes, but rather than the teardrop shape of the briolette, they have a wheel or donut shape with a hole drilled through the center. It makes them infinitely easier to design with in so many ways, but conversely, more a challenge because it is so much easier to fall into standard boring designs with them.

This necklace just rocks in all sorts of ways. It is the same concept as a wire wrapped briolette pendant, but rather than a single briolette stone, this is just a series of rondelles lined up on a sterling wire with a loop (a basic rosary loop) wrapped at the end. The loop gives the chain a place to anchor and a very simple chain is attached to the rhondelle centerpiece to do just that.

That is all. A simple centerpiece and a chain to go with it. Simple, elegant and visually pleasing. A very beautiful and cutting edge necklace to make as gifts for this Christmastime. I guarantee you this is going to be the new hot shape coming. If you are done with briolettes, hunt down some rondelles and work with those instead.

I often post jewelry to make, but have not posted many without precious metals or semiprecious gemstones. However, ordinary beaded jewelry is very popular and quite simple to make for obvious reasons. And it has the added benefit of being quite budget friendly, particularly if you shop the sales and keep your eyes out for bargains.

These prayer beads are absolutely lovely and oh so colorful. Plus, the spiritual aspect makes them a very special gift indeed for those that might follow a particular path in their hearts. Obviously the charms could be changed to represent any particular spiritual path as most everyone finds time in their day to offer up prayers.

To finish a set of beads like this (with no obvious clasp), you first string the beads using a stretchy type of beadalon. Once you have all the beads on your bead cord, you thread each end of the cord back through two or three of the beads already strung on the cord. This will anchor the cord onto the bracelet so the cord will not slip away. Then simply tie the cord around itself in a knot (this knot will snuggle between two beads). Tie it tightly but be careful not to break the bead cord when you tighten the cord.

Repeat the process on the other end of the bead cord. Once that is done, presto. You have yourself a gorgeous bracelet of beads with no beginning and no end (no clasp), on stretchy cord that will fit over the wrist of your recipient (or yourself) with no fuss and no muss. A bracelet made of beautiful, colorful (and hopefully budget friendly) beads that you handpicked to show all the love you feel for your friend.

The resolution on this photo is a little blurry, so sorry about that. However, you can see that this is another and relatively novel way to use your briolette stones.

Often, you see those stones stuck in a necklace dead center as a pendant (which I admit that I adore) but it is getting redundant. Time to experiment.

This particular bracelet is made up of nothing more than a blue topaz briolette with a basic rosary type loop on both sides, then a pearl with the same basic loop on both sides. They are attached, creating what amounts to a rosary chain, but it passes as a bracelet here.

A jump ring is attached to the last loop of each of the pearls on the end to give the clasp a place to anchor and the bracelet is finished. That is it.

With a bracelet like this, the briolettes will flip up and down significantly during wearing which actually draws a lot of attention to the piece. It can be lovely. However, as a suggestion, make sure that you make the bracelet on the large size for your recipient so that the tips of the briolettes do not aggravate the skin as they constantly move against the wrist.

If you like the look of those particular pearls, I have seen them described more and more as having “love circles”. They are amazingly easy to find on eBay, but it seems to be the favorite seller description right now.

I really like this simple strung necklace. I have been looking for some classic but elegant designs for Christmas presents to put together for friends and family members and I think this might just fit the bill.

Once again, this is a wonderful way to use up some of the briolette stones that you have in your stockpile without have to rely on the constant use of the wire wrapping that is becoming rather common place. I have been trying to expand our repertoire with more options than just the standard wire wrap briolette stone, even though I know a bazillion visits to Kattitudes happen from people in search of information on how to wire wrap briolettes.

As I have mentioned in the past, if you are considering wire wrapping your briolette stones and you are working with sterling silver and one of the lighter briolette stones (as I have a tendency to work with), be aware that as the sterling tarnishes, it will darken the drill hole of your light gemstone. As a result, I have switched my wire wrapped briolette work to gold wire. However, weekend jewelers do not always have that option (as you might not have the easy access to gold wire that I might have as a bench jeweler), thus the reason why I am trying to expand suggestions on how to use briolettes beyond the standard wirewrap.

Instead, designs like this one, that use a material along the lines of beadalon to string the alternating topaz briolettes, sterling beads and pearls threaded on headpins are becoming easier to find and more frequently seen. The secondary smaller smoky topaz stones are cut in a shape called rhondelles and are a gorgeous full round wheel/tire shape. They really fill out this necklace nicely and provide a nice counterbalance to the size of the pearls and the color of the matching briolettes.

This is a simple threaded series of beads. The toggle is in the Bali style and I particularly like the design as the extra loop of the toggle can give up to an extra inch of necklace, if you would like some additional maneuvering room when you wear it (or if you are not exactly sure of the neck size of your gift recipient).

As you look at this necklace as a whole, this really is a great design. The four basic components (the two shapes of the smoky topaz, the sterling silver beads and the pearls with their ball headpins) basically just echo each other over and over, creating a lovely symphony of beauty.

And this really is easy to make. Just string it on beadalon, crimp and go. It is that easy. This would make such a WOW moment at Christmas.