kattitudes

Starting today, you will find a very handy page over there on the right hand side of the blog (it is listed under the pages). I have created a page that lists pretty quick and dirty some of my favorite shopping places online.

It is a first draft, so not all my bookmarks are up there by any means. However, some of the multitudinous places I wander online are up there so that you too can wander in and find some of the remarkable bargains I’m finding.

If you have places that you love, please - by all that is holy - let me know. I am always looking for a new place to shop. Send me a note, leave a comment, and I would love to check it out. I live to comparison shop (must. comparison. shop. It is in my blood).

Keep in mind, these are not places to purchase finished products. These are stores for you to purchase supplies for you to make your own gifts and wonders. This is for you to get your own crafty on.

Fantabulous. This bracelet uses one of my favorite tricks for fancy. Look carefully at the photo. There are three strands of citrine chips and carnelian nuggets that funnel down to a single strand of sterling silver beads.

How do you do it?

After threading each individual strand of citrine and carnelian on beadalon, each strand is then threaded through a single sterling silver bead (with a larger enough diameter hole to accommodate the three strands. Surprisingly, this will not need to be very large at all).

More of the silver beads were added to continue the length of the bracelet, then crimp beads were added at the end of the bracelet with a two fold purpose: 1) to attach the bracelet to a jump ring (which attaches to the toggle clasp), and 2) to anchor those strands together and anchor them well.

And again, we have the issue of “is a toggle clasp safe to use on a bracelet”. Jewelers try to avoid toggle clasps on any piece that is too light to keep the toggle clasp closed.

However, the weight of this particular piece is definitely heavy enough to pull against the toggle clasp, keeping the pieces taut and ensuring that the bracelet will indeed stay on the wrist.

What a gorgeous gift this would make, don’t you agree?

A lovely necklace, using a briolette stone again without the use of the wire wrapping technique. I am shying away from the constant use of the wire wrap because unless you can use gold wire, the silver tarnishes in the stone and really calls attention to the drilled holes, particularly in a light colored stone (of which I use a lot). As a result, I am trying to show more ways to use the briolette cut without so many wire options.

This particular necklace uses stringing via alternating pearls and seed beads to highlight a briolette stone as a focal bead. Lovely. And I particularly like the color combination of the dark focal bead with the light pearls and seed beads. It really makes it stand out.

As I have mentioned before, because this necklace is not individually knotted, I would use beadalon wire as opposed to thread or silk cord to create a necklace like this. It creates a sturdier piece and there is less worry about an accidental break (if the necklace gets caught on anything, like a baby’s hand or the like).

This necklace is very simple to construct, literally just threading the beads onto the wire. As a reminder, the wire comes in different size diameters, so if one wire doesn’t fit your stones and beads, just try another.

There are so many wonderful stones out there these days that you could easily get a number of these made whilst watching your movies in front of the television late at night. Gather your tools and put them all in a tote bag and keep them near your favorite comfortable chair. Then when you rest for the evening, your tool bag is right there, ready for you to work.

I saw this favor box on BHG and loved it. I adored it. But most of all, I thought that it was perfect for Christmas. I give so many jewelry pieces that I am always looking for creative ways to wrap.

And knowing that I can run out and pick up bags and bags of faux pearls and use my glue gun to pile them up on the lid of all the spare boxes I have sitting around made this picture all the better.

This idea wouldn’t be limited to faux pearls. You could cruise through the dollar store and see what is available to use in the same manner. Little ornaments, tiny toys, all sorts of items might just spring out at you.

And if you wanted to do this for Valentine’s Day, you could use those horrible conversation hearts that no one should ever be eating. The concept is just fantastic and it really lends itself so well to so many things.

I’m actually looking forward to using this for Christmas this year. I was thinking about doing one with dog bones for the kennel owner, but realized that the dogs would never leave that alone. I guess I’ll stick with pearls.

Isn’t this lovely? This is another quick and easy string on beadalon and kept in place with crimp beads masterpiece. Goodness but that combination can be responsible for so many things!

The amethyst nugget stones have been set off with bead caps, which in turn have been separated by clear beads. The toggle clasp has been strung after the addition of a few silver beads.

I have talked before about jewelers’ reluctance to use toggle clasps on bracelets, particularly as the bracelet is often not heavy enough to hold the clasp shut whilst on your wrist. However, the combined weight of these stones is obviously enough to keep the pull on this clasp tight, thereby ensuring that it will stay closed.

I really like this bracelet, and appreciate the strength of the larger stones used here. I can see changing the smaller beads for almost anything; pearls, sterling silver beads, topaz rhondelles, peridot chips, gold beads. Whatever works for your particular style.

I don’t know if these are available in the states, but I thought they were a great idea if you have someone in the family that is always plugged in. I know when I wear my headphones, my cords are always getting tangled in my earrings and this is a really innovative solution to that problem.

I made the picture clickable so that you could see an up close detail of how the earrings were constructed. Really, the construction was much less challenging than a regular earring. The chain is looped through a jump ring and the loop is put around the ear piece (ear bud) that goes into the ear. The other end of the chain is decorated with whatever charms or beads may suit your fancy.

They are a little quirky but sometimes quirky fits the bill just perfectly. Ear buds like these can be purchased relatively inexpensively, so this is a cute item you could put together as a stocking stuffer for a teen in the family that might really appreciate the whimsy.

Goodness, forget the teen. I’m doing it for me.

The charm of this particular bracelet is the curved tube finding. That is literally what it is called - a curved tube finding. They are relatively easy to find.

This design is literally simply nothing more than a simple beadalon strand and finished with crimp beads. The focal points are three spaced pearls, but other than that, it is just beautiful curved sterling silver tube findings interspaced with two sizes of sterling silver beads.

These are so easy to make. Really, they are. There is no wire wrapping involved here - just stringing beads and finished with a crimp bead to keep everything in place.

We talked about PMC (precious metal clay) and how wonderful a medium it is for creating fantastic jewelry pieces. These dog bones are a perfect example of a really cute item made from a sheet of PMC. The bones are pressed out with a built in jump ring attached already and decorated, then fired. The toggle is made to match (although larger).

Once fired and ready to be worked, the silver bone pieces are strung together with jump rings to create a lovely and enduring bracelet.

If you are not feeling up to molding your clay pieces from PMC clay, you could try the sheets of PMC instead. Then it is just a matter of cutting out the shapes with which you are comfortable working.

Instead of three dimensional pieces, you are working with two dimensional, which means that you could cheat and print out shapes from your clip art, overlay them on your PMC sheet and use your handy exacto knife to cut out your shapes. See how easy it is to use shortcuts and make great art?

See, here is one of the categorical drawbacks of being a bench jeweler. There are no more surprises. When you know the outrageous prices that jewelers charge for their jewelry, you know that there is no way on God’s green earth you are going to send your Mister, unescorted, out into the world anymore for anything even marginally related to jewelry.

Now granted, my Mister has purchased for me some of the most gorgeous jewelry this side of our budget that has ever been seen. I finally own a few antique pieces I grew up thinking would perennially be out of my reach.

But now that I am, as the vernacular states, in the know, I cannot let him out anymore, knowing that I can put together a ring for literally a fraction of what the bloodsuckers will demand from him.

It stinks!

The biggest part of this stinking is the demise of our Christmas Tradition.

Now you have to understand, the Christmas Tradition came about wholly and completely on the part of my Mister, with no prompting and completely unbeknownst to me.

It was the Christmas two months and thirteen days before our wedding day proper. At the conclusion of our Christmas morning festivities, my amazing Mister reached into the heart of our fourteen (yes, fourteen! what a challenge that was to clean up after) foot Christmas tree and pulled out a tiny blue box. If you are a female and breathing, you *know* what that means. (Note: I originally wrote the tree was 12 feet, but my Mister read that and corrected me. Apparently it was 14 feet. We lived in a loft at the time and the clean up was staggering. I tried to blank that part out of my mind. My brother in law {the monkey} had to shimmy up a water pipe to put the star on top. It was a massive tree.)

Nestled inside was the first of what has come to be known as our Christmas Tradition. Simply put, every year, I get a piece of jewelry for Christmas. The Mister told me early on that our Tradition reflects our year; feast or famine. If it was a good year for us, it is an extraordinarily lovely Christmas Tradition. If from a budgetary standpoint, it was a famine year, the Christmas Tradition reflects that. But regardless of our feast or famine status, my wonderful Mister has always pulled out that small box.

That amazing man can pull all types of misdeeds and stumble through endless misnomers all year long, but everything becomes water under the bridge come December 25th when he reaches into that tree and pulls out that tiny box for the year. He’s a smart fellow, you know? Born diplomat, that one.

Jewelry just fascinates me. It is one item that mankind absolutely does not need, but one item that we will literally start wars over. Jewelry. I finally decided to make it a profession when someone (I can’t even remember who now) pointed out to me that the first thing I noticed on a person (always) was their jewelry!

I love jewelry. I don’t care what type, what it is made from, where it has been recently, if it is plastic or paper or real or not, I just love adornments. I love the whole kit and caboodle.

And so now that I know a little more about jewelry and how to make it and how to find it a little less expensively than the Average Joe…well, the thought of sending my Mister out for my Christmas Tradition almost breaks me out in hives.

Gone are the days I can dream about these. Now I try to aim my Traditions as low as possible. I don’t want the Mister taken advantage of. And knowing what I do know now, if he’s in a jewelry store and breathing, well - there ya go.

And now, as I am working on making more of these type of pretty toys, rather than dreaming about waking up Christmas morning on a feast year, I wake in the hopes that this is the year that my Mister didn’t go overboard. It is just too easy for me to find and make the pieces myself.

So, it is with a heavy heart that I, in good conscience, bid my Christmas Tradition goodbye. I cannot let it continue, knowing that I can save the family budget so significantly.

However, if there are any bench jewelers out there that would be willing to work out a reciprocal Christmas Tradition agreement, I would love to talk.

This year, I am hoping for a simple white gold lever back basket set (or bezel set, either works) pair of pink stone earrings. Sapphire, topaz or kunzite. I need something that I can put in and leave in that are safe through daily workout sessions (including swimming sessions). And yes, I know we are supposed to take out our jewelry, but I don’t.

That is what I hope to find in my little blue box this year. I will admit, I have received what I hoped for in my box only once in all the years. That is because my Mister has developed quite the reputation as the independent thinker when it comes to choosing the jewelry that he wants to give me. I have never had cause to complain, so if he decides to go with something different, he is very knowledgeable and fun to work with.

This is the man that researched diamonds for months before he bought my engagement diamond (sans setting), then took another year to pick out just the right setting. (For those that understand jewelers speak, he ended up designing a Tacori style with an emerald cut center, with both trillion basket set and round bezels on each side, then had the wedding band with baguettes made to match. Very one off and I obviously adore it).

So, if you are a bench jeweler that would be interested in keeping alive our Christmas Tradition and want to work out an exchange program (I am interested in finding someone that is willing to deal with a like exchange. I can work on your surprise [if you have one] at or near cost in a like for like exchange).

I understand it seems silly, but it’s the surprise that I will miss the most. The moment between seeing that box appear and wondering what will be in it right before I flip that lid open. And if I can find someone that will help my husband keep that surprise, all the better!

Once again, beautiful example of wire wrapped briolette stone, with wrapped pearls being used to camouflage the wrapped section of the construction. Were I not happy with the wrapping, I would have simply used a crimp bead to cover.

Crimp beads come in various millimeter sizes (like so many other jewelry components) so it is easy to find crimp beads that are small enough to accommodate the small amount of space needed to cover a wrap.

The matching earrings really make this set sing. And cut blue topaz are really able to be found inexpensively, so it would be completely possible for you to price this and purchase the pieces for a wonderful gift this Christmas.

When I say inexpensively, you could find three matching blue topaz briolette stones for under $10, if you looked carefully. Add $5 for the pearls and another $5 to $10 for the sterling silver and you have a lovely jewelry set, made of blue topaz, pearls and sterling silver, made for $20 to $25 dollars (and I am definitely rounding up. I know it can be done for less than that).

It’s sets like this that make me enjoy being a jeweler. These look good on pretty much anyone. The colors compliment so many people, and the construction is simple and elegant enough that it can dress up an outfit, or dress down the same when things are too serious. Jewelry is so versatile, I love this stuff!