kattitudes

I am so in love with this that I just want to shriek. I don’t remember the last time I loved something so much and found it so easy to duplicate that I just wanted to do the happy dance all around my happy desk.

This is a ribbon. And 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 ribbon.

An eyelet snap.

A watch face.

Put them together and you have more watches than you imagine.

It would take you less than five minutes to put together a spectacular watch for a gift. And if you spent some time, you could make an incredible range for the holidays.

Could you imagine giving a gift of a watch with interchangeable ribbon watchbands? With as many wild watchbands as you could possibly make? You could just go wild in the fabric store. And since you only need enough to go around a wrist, the cost would be pretty minimal.

Oh, I am so doing this for Christmas this year. Now I just get to pick who gets to be the lucky recipient (aside from me, of course).

These three bracelets are all the same design, built with different stones. They show a marvelous use of the briolette stone, without having to resort to the same old wire wrapping briolette stone that has become so redundant.

This design is literally simply nothing more than a simple beadalon strand and finished with crimp beads. The center focal point is a nice pearl, but other than that, it is just a beautiful alternating set of tiny rhondelles and small silver beads.

Aren’t they lovely. And showing these bracelets constructed with different gemstones can show you how simple it would be to make the exact same piece of jewelry for different members of your family. Different colors and different stones speak to different personalities and these examples show that particularly well.

These are so easy to make. Really, they are. There is no wire wrapping involved here - just stringing beads. Give it a shot.

First, let’s make sure we are on the same page. PMC is shorthand for precious metal clay, or clay slip that is embedded with metal (mostly silver, but there is a gold alloy available). You work with the clay as if it were Play-Doh or some other modeling clay.

If you were ever good at shaping your PlayDoh (or clay) into little shapes, then PMC is right up your alley. After you shape your clay into the design you wish, you set it out and let it air dry. Once the clay is dry, the object is heated to a temperature approaching the melting point of the metal inside the clay, which allows the particles inside to fuse into one nice solid fully metallic object. At that point, your fired PMC work can then be polished or soldered or just flat out worked like any other piece of silver jewelry.

The only caveat about working with PMC is that after the piece has air dried, it does have to be fired. In order to do this, you usually must have access to a torch or kiln (notice I said usually. I’ll talk about the exception in a moment). However, these pieces are not at all prohibitively priced, and by contacting local craft and jewelry supply stores, you might just find fellow artists that would be willing to share (or rent) kiln time with you.

There are three types of silver PMC and only one type of gold alloy. Of those, only the gold and two of the silver PMCs clays require a kiln or the stronger torches. However, to make life easier, one type of PMC (PMC3) was developed specifically so that it could be fired with a hot air gun or a simple butane torch from the hardware store. This puts the ability to work with PMC well within the range of anybody that wants to be able to play with this fantastic new jewelry toy.

The best place I have found to read up on PMC online is the PMC Guild. Wow, those folks really know what they are talking about. And they offer classes, so if you find that you fall in love with PMC, they can hook you up in a heartbeat.

I love this pendant, not just for the general design, but for the fun of carving the picture into the clay. In addition to carving an adorable tree of life into the chunk of gold, the artist also braided a rope and attached to the top to give the chain someplace beautiful to attach.

PMC is remarkably easy to get used to working with, and more and more classes are out there available for us to take. Jump into one and see if it works for you. When you see some of the tiny little charms that people have modeled out of PMC, you will fall. in. love. That is what got me started honestly. I just went gaga over the tiny little images that I could reproduce, relatively accurately no less! And if you are any good at sculpture, you will be amazed at how easy it is to design just phenomenal pieces of your own. Imagine gifting an entire charm bracelet of your own charms. What a treasure that would be!

via PMC Guild

Now this is a nice departure from our stereotypically wire wrapped briolette stones. The artist, rather than fussing with the wire wrap issue, took numerous briolette stones and strung them on a sturdy wire.

The stones were capped on either end with a bead, which also helps keep the stones tight against each other, thus ensuring that they will stand up in odd manners as opposed to just lining up in a typical alternating fashion. On the other side of the flat bead is a crimp bead, and the wire was bent into a loop, giving the necklace chain a place to anchor.

As I discussed previously on the ivy necklace, a true strength in this piece in knowing when to end the focus. Rather than overloading the necklace with briolette stones all the way around, after a strong center piece was established, the rest of the necklace fades back into a simple chain. It is a great way to center the piece and draw attention to your gorgeous stones. And as a good jeweler’s trick, it helps keep the necklace turned around the correct way because all the weight of the piece is in the front of the necklace which keeps the chain from turning on your neck.

I know so many people hit this blog looking for ways to wire wrap briolette stones, and as lovely as that style can be, it is also getting extremely repetitive. As a jeweler, I am always experimenting with new ways to use that gorgeous cut myself, so seeing new possibilities and other artists branch out into new methods of use is very exciting.

Buying multiples of briolette stones is financially possible now, thanks to places like eBay (still my number one supply house, where even with access to my super secret jewelry supply sources, I can usually find things much cheaper. There are things I simply won’t buy on eBay, but for my basic stock, I usually can swing a pretty decent deal, especially when I buy in bulk). And since weekend jewelers have access to such fantastic stock, making necklaces like this as gifts is absolutely possible.

Can you imagine opening this on Christmas Day? Talk about a WOW moment! And really, the construction is not that difficult. Just make sure that the briolette stones are snuggled up nice and tight and that the crimp beads are anchored in well to keep the briolette stones standing up at odd angles.

I have to talk about wire mesh ribbon tubing. This stuff is just fun. It is constructed from metallic wire as the name suggests, but is it surprisingly soft and supple, making it a dream to shape and form to whatever your imagination can bring forth.

Wire mesh ribbon, while metal, is easy to cut with scissors, so you do not need any special tool to work with it. As the photo shows, the ribbon is actually a tube, which means that it can be filled with just about anything under the sun.

In this particular example, the tube can been pushed to its limits with pearls (which we all know is one of my favorite items with which to work). And after the ribbon tube was filled, pearls were then attached strategically to the exterior of the ribbon tubing with headpins, thus enhancing and detailing the treasures hidden inside.

For more photos of exactly how malleable and flexible wire mesh ribbon tubing can be, there is a website available with much more extensive photos of multiple ways to play with ribbon tubing.

Finally, this particular piece was finished with a crimp end finding. The ribbon tubing was tightened then crimped down by use of the finding itself to keep all the pearl treasures into where they belong. If you had concerns about the safety of keeping beads or the like inside the tube, you could always essentially “seal” the end of the tube by stringing a larger sized bead on the outside of the tubing (running the ribbon tubing through the bead hole) and then installing the clamp end. This larger bead would act as a stop sign for all the interior beads. However, knowing how clamp end findings work, I would have no problems sealing off this piece using just the finding alone.

I really like the combination of the wire, both using it as tubing and a ribbon - filling it and drawing it out as a single thread. This particular jewelry tool can be used to create really fantastic pieces. I haven’t seen a lot of other artists working with this yet, but I hope I see more as wire mesh ribbon tubing really does have a lot of potential.

This is an utterly fantastic way to finish off a pair of briolette stones without having to fuss with the wire wrap issues. Briolettes are such a lovely cut, but let’s face it. That drilled hole through the top really throws off the mojo of the stone, you know what I mean?

That is why I love these cone bead findings. They cover up the entire drilled mess, and hide the connection underneath forever and ever. The trick to using these is to make sure that the wire you use is long enough to poke down through the hole at the top, through the drilled hole in the briolette stone and back out the top of the hole.

At that point, you can finish it any old way you choose. This example put a nice simple sterling silver bead on the top to help cover the wire wrap (although there is more shown on top of that bead).

These findings are pretty easy to find, and so if you are tired of having to fuss with the whole wire wrap around the top of your briolette stone, this is an option you might want to consider in place of the standard wrap.

Lovely earrings - I’ve made multiple sets like these and they always sell well. If you make them for a gift, I am willing to bet your recipient will love them.

There are six beads on each earrings, working together to make up such a fantastic little flower bloom. If I was not happy with the end result wire wrapping, I would have covered the wrap with a crimp bead cover (incredibly versatile for times such as these).

Look carefully at the next picture, because you can see how a wire wrapped link was used to attach and lower the set of beads containing the leaves. This gives the earrings an extra dimension of beading, placing the leaves naturally below the blossom where they would fall on a plant.

It is not a hard link to make, as long as you can wrap a briolette stone. You are just making one end with a loop, then switching ends and putting the rest of the wire on your pliers to finish the entire link. You can look at the wire on the green leaf and see what basically is the same wire wrap. It is just that to make the link, you do not include the bead - it is all wire.

This is a different set of earrings than I usually show, just because briolette stones have become so incredibly popular that everyone is searching and wants to see how to make them. This set of earrings utilizes the same wire wrap tricks and talents, but you end up with an adorable set of flower blossoms.

The wire wrapping part of these earrings is not difficult, but only gives the appearance of being intimidating. The nice thing about wire is that you can unwrap it and re-wrap it a million times until you get it right or until you get it to the point where you are happy.

And this gives me the opportunity to use up some of those flower shaped beads I have been collecting. I find them so cute, but until now couldn’t find the right vehicle in which to display their charms. Well, now we know.

I have a handful of miracle gardeners in the family; those types that can grow something from nothing. Honestly, they could make a garden grow in Death Valley. Well, this type of earring set would be perfect for her (not to say that men aren’t gardeners, but I am pretty sure most of the he man gardeners out there would prefer not to receive earrings for gifts).

Do you have miracle gardeners in your friends and family group too? Or maybe someone that would like to be a crackpot gardener but just doesn’t have the time, money, skill and most important place to grow them? Then maybe making pair of earrings (and a matching pendant) like this would lift her spirits and give her a special bloom to carry around with her always.

How is that for beautiful symmetry? Both sets of earrings are constructed the same, using a simple headpin to anchor the entire beading portion of the earrings.

Very simple. Very elegant. Very inexpensive to construct, which means there was no need to pay the $40 odd dollars being requested for these when I saw them. The basic construction is so common that the same theme has been shown over and over and over. It all hinges on what goes on those headpins.

And since you know that these are super easy to construct, take some time to wander through the beading aisle of your favorite crafting store. My local store just expanded their inventory by leaps and bounds and now it takes me hours to get out of there… and never unscathed financially. But I have been making some outrageously wonderful earrings sets as a result, so it’s all good!

What does it take to get your creative groove on? What types of pieces inspire you to get creating?

I absolutely love this combination of glass leaves contrasting with matching metal leaves. Just fantastic. The pearls are glass beads, which makes them particularly fun (and inexpensive), and I am in love with the acorn top findings.

The whole bracelet has been made from brass findings, which are incredibly common enough to find in almost every jewelry supply place, without fail.

The charms and findings have all been attached by jump rings, and the chain, while certainly thick enough to hold them, has been overloaded so as to really show off the abundance of the harvest season.

Since many of the craft stores sell these type of charms in packages of multiples, this bracelet would be a cinch to construct with little effort and fortunately, little searching for the pieces too. I just really love the juxtaposition of the metal leaves and the glass leaves. I think I’m going to duplicate that myself in some of my upcoming pieces.

And while Christmas is coming, surely there are still gift giving events happening from now until then. Anyone have a birthday this month? What about preparing a bracelet like this as a hostess thank you gift if you are traveling for Thanksgiving dinner this year? Such an easy bracelet to put together, but it would be so warmly received.

Here is a very different pearl necklace version than what we saw yesterday. Instead of a strand of pearls, this has multiple organza ribbons threaded with pearls of a contrasting color strung along different strategic places.

The ribbons are then fed into a crimp end finding and just as the name suggests, crimped down to hold them in place. The clasp is part of the crimp ending, as is the chain attachment on the other side.

This is a simple and elegant necklace that really gained in popularity. It is incredibly easy to make, and I love the look of the contrasting pearl colors popping out against the black organza ribbon.

Because this is such an easy necklace to make, you could quickly make a number of these, not only for Christmas, but for birthdays or matching wedding presents or bridesmaids thank yous. Really, whatever the mood strikes you.