A Nature and Heart Theme

Spring is finally here, and although it rained part of this week, it's been hot and sunny for a few days, which made everything grow and look all lush and green again.


Spring Necklace

I am still playing with sheet metal, and the necklace below has been made with two pieces - once slightly resembling a budding twig, the other resembling a seed - from copper sheet. They've both been cut, filed, sanded, hammered, texturised and oxidised with a pencil blow torch.

I've added two types of jade (dark olive green oval bead, and pear shaped briolette in lime green jade) and two sizes of peridot (sticks) and a lovely picture jasper with a fossil pattern on it.


Here you can see the beads in more detail:


And here you can see the detail on the picture jasper and the copper pendants. I love the way you can achieve different colours (pink, purple, blue, green, maroon) on the copper with blow torching it!

The chain has been made up with handmade jump rings in copper and two different types of vintage chain, one copper, the other a gingerbread brass, which gives is a lovely organic feel, especially as I've added one of my handmade clasps.

If you're interested in the necklace but want to know more about length, size of pendant, price, etc, feel free to contact me, but be quick, these are selling like hot cakes!


Growing Necklace

Right now everything is growing and one of the essential ingredients for nature to grow is sunshine and of course water or rain. With people it's not that different. Sometimes we need some tears to grow.

I've combined a very organic and flowing copper shape wit Ceylon blue kyanite, iolite (water sapphire), blue topaz, chalcedony and I believe, aquamarine and capri blue chalcedony. (I honestly can't remember apart from that all of them are semi-precious!) I've used a lovely copper double-ring vintage chain that I oxidised further to get the colour I wanted.


Here are the beads in detail, all nicely wrapped:


Here's the copper shape in detail:


And this is the little dangle right next to the handmade clasp:



Fleur Fantastique

This one was a labour of love and done over a few days.


I started off with the flower shape, that was first cut out of brass sheet, then filed and bent and hammered and shaped and filed some more and sanded and finally oxidised with a blow torch to bring out the different colours in the brass. It's like magic, you never quite know what colours will appear. There could be a lovely rosy pink, or a grassy green, or a violet blue, or a turqoise or just a dark brown or a gingerbread colour.

Next, I made lots of little leaves (7 altogether) from more brass sheet. They had to be shaped, filed, sanded and oxidised too.

The round ring from which the flower pendant hangs came after that (more info below on how it works). It was made from two gauges of brass wire and wrapped with wire all the way round and oxidised and polished.

Then, it was time for the fun bit, choosing the beads. I've used a lava bead for the top of the flower and black tourmaline, black gold stone and REAL ruby for the stamen. All wrapped nicely within the flower shape. Adding the gorgeous vintage chain was the last step.


Here you can see the pendant - flower and leaves. The necklace is actually a lariat and the leaves go through the ring to adjust the length.


Here's the flower with beads in detail:


Here are the leaves in detail. You can see the lovely textures and colours from shaping, hammering and oxidising.


This is my fabulous 'adjuster ring' . The little spiral at the front allows you to loop the chain around to adjust the length of the chain/necklace. It works really well, and unlike a lot of lariats you don't have to make a knot in the necklace which you'll have to undo before you can take it off again and you also won't end up with part of the lariat trying to strangle you.




Damasque Butterfly Earrings

More brass jewellery. The butterflies were cut out of brass (using a template I cut from paper so they both would be the same) and then texturised, oxidised, polised, filed, shaped, sanded... the usual drill. It took me about 4 hours to finish these little darlings. I have then adorned them with gorgeous wrapped round coral beads in a deep laquer red, and with little threaded coral sticks. I have used handmade earwires and jumprings.


Here you can see how they look when they're hanging.


Here you can see the lovely red coral beads and the texture of the butterfly in more detail:


A close-up of the texture of the butterfly. To me it looks a bit like precious golden damask fabric and with the red beads it definitely has an oriental theme.



Damasque Heart Necklace

This necklace matches the earrings above but can also be worn by itself. The two (earrings and necklace) will be sold separately though, as they go together or by themselves.

The hearts for the necklace were created in the same way as the butterflies, and adorned with coral carved roses, coral beads and more coral sticks. I've used a handmade clasp, handmade jumprings and a lovely figure of eight vintage brass chain with a gorgeous patina on it.



Here's the big heart in more detail; as you can see, I drilled holes all along one side of the heart and threaded little coral sticks through them with brass wire.



Here are the two smaller hearts 'in position' on the necklace:



Here's the heart on the right in more detail:


Here's a close-up of the heart on the left. You can also see the chain in more detail.




Silence of the Heart

Romantic hearts are all well and good, but I wanted to do something more interesting and combine wire with sheet in a creative way. When I'd finished the heart it reminded me of the poster to the film 'Silence of the Lambs' and the mask worn by Hannibal Lector - not sure why, but hence the name of the necklace. It's of course nothing as gruesome and terrible as the film. LOL See for yourself:


The heart has been cut out from copper sheet, cut in half, then I drilled the holes so they'd line up before filing and sanding and shaping it. Next, I threaded wire through the holes to combine the two heart shapes again. The heart was then oxidised with the help of a pencil blow torch. You can see all the different shades that can be achieved (alas still more by accident than by intent):



I then added gorgeous chalcedony beads and a candy jade pink heart bead to the pendant with handmade jump rings. Each bead has been wrapped in a different way to add more texture and interest.



Finally, I added a handmade clasp (wrapped in more thinner gauge wire) and lovely vintage copper chain. There's also a little dangle with another small heart made of copper sheet and jade and fossil beads threaded onto more wire.

All the items will be in my Etsy shop soon, however, if you can't wait and fell in love with one of them, e-mail me for more info on sizes, lengths and pricing. :-)

If you'd like matching earrings or a bracelet with any of the items, let me know and we can discuss things.