Sunday started as a nice day today!

 

In addition to our regular Sunday breakfast my husband made these 8 croissants! (Yes, I know it is only 5 in the picture :)

Sentimental value of my creations

Some time ago I wondered if I would ever make jewellery with sentimental value... a story behind it... Now I can tell a story about almost any piece of jewellery that I make. These earrings, for example, have those little faceted green chalcedony beads. I am looking at them and recalling the day I bought them in Russia... They told me it was apatite :) I did not believe them and estimated the price for the enhanced chalcedony. The price was right, the colour was gorgeous... I bought them :)

 

The crystal glass in the picture has a sentimental value too. I remember how we bought them with my mother. Many years after I brought them to Canada with me in a purse... all six of them... I was very careful :)

 

The glass does not come with the earrings, by the way :)

DIY - Glass Bead

I was looking for these artists from the Twin Vision studio to put their work into my Virtual Wish List (they made fantastic glass installations as well as interesting face beads)... but I've come across this tutorial for beadmaking and moldmaking on their web-site.

This is not a usual tutorial to find in Internet! Once I participated in a process of making something like this. It would not be hard for me to do this again, if I needed... except for the equipment, of course. I would need to find an actual glass artist's studio for glass melting. Honestly, I do not see that happening any time soon :)

I've met the sisters artists at one local bead-show. Maybe next show (or next after the next one:) I will buy one of their glass face beads. They are very unique and very beautifully done! 

My butterfly pendant has been on the front page of Etsy today!

The picture is courtesy  of its curator Irina Shevchenko.

 

Queen of the Day

 

I am happy that this necklace has found a customer. Many liked it... As always, when many people say compliments, I am not sure if they are true, until somebody buys a piece of jewellery that was getting all those compliments... This is a nature of any designer :) We all are like that! :)

 

This is my last project in cooperation with Irina Astratenko. Well... the last that I have, anyway. For now I won't be making anymore, unless there is a custom order... The necklaces were experimental. The experiment was successful. However, they are very unique... all handmade... they need to be appreciated by the cost that comes with high quality handmade work...

 

For now I feel that I need to move on and come up with new ideas! :)

Etsy Finds. Paintings on the stones

I would like to introduce you to an art that is getting very popular in Russia right now. I see more and more talented artist starting doing the paintings on the stones for the jewellery. It is not something too new, but relatively new in Internet.

 

The author of this work is Elena Mitrofanova, who is... to think about it... the first artist I've met in an international online market.

 

This kind of work is usually in a high demand in Russia. I can only wish Elena good luck on Etsy too!

Queen of the Night

The collar for this necklace has been in my possession for a long time... I really could not decide what to do with it! I am still not sure if this design was the best I could do for it. For my luck the crystals (Swarovski crystals) had just perfect size to fit into the open spaces of the squares.

The collar is made by Irina Astratenko, the tatting and ANKARS artist. When she showed the collar to me, I knew it could be a base for something absolutely fabulous. Now I just needed to make it happen. I felt a great deal of responsibility!  

The first idea was to get Russian synthetic diamonds. It would be a lot more work to set the stones in silver. The necklace could become even more fantastic than right now, but... it would be against my idea to make something affordable, something that would be good for a fancy and fun night out, and not just fancy one.

The big Swarovski is set into a black Japanese glass seed beads bezel with more Swarovski crystals around it. The seed beads allowed me to transfer the lacy look from the collar onto the big drop and "marry" them together.

The black Swarovski crystal on the back is set into sterling silver. It can be white (if a buyer wishes so), but I personally felt that it needed to be black.

The necklace is available at the Just Jewellery gallery at the moment.

Do you believe in fairy-tales? You should... They still happen!

A wonderful story has just happened yesterday... So wonderful, that I have to share.

If you are an artist you know... if you are not an artist you might not know... that even if you make beautiful things that many people like... you still need lots of promotion in order to reach your customers. Some people are very good at promoting just about anything, though not everybody... Then it is wonderful to see when their friends artists help in promotion.

Irina Astratenko, who is my co-artist in making the lace necklaces like this one, just got a surprise personal exhibition in Moscow (Russia) by a friend of hers, who was her first ANKARS teacher many years ago. Rina Stepnaya got hold of her best work and organised Irina's exhibition herself without Irina knowing about it! (She wrote about the exhibition in her own blog, there are more pictures there too. The blog is in Russian).

I am very happy for Irina. Her work deserves such an amazing surprise!

My opinion of Rina has been very high before, but now it goes just above and beyond. I am even happier now that I have something in my possession, that Rina has made just for me... (I see, I called her a "fairy" in my post... I had no idea how close I was to the truth! :)

Boho necklace

This necklace is made of copper, brass and natural stones. The gem stone beads in the pendant are black onyx, peridot, iolite, labradorite and a big bead of Botswana agate. There are many other stones in the chain. The chain is bigger than you can see in the picture.

 

I would like to say that this necklace is for sale in my etsy shop, but I have not figured out how to make a good picture of the whole necklace yet. It is so long! :)

Co-operation with other artists

There are many pieces of jewellery that I've made in co-operation with other artists. I did not even think about it until today... Jewellery making is not just work for me, it is my biggest hobby. I enjoy the process of making jewellery and I enjoy coming up with the designs. I also enjoy making something, that has not been designed... when you just start making something and see what comes out. It is a game that... thinking about it... I have managed to involve other artists into :)  I think, they loved that game too :) otherwise they would not have played with me :)

 

The biggest co-designing game was the "Virgin" project, of course.

 

I've written about it in my blog already, here. That was a nine-artist project for a wearable art contest. We had a sketch of what result approximately we should get, but that's about it.

 

There were also parts for the jewellery that I was ordering and buying from other artists. Sometimes I had a project in mind, sometimes I had no exact idea. For example, I asked Bruce McLellan for a custom cut  Canadian labradorite. Only after I'd gotten it I started designing a pendant for it:

 

I have a post about this necklace here in my blog.

I also did not have designs for the necklaces, when I ordered the black lace collars from Irina Astratenko. I made a few of them. The first necklaces ended up on the catwalk!

I myself was in the same position with other artists as Irina was with me. I sent my unique metal findings to my friends. They did not know what I was sending them, so they designed jewellery after they've gotten them! This is one of those projects:

 

Irina Belinskaya is the author and the maker of this necklace. The post about it is here.

I created a new label co-operation with other artists. By clicking it you will see our other projects. Of course, there are more projects coming!