keep moving

Recently started learning Viking knit, mostly because I hate hate hate buying chain and would like to be able to string my pendants on something other than leather cord and have not yet gotten the guts up to use my blowtorch, let alone try to make chain with it. Viking knit is time-consuming and probably not the best way to make fine or narrow chain, but it has its own aesthetic appeal, and if I'm careful about how I handle the jump rings or bails, works pretty nicely for my stuff- it's not like I make delicate, minimalist pieces. The coiled end cones are kind of a pain in the ass to do, which is why I didn't photograph that part of today's experiment; they are sad and amateurish beyond the common run, but hey, not like anyone other than me's got to see them.

( Four pics behind the cut, three of which are the same shot under different lighting conditions. )

( I did this design in copper and then verdigrised it. I still need to seal the other one so it's safe to wear next to the skin. Meantime, here, have some shiny instead of some mottled greenish. )

Sweet baby Eris, fourteen gauge jeweler's brass is painful to work with. Physically. I don't have machinery or vises for this, I work with pliers, so a fourteen gauge piece of stiff metal is basically a wrestling opponent for my thumbs.

Finished the statement necklace I mentioned back in early June.

( My apologies to people using reader software for this. I do not entirely know how to describe the images properly. )

( One piece, multiple pictures, rather more fancy. )

I did this one almost entirely because I'd bought those turquoise and bronzite dangles thinking they looked awesome and I wanted to work with them. turquoise practically cries out for silver, unless you plan on pulling out all the stops and going gold or bronze to a degree I didn't think I wanted to do. The round beads are dyed magnesite. The central stone is bronzite. The beads on either side of the central stone are crystal, but the slightly larger red beads in the lower arc are garnet, as are the red beads in the dangles (although the ones in the dangles are dyed to make sure they have even, saturated color, because like many stones garnet comes in grades from 'no srsly this is a gemstone, honest, we swear' to 'OMG CALL THE AUCTIONHOUSE', and I do not have the money for the good end of that spectrum). The wire is sterling silver fill, which is ten percent silver and the rest is copper; it lasts way longer than silver plated. This whole thing was done as a gift for an old friend from high school, who I haven't been able to meet up with in a while. I kind of owe her something like two or three special occasion gifts, so I confirmed that she likes turquoise as a color and used her as an excuse to do something with those dangles.

Just realized I haven't posted any of this in a while.

( There are pictures back here. )

( Two pictures. I've filled in their alt text. Please let me know if I need to put descriptive text in a different HTML variable. Thank you. )

Item #1 is a bracelet that was originally designed for a 30mm long by 20mm wide Swarovski crystal. Item #2 was a minimalist pendant designed for hanging from a slightly more fancy bail and set of chains, and was intended to involve a rectangular cubic zirconia as its central stone. Both pieces were made using Boston Harbor sea glass instead, because it's attractive and I had it on hand and also because it's free.

I am never going to be able to get over the fact that literal actual Boston Harbor trash makes good jewelry.

Another necklace finished. This one's for my mom, for Mother's Day.
( I'm putting all of these and a few others up on my Smugmug account if anyone wants to see all the pictures at once. )