Jewelry Making

I found some more jewelry that’s on the funkier side the other day at Lluvia Designs. Phaedra A. Torres makes unique necklaces, bracelets, earrings out of a kaleidoscope of different items. Some pieces feature “found” components such as shells and buttons, while others use handcrafted silver (often made by her family in Mexico) as focal points.

A lot of her items have a playful, bohemian flair to them, but I also get the sense of a deeper organic look to a lot of the pieces especially in the use of knotted leather cord and shells. There’s almost a sort of connection to the landscape in much of her jewelry.

Some background from her site:

I started selling my unique pieces several years ago after many requests for purchasing my handcrafted jewelry. I am based in Los Angeles, and began making jewelry as a hobby over 15 years ago. All items available for purchase are handmade and one of a kind. Most of the silver used is handcrafted by my family in Mexico, who have been metalsmiths for generations.

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I always find a lot of interesting articles and different entry points into techniques at the Jewelry Making About.com (Tammy Powley runs this). Many times, the articles aren’t about jewelry making techniques that I can use immediately, but nevertheless get me interested and I always file them away to look at later.

This time on the site, she talked a little bit about Using A Soldering Torch for making jewelry. Specifically, about what kinds of torches you might use in order to try this technique out for putting together metal jewelry. I’ve always been interested in perhaps taking a class someday on soldering jewerly. I’ve actually used a propane powered torch many times before, but with a standard tip rather than one meant more exclusively for jewelry. You’re going to laugh, but I actually use a propane torch frequently to take out my broken hockey blades from the metal shaft of the stick. (The torch heats up the glue which enables you to pull out the blade. Yes, hockey and jewelry can coexist…)

One of the main points she tries to make is why you DON’T want to try to use a soldering gun or iron for this type of work. The reason for this is because these type of soldering devices cannot provide the intense heat requirements (over 1000 deg F) required for soldering jewelry.

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I found some interesting and cute stuff over at the UK jewelry site (that’s actually “jewellery” for many sites across the pond!) Aurora Bloom the other day. Jenny Hudson designs all the pieces and has been making bracelets, brooches, earrings, necklaces and phone charms for a number of years, but only set up her online shop this year.

Although the color scheme of many of her pieces tends toward the more pink and/or girly (which is usually not a style we gravitate toward), I liked her choice of unusual components such as shells, cameos, polished stones and vintage plastic in the work which makes it a bit different than many other DIY designers who have similar items.

From her site:

The findings and beads used to make our jewellery have been carefully sourced from a number of suppliers. The current range is made up of components from the USA, Africa, Czech Republic, Austria, Bali, Japan, Germany and the UK. There is a strong emphasis on ‘the unusual’ and mixing the past with contemporary styles.

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I found another cool looking potential DIY jewelry craft show/fair to consider when selling your items.

This one has the interesting name No Coast Craft-O-Rama which is of course because the craft fair is located in Minneapolis, MN. So many times for craft shows and fairs, you hear about “West Coast this” and “East Coast that” - and so I think these people got a little tired of being ignored so they’ve tagged their show with catchy name “No Coast”!

The Craft-O-Rama is put together by Crafters Local 612, who are 6 crafty gals (Tracy, Willa, Ellen, Kristen S, Eireann and Kristen Mary) from the area. What is the No Coast Craft-O-Rama? Here is their description:

A hip craft sale catering to unique handmade items of all sorts put on by people who wanted to have a venue for buying and selling crafts typically outside the “craft sale” or “art sale” norm.

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