I Love Artisan Beads!

by Patti Vanderbloemen

While I thoroughly enjoy using gemstones in my jewelry designs, I get so much satisfaction when I use an artisan bead or component!  Carol is an amazing metalsmith, but as she showed us a few weeks ago, she (and her husband) makes fabulous porcelain beads and components. I could not resist! This is my recent haul from her shop:

Yummy, right?! I am thrilled --- THRILLED -- to have received a few porcelain cabochons, in addition to beads and components.  I mean, look at that crescent moon!!!!

Anyway, I just received this package late Friday. One of my nieces decided to have her baby two weeks early, so I spent this morning and early afternoon visiting the newest addition to my family.

That is my beautiful Mother and her 4th Great Grandchild, Vivienne Rose. Niece and baby are doing just wonderful! (Sorry for the shameless plug...but this picture brings me so much joy!)

Anyway, I did not get to complete as many of the projects that I wanted to before this blog post. I could very easily have simply attached an ear wire to those gorgeous charms, called them earrings, and been done with it.  But I have other ideas!

Lately, I seem to be completely enamored with tube settings. They are appearing on more and more of my designs. 

The glaze on these charms is the softest of lavender, so I used faceted lavender Cubic Zirconia.  I soldered on a post to the back, and half a jump ring to the bottom so that the porcelain charms dangle freely.

I nearly fell over when Carol first posted pictures of her Cherry Blossom charms. I live very close to Washington DC and the annual Cherry Blossom Festival downtown is a Big Deal around these parts!

Photo courtesy of Carol Dekle-Foss / TerraRusticaStudio

While I have made "flower" style earrings from sterling silver before, I wanted to replicate the cherry blossoms as much as possible.

Carol's cherry blossoms have five petals - with a "notch" on each petal.  How does one divide up a circle accurately into 5 sections? I don't know about you, but 9th grade geometry for me was 1976...yeah...a while ago. And I vividly remember that I did not get an A, or even a B in that class .... ('nuff said).

So, I used my GO-TO book, The Complete Metalsmith by Tim McCreight.

This book is not new, and I am sure that most - or at least many of our readers - have this book on their bench. It is truly one of the best references for a plethora of information. In this case, specifically, page 286.

There is a Circle Divider template (covered up in my photo - don't want to get in trouble for posting the whole image!).  Just slap your piece (in my case, a little disc of silver) in the center, and follow the guidelines on the template to perfectly divide your circle into 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8 equal slices.  I love this template, and refer to it often when making bangles that require divided sections with different textures or twists within its circle. With my OCD comes a need for symmetry!

Anyway, much work to be done to use the rest of these gorgeous pieces!  Thank you so much Carol for sharing your art!

Thanks for stopping by today!  Enjoy!

Patti