Not Your Grandmother's Pearls

Most of my recent work has been with rough cut semiprecious stones like amethyst or agate. I love the natural and raw look of the stone chips but lately I've been exploring something a bit different. I was recently given a book  "Simply Pearls" by Nancy Alden. It contains loads of information on every different kind of pearl as well as beautiful photos of pearl necklaces, bracelets, and earrings and detailed instructions on how to recreate the pieces. Needless to say, after reading this book I ran right to the bead store and grabbed some pearls! There was one necklace in the book that I loved and wanted to recreate. She used a snake chain and attached clusters of small pearls in the center. The snake chain reminded me of the Full Persian weave. First I fabricated the chain. A Full Persian chain is a fairly time consuming endeavor but completely worth the time in the end. After a few days of intense mailing, I began with the pearls. First I attached the pearls to rounded head pins. Then I made a gazillion tiny little links and used them to attach a pearl to a link in each segment of the chain. This was also very time consuming but the result was better than I imagined. I was so happy with it that I made matching earrings and a bracelet! The pearls I used for these projects were glass but I hope to eventually graduate to real cultured pearls. 

P.S. Sorry for the blurry pictures. When I get my new smartphone today I will have a far better camera and will post new clearer pics!

Hygge Blanket

Alec recently got a new kitten and he is the cutest thing ever. His name is Hygge and before you judge the silly name let me explain why Alec chose it. A while back Alec was studying in Denmark and stayed with a host family. The family has a cat and during his time there Alec really enjoyed playing with her. You can imagine how excited he was to hear that she had had kittens when he went to visit the next year. When he met them he loved them so much that he decided to keep one of them! Since the kitten came from Denmark he wanted to give it a Danish name. The word hygge is a big part of Danish culture. It's hard to translate but I suppose the best English word to describe it is cozy. Naturally he thought this would be the perfect name for the cat! He is super cute.

 Since Hygge makes us feel so cozy I thought I would crochet him his very own blanket so that he could feel cozy too! I used my favorite yarn of all time Vanna's Choice. It's really soft but still very affordable. The colors I chose reflect the colors of the cat so that when he curls up in it, it will look like a giant cuddly ball of adorableness! I used a pattern from Red Heart Yarn that I have used in the past for larger blankets. It is called Country Home Crochet Throw. Here is a link to the pattern. http://www.redheart.com/free-patterns/country-home-crochet-throw

I altered the pattern a little bit to make it an appropriate size for a cat. Instead of 85 rows for each strip I made 31. Other than that I followed the pattern. Its pretty simple and went fairly quickly. I made the whole thing in a day. In fact I had yarn left over and decided to make another one for my cat Jelly! She really likes it!

(by the way this is my new favorite photo of my girl)

Croton Dam

Today was a beautiful fall day so Alec and I decided to make a trip to the Croton Dam. We had been talking about going for a while and thought today would be a prefect day to go exploring around the area. On the way there we passed through the lovely towns of Sleepy Hollow and Ossining. They have very beautiful old buildings there that I think we will have to eventually spend a day looking around there.

The dam itself was incredible. Alec had been there before and showed me pictures of it but I didn't expect it to be so big! When you pull into the park you have to drive over this adorable little bridge and through the trees you can just make out the water cascading down the left side of the dam. After you get though the trees the dam seems to appear out of nowhere. We spent a good amount of time just staring at it and taking pictures. Eventually we sat down at one of the picnic tables and had a nice little snack.

It was a little cold so we decided to get up and walk around. We made it all the way up a huge hill to the walkway on the top of the dam. The view was incredible. To one side there was the park and to the other was a giant lake. After walking around a bit we found a trail that led back down to the park. On the way we collected leaves for a collage that Alec wants to make. I'll post pictures of that when he's finished because it is going to be awesome! 

It turned out to be a great afternoon. I took some pictures on my phone so I apologize for the terrible quality.

Tiered necklace

After making my black banded agate necklace from my previous post, I decided to make a necklace based on the chain used in that design. I used gold wire instead of silver to create the dragon scale weave. I decided to start in what would be the center of the necklace because that would be the widest part of the chain. After establishing a good length for the center, I gradually narrowed the width until I I had three tiers. I broke up the third tier with a rectangular stone. To finish it off I made a nice little clasp. I hope you like it!

Semi Precious = Fully Awesome

Lately I've been really into combining semi precious stones like turquoise, agate, and amethyst with various chainmaille weaves. I love the juxtaposition of the natural stones with the more industrial look of the wire weaves. It's a good way to feminize a more masculine chain pattern and the silver wire really shines next to the stones. One of my first experiments was with black banded agate. I found a strand of them in stick form and was very intrigued. The color and shape of were quite beautiful and exotic. I snatched up a strand not sure what I would do with them, but confident that I would figure something out.

I knew I wanted all the beads strung together and hanging in the center of the necklace as the focal point. I would attach a chain on either side to complete the necklace. I began by stringing them onto sturdy bead string. I prefer nylon filament. Attaching a strand of beads to a chain can be kind of tricky. I wanted to hide the actual connection because I hate hate hate it when you can see crimper beads on a piece. It just looks unfinished and unprofessional. My solution to this was bead cones. Little silver cone shaped beads. What I did was attach a wire eye pin (make them yourselves with a pair of round nose pliers and some extra wire. Save your money people!) to the strand of beads using a crimper bead. Then I slid the bead cone over the other end of the eye pin, trimmed the wire, and made a loop with round nose pliers. That way the loops of the chain can easily connect to the loop over the bead cone.

Now that the bead strand was completed, it was time to fabricate the chains. I decided a wider weave would be necessary to balance out the size of the beads. One of my favorites is a weave called dragon scale and it can be made as wide as you like so it was perfect for this piece. Instead of my usual silver, I went with the gold wire for this one. It was more elegant and combined with these exotic looking stones it looked fantastic. I created two tiered chains and connected them to either side of the bead strand. A toggle clasp finished it off. I really love this necklace and I currently making another one with tigereye and silver wire.

Here are some of the other necklaces I've made using similar techniques and semi precious stones.

Amethyst chips with Full Persian Chain

Turquoise stones with Byzantine Chain

Adventures in Felting!

A while back my boyfriend took a trip to Iceland and brought back some lovely Icelandic wool. I had never seen anything like it before and was so excited to work with it. The only problem was the yarn was not really spun and if you pulled too hard on it, it would tear apart. Since I have no idea how to, nor do I have the means to spin strands of wool into yarn, I figured what the hey I'll try to crochet anyway! I had read about felting and thought it could be a good way to make the project actually stay together. I thought a small project would be appropriate to begin with so I grabbed my tiny crochet hook size F and got to work on a little clutch purse.

I used a simple single crochet stitch and established the width of the purse first. It was slow going at first because as I said, the yarn (if you can call it that) was very fragile and kept tearing. But I found that just twisting the two ends together sufficiently repaired the breaks.

Crochet until the length is three times a long as you want the final piece to be, making sure to leave a button hole about half an inch from the edge. Do this by chaining four (more if your button is bigger) skip four stitches and single crochet in fifth stitch. continue single crochet to edge.

Next comes the felting. Felting is a process that shrinks the wool fibers creating a denser, stronger fabric. Generally only 100% wool fibers will work. Wool/acrylic blends are not the best choice yarn for a felting project. One way to felt is to put the piece in the washing machine on high heat with some towels thrown in to create the friction needed to complete the process. I, however, chose to felt by hand so that the individual stitches in the piece would still be visible.

What you will need:

• bucket or wash basin
• hot water
• liquid dish soap
• and a whole lot of elbow grease

Fill you bucket with enough hot water to completely cover your project. Add just a few drops of the liquid dish soap to the water and mix so that it gets nice and sudsy. Begin by swirling the fabric around the water making sure to completely saturate it. Rub it against your hands, the bottom of the bucket, and against itself. This is where the elbow grease comes in! It can take a while but be patient. With enough friction you will begin to see your fabric transform. It will begin to get denser and fuzzier and will even shrink a little bit. Felting it in the washing machine will cause even more shrinkage and a denser fabric. 

How long you continue will determine the look of you final piece. The longer you felt, the more solid the fabric will look. I prefer to have more stitch definition so I stopped after about fifteen minutes of felting. When you are finished, rinse out the piece in clean water. Press out the excess water and lay on a towel to dry.

If you want your clutch to have a lining now is the time. Cut a piece of fabric to size and sew along the outside edges. But make sure not to cover up your button hole. When finished, fold up the bottom of the piece leaving about a third of the fabric left for the front flap. Sew along either edge. Attach a button for a closure. Make sure you line it up with the button hole on the flap and you're done! 

I really love the way these came out and cant wait to try my hand a felting again! Good luck with all your felting endeavors! 

That Darn Cat!

So I have a cat. Her name is Jelly (I will explain!) and she is just the best. She is an absolute nut but I love her. The story of how she came into my life is kind of a strange one so I figured I'd share. I think it was around February or March of 2010 and my boyfriend was going to school in Newark. He was a member of a fraternity so every now and then we would hang out at their house. The backyard was kinda small but nice. Well, as nice as a backyard in Newark can be. There was a small patio with a grill, a little grassy area, and a wood platform that they used as a stage. This is where Jelly and I first met.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The story begins a few days earlier. I was laying in bed late one night watching tv. There must have been a commercial for Jello right before I fell asleep because I had the strangest dream about it that night. I was outside in my backyard next to an old grey shed that we have. Strange noises started coming from under the shed so I decided to take a look. As I got closer the noises got louder. Something was under there. I knelt down to take a closer look and found a small orange cat curled up in the dirt under the shed. I started speaking to her (somehow I knew she was a girl) and she eventually came out. And the last thing I can remember before waking up was that she had a collar around her neck with a tag that read "Jell-O" but I decided to call her Jelly for short. 

The next morning I woke up thinking, "Well, that was strange." But of course as the day wore on I forgot about it until I got a phone call that afternoon. It was my boyfriend. He said that there was a small cat living under the little stage in the backyard of the frat house. I said, "How weird! I just had a dream there was a cat under my shed!" I told my parents about it later that night. My mother got a sick look on her face and my father made it very clear that we have two dogs already we DO NOT need another animal in the house!

The next weekend I went down to visit and we ended up having a bbq at the frat house. The minute I stepped into the backyard I saw her. She was adorable. A tiny black and white kitten. I sat down in a chair and she jumped right into my lap. From that moment all was lost. I knew I could not leave this small creature to fend for herself in the middle of Newark. She was my cat now. They asked what I'd name her and I thought for a moment. The dream! This is her! It's JELLY! It was fate. I took her home the next morning (much to my father's chagrin) and we have been together ever since!

Her crazy antics always keep me laughing

She loves to climb into small places

She's an attack cat! 

 
She loves to do the laundry

But most of all she loves to snuggle! 

First Post!

Welcome to my blog! Four words I never thought I would say! I've been wrestling with the idea of starting a blog for few months and finally decided to go for it. I'm a twenty something graduate from art school with a teaching certificate attempting to figure out where I belong in the world. My passion is jewelry making but I also love ceramics and crocheting. Now that I've been out of school for a while I have had the opportunity to work a lot more on my art. And let me tell you I've been a jewelry making machine. When I first started designing jewelry I would almost exclusively make chainmaille pieces. I learned how to do it online through various tutorials and fell in love. The idea of making something so incredibly complex from materials as simple as a spool of wire and a pair of pliers was beautiful to me. I started out making simple chains with not much creativity to them. Once I started I couldn't stop. I had to learn every pattern. When I would exhaust the patterns on one website I would scour the internet for new weaves. Honestly it felt like I had looked at every website about chainmaille that had ever existed. I felt like I had seen it all. I was stuck. Until I realized maybe I could use the existing weaves that I had learned and modify them. Then a light bulb went off. I am an artist! I don't have to follow instructions to create something beautiful! I thought that I had been creating works of art but realized that I hadn't even found my own voice as an artist in this new medium. I struggled at first trying to come up with ways to make the chains more interesting until one day I took a trip to my favorite place, AC Moore. I was looking at some of the bicone crystals and thought, "maybe these could fit inside the inverted round weave!" I immediately bought some, brought them home, and went to work. It took a bit of trial and error to figure out what size crystals would fit inside what diameter rings made from what gauge wire but I eventually figured it out. The end result made me so happy that I went on to make the same bracelet in every color crystal I could find.

This is the first one that I made. I thought the contrast between the deep red and the bright silver was very striking. Since then I don't think I've made a piece of jewelry with only one design element. At first I was really into using the crystals to add a feminine touch to an industrial look. However lately I've been using semiprecious stones for a more natural look. I think I almost like those pieces more. They have a more professional and polished look to them. I will post more pictures of them later and more of my works in progress in future posts. But for now that is all. Here is a link to my etsy shop if you would like to see more! 

http://www.etsy.com/shop/KristinAshleyDesigns