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

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