Month: July 2013

Crafty Vacation and Little Flowers

work station

This has been a busy week for the both of us.  Roxy has started a fantastic and well-deserved vacation that has brought her one time zone closer to me.  And what is she doing with her time?  Relaxing, and beading of course.  She brought her tools along and has created a mini work station for herself.

She has so far made 6 necklaces, 1 pair of earrings and 1 bracelet. The only slight snag is she forgot ear wires but she tells me that just means she’ll have to finish off her sets when she gets back home to Edmonton next week. Here is a preview of a few of her great new pieces.

some results so far
Some fantastic new necklaces, including a whole lot of pearls!

As promised, I’ve started posting the memory wire bracelets.  I’ve called these the Little Flower series, inspired by the adorable, tiny pewter flower spacers scattered throughout each of the bracelets.  Memory wire is a lot of fun to wear, particularly because it doesn’t require a clasp.  The bracelets simply wrap around your wrist, and will actually resize over time to fit their wearer.

Little Flower series bracelets
The Little Flower series: memory wire bracelets featuring gemstone chips & adorable tiny pewter flower beads spaced throughout.

Of course, five new bracelets (and a couple pairs of matching gem chip earrings) means a lot of photography.  Good thing we’ve been having such great weather here, as I love getting out and taking advantage of natural light.

Robyn

To sell jewellery online…

Onyx rectangles and freshwater pearls
First photo

When Robyn and I first decided we were going to make jewellery we set out to sell at local art shows, people could see our items in person and the jewellery would speak for itself.  I’d make a piece, snap a picture, like what you see over to the right and then move on.

Over the last couple years we’ve both had a lot of positive changes in our lives but these have made it so that attending art shows in person is a much bigger challenge then it was before. Robyn started to focus more on our ETSY store during this time. She already had a good understanding of websites and of photography and I was happy to let her run with it as this was well within her comfort zone. Then Robyn got married and had a baby and I started to feel like I should pitch in more (a lot more) with the online store side of our business.

I figured out the ETSY store and website pretty quickly but soon realized I was going to have to start posting, and more importantly, taking and editing my own jewellery pictures. Oh man! Who knew that to sell jewellery online, you also had to be a talented photographer? I was feeling well out of my element on this one so I enlisted the help of a good friend and very talented photographer, Dano Tanaka (check out his work here: https://www.facebook.com/danotanakaillustrator). I bought a mid-range fancy new camera, a mini home studio and set to my task.

The image below is the result of the last few months of learning.  As with anything else in life, I feel I have a long way to go and will enjoy continuing to improve this new skill and perhaps even apply it to other projects.  However, I am pretty happy with what I think are noticeable improvements in the quality of my images. I’m grateful to Robyn and Dano for their patience and support throughout this learning process.

Roxy

Same piece as above, pictured in 2013
Same piece as above, pictured in 2013

Our Week: Etsy and beyond

We’ve had a busy week!  First and foremost, we’ve both been on an Etsy binge, and have lots of gorgeous new jewellery posted to our store. Have a browse around. We love receiving comments and feedback on our work!

New Etsy items
Some great new pieces we added to our store!

I also got a little crafting time in as well.  I was hunting through my stash for some inspiration, and came across some memory wire.  I haven’t used it in a while, so it seemed like a great opportunity to create some fantastic wrap bracelets.  Our sneak peek includes a great wrap bracelet in fluorite, and another in sodalite.

Memory wire wrap bracelets
Memory wire wrap bracelets – coming soon to our Etsy store!

Hope you enjoy!

Robyn

Gotta Love Those Pearls!

We’ve got some fun news!  Wire-sculpture.com has written up a great Gem Profile blog article about pearls.  (If you’re interested in learning about gemstones, their weekly Gem Profile series is very educational)  Not only are we huge fans of pearls, we love the fact that they included one of our bracelets in their blog!

2012-02 003
First Leaves of Spring, a lovely bracelet strung with freshwater pearls and petite peridot coin beads. Click the photo to see the listing on Etsy!
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