silver wire and gemstone jewellery in development by Gayle Bird
For the hundreds of people who have gone away crestfallen over the years… I’ve finally made brooches! These are all I have… when they’re gone, they’re gone! Available exclusively at the Holiday Spirit Fine Craft Market, TOMORROW, Friday, Saturday & Sunday!
No time! Setup is in 12 hours! Gotta run!!
In the midst of unbelievable chaos, I managed to complete a last-minute batch of steampunk flower pendants before the CBCCD show in 4 days!
I especially love the one with the red/orange leather, below:
I had to make some more because I nearly sold out at my last show! These things go very fast.
I was tucked in behind the table at the C200 show and it was fun watching jaws drop from my nearly-hidden vantage point.
I started playing with sheet metal – copper and aluminum – shaped, hammered and hole-punched as a basis for the flowers. It’s working pretty great! You can see it on the left, above, and in the middle, below.
In other news, about a month ago I was building flat, round, upholstered display discs (see turquoise, above!) and in so doing, I think I over-used the duct tape and strained a tendon in my right index finger. It could also have been the heavy wire-work I was doing for ornaments and neckwires.
In any case, working was painful and it seemed the best thing was to rest the finger. So aside from my day job, I’ve been avoiding using that hand for four or five weeks now. Getting back to the bench and being able to create again was a relief! It’s still a little stiff but I couldn’t help myself.
I hope to get a few brooches done before the show, but it is hard to say if I will have the time.
The fancy martini fundraiser party is this Thursday, and you can contact CBCCD for tickets. After that, we are open Friday evening, all day Saturday and Sunday for only $2.00 admission. Hope to see you there!
Yesterday was SO productive! I worked 8 full hours in the studio, with hardly any lollygagging or shenanigans. It was all about preparation for the four shows I have in the next 5 weeks, to make setup as painless (literally) as possible. I:
Covered one of the presentation boards I got on the cheap with fabric that I guessed at the length for and was an inch shy of being not enough. This process caused me to stretch in ways I haven’t stretched in a while. Today I am paying for it with aches and pains. But it’s totally worth it! Then I loaded the presentation board so I can just slip it into its case and have the world’s easiest set-up.
Completed a wholesale order for… wait for it… Little Mysteries in Halifax!!! Squee! They took one each of my new Focus line, as well as a dozen simpler gemstone pendants with meaning cards attached. I’m so delighted with this I can’t even think straight. The photo below – of simple gemstones with simple meanings – is the culmination of my career. Literally, this is all I’ve ever wanted to do but could never figure out properly.
Printed cards for my rare beach glass pendants that fit into the new boxes I have on hand and loaded them up. They look so fancy!
Created new STEAMPUNK cards and loaded my clay steampunk into boxes.
Loaded some beach glass onto cards.
Loaded my ring tray.
Counted and sorted my inventory.
Did a dance of joy.
My Arts North end-of-season inventory is back, and I’m pleased to discover that I now have twice as many rings as I thought I had, and nearly twice as many earrings. Phew! This is good, because I woke up this morning realizing this is my last full weekend of production, and before I’d gotten out of bed I had organized my whole day. Except now it’s 11am and all I’ve done so far is poach some eggs! It’s OK though because I got some much-needed sleep.
Today I need to figure out the final say on my ornament design… I ran out of beads from the very successful ornament from last year, so I had to order new ones but they’re too small for the old design. I posted a new design on my Facebook page, but private and public opinion was that it wasn’t right. So it’s back to the drawing board! I might make a smaller version of last year’s design; I haven’t decided yet.
I DID decide that I will be making a small batch of Christmas earrings, and they will be my Show Special at only $15! I’m pretty excited about that… I was playing with the new beads to come up with the new ornament and have a bunch of too-small-for-the-tree pieces that will be perfect for earrings.
It was fun this week to be someone’s mentor… a friend I showed some jewellery techniques to about a decade ago is finally worked up to her first show, and she had questions for me… and I had the answers! I felt like a rockstar for a second there.
After ornaments, my priority this weekend is to make coal pendants and beach glass pendants.
OK. I have got to get to the studio. Have a great one folks!
Been making crazy amounts of jewellery these days…
Check out how awesome that labradorite is!
Finished up a bunch of rings lately, some even with gears and such!
Managed to get a few gemstones going as well, although I’m not quite able to identify this one.
This rainbow one is totally fun.
And a huge flowery one! So cool.
For the first time ever I’m running a calendar and a production schedule. Today I’m supposed to be making ornaments :)
Some folks have been asking where to buy my jewellery this year. Here’s the list!
Centre 200 Christmas Craft Fair
Friday, November 11: 2pm – 9pm
Saturday, November 12: 10am – 8pm
Sunday, November 13: Noon – 5pm
Holiday Spirit at Cape Breton Centre for Craft & Design
Tentative schedule:
Private Shopping Party, Thursday, December 1: 5pm – 9pm
Friday, December 2: 5pm – 8pm
Saturday, December 3: 10am – 6pm
Sunday, December 4: Noon – 5pm
If you happen to know my avon lady or my future mother-in-law, they’ll be holding private jewellery parties at their homes next month as well.
And of course, my work is available year-round at the Cape Breton Centre for Craft & Design:
CBCCD is open year-round, Mon-Sat.
PO Box 1686,
322 Charlotte Street
Sydney, Nova Scotia B1P 6T7
Tel: 902.539.7491
Fax: 902.539.4807
www.capebretoncraft.com
My Etsy shop is currently empty; once I see what my returning inventory is like after Arts North closes this weekend, I might be able to put up a few items. I’ll keep you in the loop!
For the first time in 3 years, I got my little behind to the NS Gem & Mineral Show. I went completely bonkers and oh boy am I glad I did! Check out the colour on that aquamarine! The deep blue apatite! the brilliant yellow citrine, the peridot… oh man I’m excited.
I have been planning my Focus series for like a billion years now, and now I have the full complement of what I need. Here are some closeups!
The most amazing blue AAA kyanite, citrine, and amethyst/citrine points.
AMETHYST!
Carnelian. Loving these facets.
Top row is some rainbow moonstone, nearly invisibly. The rectangles are the kyanite I had before – rough, inconsistent colour, full of matrix. The triple-a stuff is just so much better. The bottom three rows are iolite, iolite, and more kyanite.
One of the big regrets I had about the last show was not going back for more agate slices. This time, I bought nearly everything they had!
Including these brilliant tumbled fragments.
I am completely in love.
Hoo boy, I love this batch. I had several new sets of components I had wanted to try – enameled flowers I got from an artist on etsy, lacquered birchbark I’d harvested from a friend’s woodpile, skeleton keys my dad salvaged from his basement, and stamped bronze and copper filigree that I’d coloured and varnished myself. I meant to do four different styles, but somehow they all got mashed up into my steampunk line and turned into something crazy and awesome.
The new materials I’ve got on the bench are blowing my mind. Unfortunately, my vacation totally interrupted my creativity time and I can’t show you anything finished yet!
I can, however, totally tease you :)
And ok, you can see some of the half-finished bits in the background. Maybe I jumbled them together on purpose so you can’t make them out. Y’know. Maybe.
For those of you who have asked if I make brooches …. I do now!
I know I’ve been inundating you with updates lately, but I can’t help it! I’ve just been so productive and I love to share :)
Some lovely soft colours of beach glass – yellow green, blue – wired together and placed on a ribbon necklace.
Yay!
This pile of beads has been haunting my last three studio benches. Today it finally became a necklace!
This is the most fun I’ve had in the studio in a while! Mostly I’ve had to focus on production pieces – making a million earrings in a row and spending weeks building rings; they’re satisfying to make but it can get monotonous. I finally decided to spend today doing something completely unique!
I didn’t have a serious plan for this one but it worked out beautifully. I’ve had these firescale carnelian ovals for a very long time and it was lovely to use them in a serious piece like this.
You guys, I am so lucky. My parents, my future mother-in-law and my friends all love to hunt for beach glass and have been bringing me the most delightful finds. Plus, I managed to get out once or twice my own self! It’s completely re-energizing to stand on that beach, look across into infinity and just breathe in the salt air.
With the exception of most of the marbles, all of this was found within the past month or so. That huge amber-orange piece (whose colour & rarity I’m having trouble identifying) I was lucky enough to find myself, but the two red/orange art glass pieces were found on different days by different people!
And now, some of the final results:
Is this yellow? Or orange? Or honey amber? I can’t tell.
Teal!
A gorgeous A-grade Gray.
This isn’t quite gray, but it’s sorta getting there, which along with the super rounded state, suggests it’s really old. It’s sort of a flattened cylinder which makes me think it used to be a cup handle.
Gorgeous piece of Aqua. I think I like the antique gold wire on it; do you?
Fabulous yellow!
A smooth piece of Jade.
A kind of blurry photo of a nice piece of Lavender.
Cobalt! So pretty, that cobalt.
Fabulous piece of citron – sooo pretty when you hold it up to the light.
And finally, this amazing piece of art glass that is red which smoothly transitions to orange. It’s got ridges, suggesting it used to be a plate or bowl. It’s kind of small so I had to use smaller gauge wire. It seems like I only get 1 red piece a year, and this is it for this year! The other piece above appears to have come from the exact same piece, and it doesn’t really count because it’s so small I don’t think I’ll be able to use it. But it’s pretty!
In other news, I’ve been thinking of doing a bunch more shows this year. It’s a lot of work and I find them mentally and physically exhausting, but the sales are always good and we’ve got a few wish-projects for around the house, so I think I’ll go for it. Which means I’ve gotta get off the internet and go make some things :)
These are soooo pretty! My parents brought me most of these (the yellow one was from last week!) and the gray in the bottom left corner was presented to me by a dear friend. I should have put these in the light box so you can get an idea of the real colours…
…but this is what’s on the bench to be wired up this week!
I hit the flea market & value village a couple of weeks ago. What a jackpot! Got a pile of watches for Laird to pull apart for me, some vintage and new earrings and chain, some metal bracelets I’ll use as the base for some steampunk pendants, and a little surprise….
… Belt Buckles! Not sure if it’s going to work but I plan to wire some clock parts and vintage bits to these and see if we can make some nifty jewellery!
The other day I finally completed the pile of waiting earrings on the workbench. For some reason they were completely blocking me! I normally work in batches of 100 at a time but these 2 dozen just wouldn’t finish themselves.
But I got ‘em all done and reached out for the earwires – to discover only a couple of stray ones at the bottom of a drawer.
Disaster!
I immediately ordered some online, but that takes weeks. I thought about leaving them until the hooks got here and simply working on a different part of the bench, but just couldn’t bear to leave these half-finished earrings on the bench for one more day, staring at me. So, I dug through drawers and boxes and baggies and managed to scrounge up just enough fishhook earwires to match up with what I needed. A sigh of relief – until I realized these were way too long for the tiny little earrings I’d made and they threw off the balance of the design.
Now what? Desperate to just make this pile go away, I grabbed my fattest bailmaking pliers and did a test to see if by making the hook fatter, they’d end up shorter… and it worked! Better yet, I like them way better than the basic fishhook earwires! I think they’re much more elegant and make them stand out.
It’s more work, but I’m so going to do this to all of my earwires from now on. It just goes to show that a pain in the arse can be turned into something kind of special.
I saw a lot of these digital watch components on Etsy and I HAD to have them. Being such a computer geek, I’ve always wanted to figure out some way to incorporate circuitry into my jewellery, but computer parts are always so clunky. But these seemed like they might do the trick… and when they arrived they were soooo much better than I had imagined! They’re *perfect* jewellery-sized pieces of circuitry, ready-made and all completely different! Bliss. I came home from work, opened the package and was so excited I quickly scarfed down some peanut butter sammiches standing over the sink, and went straight to the studio without even changing into comfy clothes.
These are the first five. There are about 20 more in various stages of completion. I feel brilliant.
My mommy got this one for her birfday present!
A preview of the early stages of some of these… many more in development.
An unexpected burst of energy after supper resulted in 3 new pieces for today!
The buttons have been laid out in these colour combinations on the workbench for at least a couple of weeks but I just couldn’t make it work in my head. I added the inverted washers, which was better, but it still wasn’t right…. until I opened a drawer and saw the vintage skeleton keys a locksmith friend had dug out of some tubs of random bits on his garage this past summer and realized they’d be *perfect* bases for what I had in mind.
The keys are fairly hidden behind the buttons but you can mostly see the ends poking out, plus it’s really great just to know they’re in there!
Here they are all together so you can see the necklace part:
The orange-ish one has a massive inverted washer in the middle underneath that fabulous terracotta-coloured button. It was exciting to find that they fit together so well! This one also features 3 connected vintage leather flowers that were in a box of my grandmother’s broken jewellery bits.
I had actually tried with the blue combination last week but felt it was flimsy and didn’t care for it. My success with the keys had me adding a few reinforcement wraps here and there which tightened it up considerably and helped me feel like it was more complete!
I just really loved this purple button. And those inverted washers give me joy!
A dozen or so heart pendants in blood red, sunset orange, and sweetheart pink, plus one special hammered pendant in extra-large. These will be available at the Cape Breton Centre for Craft & Design later this week!
One of a kind wire-wrapped jewellery handmade by Cape Breton artist Gayle Bird. Look for silver wire, labradorite, beach glass, gemstones, glass, beads, and a unique style.
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