Jewellery Journal

Gemstone Focus Pendants

Gayle — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 18:52:56 +0000

I am extremely happy to finally be able, after nearly a decade of wiresmithing, to present the public with a line of jewellery that is centered on the lore of mystical properties of gemstones. They’re my Focus pendants, and here are a few!

Happiness:

Renewal:

Strength:

Friendship:

I also have Love, Luck, Health, Wealth, Insomnia, Grounding, Peace and Creativity. Gemstones include amber, labradorite, peridot, tigereye, emerald, tourmaline, aquamarine, moonstone, rose quartz, topaz, chrysocolla, kyanite, opal, chalcedony, carnelian, citrine and quartz crystal.

These will be available for the first time at the Cape Breton Centre for Craft & Design’s Christmas Loft Show, November 27, 28 & 29, downtown Sydney.

Christmas Loft 2008

Gayle — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 12:55:44 +0000

(Click for Larger)

This private shopping party at the Cape Breton Centre for Craft and Design is going to be totally fabulous. I will be dressed to the tens (the nines aren’t fancy enough!) and we’ll have a jazz band and martinis, and it’s going to be beautiful and intimate and a fantastic way to buy holiday presents this year.

Hope to see you there, but if you can’t make it Thursday night, remember the craft show will be open to the public all day Friday and Saturday! No fancy jazz band and I’ll be wearing sneakers, but my jewellery and all the other artisans’ work will still be on display at the gorgeous new CBCCD building.

Rack Cards

Gayle — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 23:08:35 +0000

The very kind people at the CBCCD, through a funding program, have allowed me the financial ability to have rack cards printed - plus business cards and the Moo cards I talked about this week. I spent far too many hours designing these things - struggling with niggly details, staring dumbly at them until my eyes dried out, looking for feedback from everybody, being a little stupid about CMYK, and finally getting them off to print. The final card has some slightly different text, but here’s what they look like!

Coal Pendants

Gayle — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 06:03:15 +0000

The coal industry has been a big deal in Cape Breton for decades. It’s been slowly shutting down, but of course the coal is still here - and it washes up on our beaches, all soft and beautiful. I give it a semi-gloss coat of sealant (because coal, it is the dirty) and turn it into jewellery - don’t you love it?

New Moo Business Cards

Gayle — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 12:39:23 +0000

You’ve probably seen my tiny finger-sized business cards from moo.com. I’ve got funding for more print materials so I’m using part of it to print some business-card-sized cards from Moo. The very best part is every card can have a different image on it! I chose 30 different images. Here are a few.

Earrings

Gayle — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 23:20:34 +0000

In the ramp-up towards this fall’s craft market, I’ve made nearly 100 new pairs of earrings, most of them from a fabulous batch of new glass beads I received recently. In my never-ending quest to find the best way to photograph my jewellery, I tried hanging earrings from the top of a pottery vase from the dollar store, but it was too shiny and the shadows and reflections were much too harsh. However, the remnants of yesterday’s beach glass photo session were still around, so I tried that - and the more matte middle section of the vase plus a scalloped shell turned out to be the magic trick!

Photographs

Gayle — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 21:56:06 +0000

I finally found a setting that doesn’t look completely lame when taking beach glass pendant photos - a fistful of my white beachglass, a couple pieces of driftwood, some sand dollars and a shell! I think these came out really fabulous and as soon as my camera’s battery is charged up again (grr), I’ll be taking some more.

Fall Beachcombing

Gayle — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 20:38:18 +0000

I think the fall is one of the best times to go searching for beach glass and other bits, because A) there’s fewer people around and B) the storms really churn up what’s out there and drag it up onto shore! I’ve made some of my best finds in the fall.

It being a long weekend, I found myself on an area of the island I’m not normally near, so I took advantage of the gorgeous weather, borrowed a bucket, and set out to fill it.

I asked a native where to go, and she sent me to an easily accessible little strip of beach:

Wasn’t much to it, but oh boy did I hit the jackpot on coal bits! I then took my little borrowed Shrek bucket to a beach I often visit, and which the recent winds have churned up. It was an utterly gorgeous day, and lots of folks were walking the boardwalk. I had my eye on the rock piles, though!

I got the haul home and washed off the salt and dirt, and oh boy was I excited. I realized I don’t pick up as much brown as there probably is when I accidentally found a couple of pieces which I’d originally thought of as rocks. They don’t glint as nicely as the other colours!

I was so pleased with the beautifully rounded - and therefore really old - pieces I’d found that I whipped out my tools and made pendants, even though yesterday was supposed to be a ring-making day. I am just ecstatically happy with the results.

Beachcombed, sorted

Gayle — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:00:22 +0000

I sorted my beach glass! This is everything I have. I thought it might be neat to show the actual rarity of the colours by volume. Here is all of it:

(click for larger + notes)

And a close-up on my precious pieces:

I’m surprised at how little brown I had - I actually was given four or five of the largest of those pieces. The huge cobalt blue piece my mom has had since I was a little girl - the rest are actually quite tiny. There’s some dark olive greens that are quite nice, and some of my darker teals. Or aquas. I am never sure which is which! And finally, my precious precious bag of the rarest colours there are.

There’s only one piece in there I haven’t found myself, and that’s the orange. It’s a piece of ‘depression glass’ that my friend Angie found personally and gave it to me because I was literally drooling. OH wait and that large lavender piece and I think the big blue marble were also given to me by people who found them on local beaches. The red piece was the highlight of my beachcombing life The tiny pink piece, at the bottom, was also fun. And there’s a couple of yellow pieces that were also quite exciting - not to mention that black marble!

Ahh, memories. It’s lovely when I make something out of one of these and then someone buys it. Two of my three personally-found marbles are in homes, and it pleases me no end.

Phew!

Gayle — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 23:30:06 +0000

I’ve finally managed to get a real sort of update onto my website. I replaced the Rings and Earrings pages with representative images instead of individual works for sale, as that just never worked out very well - those always have a high turnover and I just can’t keep the site up-to-date.

I’m hoping to have more betterer updates soon!