A Year of Jewelry by Beth

I thought I had posted this but something must have gone wrong when I posted it.

My piece for week 21 uses 18g sterling silver for the frame with 24g & 26g for the wrapping.  22g was used to weave the right side of the pendant.  2 white & 1 black freshwater pearls, 2 amethyst swarovski crystals and an angular hematite bead fill in the open left side of the pendant.  Obviously my inspiration comes from Sorcie.  Thank you.  This weeks theme is Starwars… The spiral is remenicent of the Princess’ hair that is coiled around at each ear.

The photo doesn’t do the pearls or crystals justice.  I am playing with my photo and paint software which were just upgraded.  The silver looks right but the pearls and crystal are not… the pearls are a milky white and the crystals are a lovely amethyst.  The black pearl is actually a bit deeper and richer.  A large portion of this week was spent reloading my new computer after the motherboard on my old one fried…

Visit the Four Seasons of Jewelry blog to see all the entries this week.

This was the week to gear up for valentines.  So it was perfect that the theme was about hearts.  I especially love hearts and use them regularly in my pieces.  Here are two pair of earrings that were made with valentines in mind.

       
First are heart charms suspended from a grouping of red swarvski crystals using 24g sterling silver wire (ssw).

A second pair features czech glass beads with an opal like finish hanging from a stylized spiral made from 21g ssw.

I seem to be in a rut.  One more dichroic cabachon simply wrapped to show off the beauty inside. The artist has used a stamp to create a pattern of squares encased in the glass. This is an attractive pendant from a distance but as the viewer is drawn toward the pendant they realize there is much more to see…This cab is unique because the back is as beautiful as the front.

At first I didn’t like the simple bail, but when I put it on the chain I realized that it was perfect.  I like it better than the other ones that I have created. It was a fun piece to wrap and is my current favorite. 

This has been a week I would not want to repeat.  We are still trying to recover from the hacking that destroyed the website and blog and all that was creativespirits.net.  My computer has been getting slower and slower and finally, despite brave efforts on DH’s part, it wasn’t starting up at all.  It would get so far then freeze up. Upon opening up the case we discovered that most of the capasitors on the motherboard were blown and spuing out a brown ooze.  Needless to say that was the end of that.

We had to bite the bullet and get a new one.  It is a pentium 4 and more than I use, but it was an excellent price so we bit.  Then it took a couple days restoring programs and reconfiguring, and locating and resetting passwords.  Thankyou DH. 

I did manage to finish the piece of jewelry for this week but had to wait until all the programs were loaded until I could download the pics to my computer from the camera and then…. of course you can’t put back the programs you are used to because there is always a new version with a learning curve to go along with it… and all my settings have to be reestablished and discovered again….. arghhhhh!!!