silver wire and gemstone jewellery in development by Gayle Bird
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!
These are the earrings I made for the home show I had on Sunday:
And yesterday I got a whole passel of new beads, including flowers, raspberries, butterflies, leaves and crackle beads - so of course I had to make more! These are destined for the Cape Breton Centre for Craft and Design’s gallery on Charlotte St., so get your butt down there if you want some! [earwires to be attached soon]
I had a wonderful evening on Sunday. My man’s mother wanted to host a jewellery party, so I packed up and went out. I had no plans, but it worked out really well! Lots of people had fun, everybody got a wee pendant for a door prize, and I did quite well in the monetary fashion, as well.
All the way home I thought of ways I could make the next one better. I want to do more! I know several people who have offered to host one, already. Fun times!
Here’s some of the stuff I’ve beachcombed this year. I really need to get more of it done, I am running out of what I picked up last year. And two evenings out, I found a PINK piece, my very first true pink!
I’ve been really enjoying the limestone - there’s a particular beach that yields the loveliest oval pendants. I’ve been getting a lot of coal as well. New this year is brick - I found a beach that has lots of brick bits that I’m hoping will be really nice when wrapped.
Click on any of the images below for a larger look and a little description.
I had a very fun weekend making a lot of new jewellery from old glass, shells, pottery and coal found on the beaches of Cape Breton.
There’s a new Ocean Harvest Charms series which consists of local stone drilled by Laird and wrapped by me with the inclusion of pewter or sterling silver charms. I think these are so beautiful:
I managed to wrap some of the rarer beach glass I’ve found, including an extremely tiny piece of red & a gorgeous teal droplet:
I also made many many common-coloured beach glass pendants:
This was all in preparation for A) the flea market, which was yesterday, and B) sending more work to Arts North.
Well, all the flea market did was make me ache all over (who sanctioned the use of concrete for floors, ever?). Barely made any money whatsoever. I did get lots of interest and lots of people took my card, so that’s good I guess.
It does reinforce my belief that I should never ever try to sell my own work. I’m simply no good at it. Someone looks at me and I smile and look away; someone looks at Angie and she immediately starts to talk about my jewellery. I should just hire her as my personal representative.
I recently received shipment of these amazing lampworked beads:
They’re gorgeous! I did this with some of them:
Laird has my photo studio so the lighting isn’t the best here. Also I’m lazy.
The large pendant in the middle on the neckwire is all mine. The rest are pendants I’ll be selling in order to pay for the beads! Lampwork: gorgeous artisan work that’s not cheap but totally worth it!
Speaking of lamps (well, sort of), I found an amazing daylight lamp for extremely cheap (less expensive than the lightbulb that’s in it!) yesterday, and it’s making working at night soooo much easier:
And hey… is that a CLEAN workbench? Why yes, yes it is! Thank you for noticing!
Also new are the rings that have been selling like CRAZY at the two gallery shops my work is honoured to be a part of:
No two alike, just like fingerprints! Or renaissance masterpieces! I’ve made nearly 150 of these in the past couple of months, and I expect to be making more. And no, I can’t make a custom one - custom work takes at least three times as long as working on my own, and I have a full-time job so I just can’t keep up to commissions. But there are many options available! I’ll post available sizes and colours when I get a chance.
That’s the update for the summer! Busy busy bee over here!
I’m rolling out this starfish series with a bang.
That thing has been rolling about inside my head for a very long time. I’m SO glad I finally got it out! Plus, I totally made it another kitchen-sink necklace (gotta stop doing that)… it’s got: hand-sculpted polymer clay starfish & shell, blue kyanite, aquamarine, pearls, labradorite, chrysocolla, moonstone, blue chalcedony, firepolished glass, pressed glass, reclaimed leather, and copper, bronze & silver wire.
More views if you click on the photo and go through the Flickr set.
Also making me happy this week are these adorable wee hair combs (again, you’ll find a few different combs by clicking on the photo and going through the set):
I expect to make many colour combinations of these. I LOVE them and want one in every colour. Gotta remember to sell them, too!
For the past few weeks my friend Angie and I have been working in her amazing paper studio. She’s teaching me things and letting me use some of her materials while she works on her own projects, and I am making boxes in which to store, display, and sell my large neckpieces.
Wanna see?
Of course you do…
(these photos are not the best quality, it’s just that the boxes are staring at me and I can’t wait to get into my photo studio to take better ones!)
Today I woke up wanting to make more starfish. The clay is exactly what I needed to kick-start my creative mojo again. I needed something different. Today’s batch is more colourful.
I also started to wrap them and they’re turning out pretty great. Exciting! I’m putting some leather in as well, that I got from the friend of a friend who’s a bookbinder. I am hoping to incorporate some beach glass.
And OK, one more thing. Snake sets!
I have had this plan in my head for so very long, and today was the first step:
Polymer Clay Starfish! Next step: leather and copper.
Oh yes.