So. Much. Brass.

I just bought a new set of brass stampings. Pendants, charms, components, links, blanks...you name it.

There are zodiac signs, reindeer, teddy bears, turtles, bulls, Scotties, flowers, cats, saddles, tennis racquets, and seals.

I spent today taking 280+ pictures. Yes, you read that correctly. And then, because I just couldn't stop there, I edited them all, cropped them all, saved them, and then uploaded them. So tomorrow all I have to do is write the listings. New listings take a lot longer than existing listings, but hopefully I will be able to share these all by the end of tomorrow, or at least Thursday night.

After that, I will be tackling the huge job of the new semiprecious cabochons. whew!

Jewelry for Mom

My parents stayed with us this weekend, and my mom reminded me that I hadn't made anything out of the pendant she'd bought from Nawbin earlier this year. It was made of Tiffany Stone set in sterling silver, and it's been sitting on my desk for months.

I always like consulting with the person the jewelry is for, so it was great to have her opinion and incorporate the beads she wanted. Here's the final piece:

Even more fun, I got to repair a vintage piece! My mom loves this bracelet, which she got from her mother, and wore to prom:

I've always loved it, too. The band is so clever; it's incredibly comfortable to wear, doesn't pinch at all, and opens and closes so beautifully and smoothly. Plus, it's incredibly flashy and fun.

Sadly, I didn't have the exact vintage crystals to match, but I did have other vintage crystals that were the same size. They aren't AB coated, and they're a slightly different cut, but I think they still had enough light and facets to do the job.

Interestingly enough, it turns out the band was made in Japan:

The original beads are Swarovski, of course, that divine bicone/round hybrid that I adore. It was marvelous fun to make the bracelet whole again; it was missing nearly twenty of its sparkling baubles, but tonight it looks great again.

Consider the Lilies

While visiting my parents this weekend, I browsed at a few antique stores.

Now, I am not normally one to look for antique stores. But recently I thought that it might be fun to see what I could find that might work with jewelry designs. Working with resins and bezel cups has become so popular recently that I thought I might look for interesting postcards and other paper goods.

Imagine my surprise when I found stereoscopic cards from the turn of the century! I had no idea that so many still existed. These cards feature two images, and work with a stereoscopic card viewer, which is basically a pair of glasses with a framework that extends out from the lenses. You place a card at the end of the framework, and then the image appears to be in 3-D. Anyone who had a ViewMaster growing up is familiar with the concept.

Intrigued, I went through the whole collection at one store. There were several that seemed interesting, and I pulled those out and put them to the side. There was an entire series which dealt with the Japanese invasion of China, I believe, and they numbered in the hundreds.

Some of them were just exquisite. This one is entitled "Amidst Nature's Beauties, Tower Grove Park, St. Louis, Mo., U. S. A." The little girl seems to glow in the image; it's rather haunting.



This one is called "Frankfort's Popular Palm Gardens, Germany." The edge of the card proclaims "Polychrome Stereo View, Reproduced from Original Stereoscopic Photograph." It occurs to me that this was a rather economical method of traveling! What better way to see the sights of a distant land than in the comfort of your own home, at the tip of your own nose? Especially during a time when travel could be both difficult and hazardous.



"Street in Old Mexico" fascinates me. The colors are rich and dusky, the look of the trees, the textures...



The last card I'm going to include in this entry asks us to "Consider the Lilies."



According to the back of the card: They belong to those good "old-fashioned" plants which frequently and justly come newly into vogue, but they are less understood and less discriminatingly appreciated than almost any other plants of prominence.

So lilies were considered old-fashioned even during Victorian times? Interesting! As always, tastes are cyclical, and the new falls to the old, and then the old cycles again, becoming new. It's interesting to see that we, as humans, are so predictable, even a hundred years later.

I picked out the cards I thought were most useful as background images or just in terms of visual interest and texture, and I bought them. Each one contains a slice of life, a scene, an intriguing image. I think I will put some of these up for auction on eBay.

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