Luna's Baublebilities

I have some gorgeous new colors for my Dragonflies and other enameled brass piece in my shops this spring!
There's Mossy



and Saffron






and Shimmery Copper



and Shimmery Fuchsia.





They are in my Etsy shop now but ArtFire will have to wait 'till Friday.  Allergy boy is home today so I can monitor his breathing - snot rocket, big cough, poor peak flow - nebulizer treatments all day.  I love spring.


Oh yeah - and I neeeed to have one of these cameras someday.  We had a Polaroid when I was a kid and I was so sad to hear that they discontinued their instant cameras.  Now Fuji is picking up that market with a teeneency camera that prints teeneency pictures.  What fun!















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This weekend, I had a customer ask me some questions about Brass stampings. In composing an answer for her, I realized that this would probably be a good blog topic as there seems to be a lack of honest, concise information out there about these pretty things that so many people are buying and using these days.






The first place to start would be what Brass is made of. Wikipedia has a good explanation
that needs no extra babbling from me. Copper and Zinc. No lead. Yay!






Part of the confusion around all of those pretty filigree pieces out there today is the question of whether they are truly "antique" or "vintage" or not. Based on my experience with these items, I believe that most of them for sale today on Etsy and elsewhere are actually newly manufactured items. There are some out there that are obviously old - left over from old boxes stored in warehouses for decades but those show significant oxidation beyond the simple patinas that modern jewelry artists are applying. The truly old stuff is often dirty and pitted and have come from some auction house clearing out old, unclaimed stuff.




All of my brass pieces are newly made from vintage and antique dies by manufacturers in the U.S. (Yay for American manufacturing jobs!) For basic information on the manufacturing process, we turn to Wikipedia again. In many cases, these dies were put away for decades until the recent fashion trends in vintage style, Steampunk, and retro Victorian jewelry came into vogue. Then the old dies were pulled out and put to work again to create new findings in vintage designs. Thus, you can buy a brand new filigree piece of the exact same design used in a brooch your great-gramma wore. Molly Byn was excited to learn this as she was recently allowed to claim some goodies from her Great Gramma's jewelry box - some items needed repair or repurposing and she discovered a treasure trove of possibilities in my studio. (I'll post some of those creations later on.)

Raw brass items are just that - brass charms, filigree and findings that are unaltered from their original state. These pieces will age and darken, sometimes in a very unlovely fashion and will probably leave a green mark on your skin unless they are sealed in some way. Floor wax, jewelers sealant, clear nail polish and furniture wax (like Renaissane micro-crystaline wax) all work well for this purpose. Brass reacts with all sorts of chemicals unless sealed - amonia will quickly darken brass and will actually eat away at it if exposed for too long. I have started using a jewelrs grade sealant for my patina items so that my customers' creations remain stable and clean.

Because brass reacts with many chemicals, there are many solutions that can be applied to create a patina on the brass. The most usual patina color is a brown-gold color that makes the piece look aged. I recently learned how to apply a green-blue verdegris patina that will start appearing in my shop soon and I have seen a few other colors that I'm intrigued by - chartreuse, deep purple - but I'm intimidated by the chemisty right now and will have to wait until I have a studio with beter ventilation and running water for safety's sake before experimenting with those.




















. . . .

I'm behind on my Goblin's Market enamel orders but my studio is (sorta) clean and we've made significant progress on our house. The realtor was by yesterday and is optimistic about the house's potential. We're selling at an unheard of price for the size and condition of the house and he anticipates a lot of interest very soon - so I have to keep cleaning to be ready for visitors!














In fact, as we have been cleaning it, I have been thinking "Oh, yeah. This IS a nice house." Someone with a bit more enthusiasm than I've got who doesn't need a studio with running water or a barn for livestock and recycled lumber could really do something with it. It has great bones.


Yesterday, just as I was starting to get dinner ready, the UPS man stopped by. He had a package full of the most wonderful things. Here are a few of my favorites.



Now on to patina and enamel for my late orders and some of these new beauties. They'll start showing up in my Etsy shop very soon.








P.S. The smiling girl in the frame was my grandmother's best friend in grade school. Doesn't she look like fun and trouble all rolled up into one??



















...

So - Here is the finished wedding jewelry - pending the Bride's approval.


I switched out the monster jump rings for these smaller ones to join the pearl strands to the brass filigree. See - they are almost invisible now, compared to the first draft. Thank you, funkyfindings for getting these jump rings to me on time!




I removed one link from the large linked pearls to make the whole pendant hang asymmetrically and added a few beads to the pale pearl strand to cause that to drape a little deeper than the copper strand of pearls.


The earrings are made from two large champagne sand colored pearls and copper beads & button pearls. I got the gold plated leverbacks from beads4ewe because I forgot to include gold colored ear wires in my last bulk supply order. Beads4ewe shipped them out very quickly and at a great price.


That's one of the things I love about Etsy. I was able to go to an Etsy supply shop and pick up the few findings I needed for very little money and very reasonable shipping rates for this project. There were no minimum order requirements, no monstrous Fed Ex shipping charge and the mark up on the findings was not huge, compared to the prices I can get when I order similar things wholesale. Hooray for Etsy supply shops!



As a finishing touch, I added a teeny blue button pearl at the clasp to fulfill the "something blue" requirement. :) I'll try to snap some good photos of the bride in her whole ensemble on Saturday.










I'm planing adding lots more kits and mixes to GoblinsMarket this spring, including some involved bead weaving kits with detailed and illustrated instructions. Anyone interested in creating an ensemble similar to Lauren's wedding jewelry can just leave me a message here and I will let you know when I've got all the necessary pieces together for a kit.

Remember the photo of all those beautiful earthy toned pearls the other day? Well, I started working on some designs and here is the first draft in progress for Lauren's wedding baubles.




I started with this photo of a design by Jamie Hogsett that Lauren liked from the August/September 2007 Beadwork magazine. The design is featured from the Create Jewelry Series, Pearls edition by Marlene Blessing & Jamie Hogsett from Interweave Press, prublished 2007.





But Lauren did not like the star shaped flower detail - she found it a bit too gaudy. She did like the pearls and the asymmetry. She also liked several styles with chain or wire linked pearls. No sparklies, though. She was clear about that.





So I linked several large rice shaped pearls together with brass wire to create one side of the necklace. Currently, this side is too long. I need to remove a few links to make it shorter so the necklace will lay asymmetrically across her neck.



Then I made two strands of smaller rice and button shaped pearls with gold seed beads and copper spacers on Silkon thread.

I love Silkon thread. It is very strong and supple when strung with beads but is stiff enough to thread through pearls without having to use a needle! This is a huge benefit! It allows me to use a nice, sturdy thread since I only have to fit the thickness of the thread through the pearls once - not a doubled thickness plus a needle. Some jewelry artists coat the end of their thread with superglue to make it stiff but I find this to be a sticky, dangerous, frustrating practice.

These strands are lovey but the paler strand needs to be made longer so that it will drape lower than the darker copper strand when being worn.


The stranded pearls and wired pearls look lovely together.


















When stranding pearls on Silkon, or any beading thread, it is very useful to use a small seed bead as a stop bead. Pass the thread through the stop bead twice, tie a knot and add a small dab of glue on your knot. I used MagnaTack, a glue used in the millinery trade. It is supposed to create a substantial bond between fabric, plastic, metal, wood - you name it! The glue helps keep your know from coming undone and alowing your beads to slip off your thread.




Then you cover the knot and stop bead with a bead tip. These are a double cupped tip with a central hole and two loops so that the bead tip folds around the knot and has a two loops for extra security when attaching a clasp or accent piece.




















Since Lauren liked the asymmetrical look of the Beadwork design but didn't like the accent flower, I decided to use a simpler brass finding as the accent with a single central pearl instead of several bunches of pearls.


I used a lage button pearl and created a ball end headpin by melting one end of a brass wire with my torch. This discolors the brass but since Lauren wants a vintage look and only the tiny ball was going to show, I did not worry about that. I burnised the flamewrked ball with my brass brush and now it has a nice, shiny antique patina.




On the opposite side, i carefully coiled the wire up to the finding and bent it over at a 45 degree angle. This holds the pearl securely against the finding. No flopping around and the ciol lies fairly fat against the back of the finding so it will not scratch or itch. I could have added a bit of MagnaTack here, too but it does not seem to be necessary.



I'll be using a nice filigree box clasp on the finished design.


I need to get some smaller jump rings as these are too big for the finding. They look just a bit akward. Some 3x4 mm oval jumps should do the trick nicely.





Most of these supplies will soon be available in Goblins' Market. The pretty central filigree is one that I got in a recent sample pack. I like it so well that I will be ordering more today or tomorow. I had ordered a sample because I wantedto see if I could fold the filigree around a bead as a bead cap. It does not work for that, but I like the way it can be used to hold a central accent bead and then link to a larger design or as part of a strand of floral medallions. I'm eager to patina a bunch of them and make a vintage bracelet with central sparkleys !

The end of last week really fell apart on me. I was breathing through both sides of my sinuses for the first time in two weeks but still not sleeping well and feeling very worn out after Studio Tour. I didn't accomplish much at all besides enameling these beauties. I've posted the minty pair and the amethyst pair at Goblins' Market this morning, the others will go up later.



I wish I thought I was going to have time to play with them myself but I probably won't get to do that 'till after Christmas. I am imagining them as Art doll Angel and Fairy wings and as embellishments on a tiara.

I am determined to try creating a tiara soon. I have ordered a bunch of new pearls and plan to order some heavy gauge brass wire today or tomorrow to use as the base. The price of sterling wire has always deterred me from making tiaras in the past but with this new steampunk movement, a brass tiara would probably find an appropriate market. I'm picturing something with a dark patina on the brass, maybe even a hint of verdegris, with lots of glistening pearls, crystals and a dragonfly or set of wings to add lift. I'll be sure to take lots of photos of the process when I get around to it!

Now I have to go clean house and pay bills. Maybe that would be more fun if I had a tiara to wear whilst sweeping and dusting.