I have been BUSY! Since my last post, I have made five pairs of earrings and a new necklace for the shop, AND a necklace for the Muscle’s Father’s Day present! One of the pairs of earrings isn’t quite sitting right with me, so it’s handing quietly off the edge of the little basket on my desk, solemnly staring at me, silently willing me to *fix them*.. but I haven’t quite wrapped my head around what it is I’m going to do to fix it.
My first necklace I completed since my last post was something that I have toyed with for a LONG time now, literally months, and what I did was to take a pendant focal bead, the kind with a hole drilled at the top for a jump ring? Yea, those. I took it, flipped it upside down so the hole was at the bottom, and I wire-wrapped it as if it were a cabochon. Then, I used that drilled hole at the bottom to dangle a sweet bead. Here is Autumn Winds, all in autumn jasper, orange and green aventurine, and of course, copper:

The kicker! The kicker!! Didja see it?! Why yes, it is indeed reversible!! I saved that for last, hoping it was obvious enough that you’d notice it without my pointing it out. Yay!
The icing on the cake came when Magpie Gemstones featured this necklace on their facebook page, and in their client’s jewelry blog!! I thought my head was going to explode, I was so flattered by all the wonderfully kind and encouraging compliments!  *squeee*!

Moving on. It always seems I get my great ideas waaaayyyy too late. I had a lightbulb moment around the 9th of the month, to make Birthstone Jewelry for June. I have tons of GORGEOUS, lustrous pearls from, of course, Magpie Gemstones as well as moonstones galore from them, too! So I sat down and made a pair, and OH what a pair! Sweet little pink-mauve colored pearls on the same shape earwires as the Simple Sunstone earrings, but this time, in sterling silver! They turned out very classy, very sweet. June In Silver:

I, being a Craft Hopper, find it difficult sometimes to sit and work non-stop continuously on one single project. Therefore, those little beauties were made in between making this necklace for the Muscle:

Ammonite, pyrite nuggets, bronze, brass and copper on leather. Doesn’t it just scream “Manly”!? And, he loved it, incidentally! =}

Next, I made MORE pearl earrings! Green Pearls were fun to make, so I made three just like it, barring the differences in them due only to the nature of freeform freshwater pearls and such:

I have more projects in the making!! If not for finding out, AGAIN!!! the hard way!!! that the wire I was working with has a coating on it, I would have been finished today. Le sigh. So, I went through all the wire in my scrap yard bucket, and found that ALL the wire *except* for the 12 gauge has a coating!! Yikes! On some of it, it’s obvious. There is a slight color difference, causing the copper to appear more orangey-orange, instead of copper’s pinky-orange color. But most of it is absolutely clear! So I kept half with the coating and the other half the Brawn, aka the Muscle, said “hey, I think we can burn that off”. So into the toaster oven in the garage it went. After a few spectacularly smokey minutes, a darker, crunchier 26 gauge wire emerged. The toaster didn’t quite get hot enough to burn it all off, just hot enough to melt all the coating, singe it and make it stick together! He decided the torch was the way to go, and soon I had many feet of clean, uncoated copper wire to work with. What would I do without him!? =^..^=