Olive I'm in love

In my goal to showcase some jewelry in new colour palettes I've switched into the Olive tones. This necklace is a collaboration of smoky green quartz and Grossular Green Mali garnets. I love how these earthy greens look with gold!

Looking at my jewelry one might think I'm a very elegant and classy kinda gal. The truth couldn't be more different! My daily uniform is strictly jeans & T shirts. I've never owned a pair of heals and rarely remember my makeup! It's curious that I love designing such exquisite high end jewelry. I really do love designing it and get a total thrill to see it on other people. It's just that I'm not my own muse. For myself I wear very little jewelry and when I do it's small and subtle. Ironic?

A lot of designers design for themselves, but I'm not one of them. I love designing specific styles for people I know. Some of my friends are very classic and elegant and others are edgy and off beat. I enjoy the challenge of interpreting their different personal styles and designing pieces specifically for them! That is my favorite part of designing jewelry.

I thought it would be fun to include a photo of my "studio" which is really just a small computer desk in the corner of my bedroom. Try as I might to keep it tidy and organized it just explodes into what you see pictured here every time I sit down to make something...

Movin into Grey...

Ok - I promised a new colour scheme, and although I know grey isn't exactly a "colour", I thought it would be a break from all the blue jewelry I've been posting lately.

The center piece of this necklace is a Thai Hilltribe Silver Orchid. The Thai people are truly talented artists. Every flower is different and you can see how each person puts their own special embellishments into each piece they create. I have some silver butterflies on their way which I can't wait to design something with.

My photos of this necklace did not turn out well. The light was too dark when I was taking them, and even my macro shots are blurry. Oh well - I plan to work on my photography skills in the new year!

There's something about blue....

I'm not sure what it is about blue in jewelry - but it seems to be one of the colours people gravitate to the most. Watery aqua blues, bright Lapis blues, bright turquoise blues or Icy Kyanite blues...they always get the most attention. The more I try to steer my colour palettes in other directions (away from blue) the more people ask for it. Knowing that it sells well, I've put together a few more pieces with Kyanite. These are from the first wave of Christmas Collections I'm currently designing.

Next week I promise a new colour!!

Cheers! Jodi

Garnets remind me of Christmas

Every November I hunker down in the dark rainy evenings and get to work on my Seasonal Jewelry Collections. Christmas is my busiest time of year for sales, and I always do a few "Christmasy" pieces because people really like them. For me Garnets are the perfect Christmas stone. Their deep rich red colour really says "Winter" to me. I love garnets with gold. Pictured here are a necklace and bracelet from my upcoming Christmas Collection.

a bracelet a day....keeps the rain away!

Here in Vancouver we are settling in for the loooooong rainy winter. This is my favorite time of year to get crafty. Today I'm posting a bracelet I made for my friend's birthday. I used the same technique as the baby bracelet in the last post with the wire loops wrapped to closed jump rings. I added interest and movement with the dangling charms.

The stones I used were rough cut Peruvian opals and kyanite.

Tiny baby bracelet

This is the smallest bracelet I've ever designed. It's for a newborn baby girl and I can't wait to see it on her wrist! Her mom mentioned that she really wanted a bracelet for her baby daughter and I made note of it. The result is so delicate and pretty I think I'll want to make an adult sized one also!

The bracelet was made using gold filled wire and closed jump rings with alternating Arizona Turquoise stones and 4mm gold filled beads. I really like working in this style of making delicate "chain" from linked beads and jump rings. I find if I just link the beads without a jump ring the jewelry doesn't move freely enough. The links get kinked very easily when the jump rings are absent. Something I've learned from linking thousands of beads together over the years.

One of the first things people always ask me when they look a my jewelry is how I get the loops formed so perfectly. Practice, practice, practice! Exactly the same as sewing a straight line....lots of practice!

Filigree from Oaxaca

I don't have any current jewelry updates to share with you today. Instead I thought I would share a bit of my personal history in my journey towards becoming a jewelry designer.

I spent the year of 2001 living and studying in Oaxaca Mexico. It was a sabbatical of sorts from my career as a designer in the clothing and apparel industry. It was also a year of reflection about what kind of work I would really like to be doing next. (designing jewelry) ..... I have been designing jewelry for almost 20 years! I started when I was only 14. I spent my year in Oaxaca brushing up on my Spanish, and I also spent that year enrolled in a jewelry design program at a local Artisan's School. That was where I learned the intricate art of filigree jewelry making. It is a dying art I might add, as the labor and time involved in creating these pieces is enormous. Young people today are looking for more lucrative careers and are more drawn to technology. One of the things I loved the most about this art form was it's ancient, manual techniques. Everything is done painstakingly by hand! The photos here are two pair of earrings I completed at the end of the course. The amethyst pair I wore for my wedding. I also met and married my husband during this year long sabbatical!!

I have lots of new jewels on order so expect to see some new collections very shortly. The winter season is the busiest for me, so I should be getting into full production mode as soon as the rain starts here in Vancouver - end of October and ALLLLL of November!!