Well that was a quick month!! Well as it’s the last day of the month I thought I would write about my last new product from last year, Yes another wire wrapped piece! Sorry lol,  I have become very fond of making this type of jewellery probably because I’m not to shabby at making it if I do say so myself, It’s only taken an age. So like my last couple of  wire wrapped charm bracelets I thought I would complete the set and make a 14K Gold fill and entwined pearl “Bird’s Nest ” ball charm and eventually turn into a charm bracelet like others at some point but wanted to be a little different with this one and make a necklace with it but I have added a twist by adding a gemstone. Now when I started to wire wrap the Gold wire I did notice a big difference from the sterling silver and Rose gold wire, It’s like trying to wrap a steel bar lol, It’s a lot tougher and the top of my fingers are similar to a tea bag – lots of perforated holes, If you manage to stab yourself  in the finger whilst weaving the wire your going to know about it – It sharp and it hurts and I’ve done it quite often! So with the Nest made with the pearls entwined on it I rummaged through my box of goodies, Now I could do with a maid with regards to this particular corner of the workshop, It’s no joke I look at it and have such good intentions in my head to sort it all out and put everything in its own compartment but I just think its a mental block lol. OK so I find my stash of gemstones and putting different colors against the nest and then I come across these sparkly beauties, Pink Mystic Quartz that I’ve had for a while and had actually forgotten about, That’s what happens when your stash is just piled on top and top and lost to depths of the eerie sweetie tin I keep them in. Now Gold and pink just pop when put together so I just new that this was the one for me, So once attached to the bottom of  nest job done! I love this unique design, I already have a few alternatives in my head but I’ll leave that for another day. So if you like your jewellery unique & sparkling then you can’t go wrong with this necklace. So that’s your lot for Jan and now we move on to the love month, Checkout the website by the way, Lots of Valentine’s goodies to choose from and we have a discount code so don’t be like the rest be an IndiviJewel.

So onto our new necklace, We have been thinking hard to what we could add to our secrets range, something different, something new and exciting, something unique that’s how we like to roll – being different! So out of the ideas we had written down we decided on the Teardrop! I know the teardrop is not new but tears are used everyday in real life for a variation of reasons, Laughter, Joy, Love, Saddness so we thought that a tear is just as meaningful as a heart so we thought for the first addition to the secrets range we thought this went hand in hand with the secret heart range. Now to start with we cut out the length of sterling silver we needed for this one with the text we were going to use but like the secret heart you can have it smaller or bigger depending on the size of your text. So the next step was to etch the text onto the silver which if any of you know takes a little time but well worth it for the results. Now the next bit is the tricky part, Trying to shape it! I have a little scrap heap pile going on in the workshop. Now it may look a simple shape but it does take a little bit of time to achive this especially as its all made by hand, Any little wrong bend takes the whole piece go off course and it’s start again to which I have the evidence on my work bench. Doesn’t help when you have no patience like me and try to rush things! Once the shape is right the next step is to solder the two ends together which again sounds simple but what you don’t want to happen is for the solder to drop off and go in your text as this also adds to the scrap pile, Yes this also happened! but like the old saying goes you learn by your mistakes. As you can see by the picture we soldered it a fair way down the design just before the bend comes into play and there is two reasons for this. The first is that it gives it a lot more solid look from the top of the teardrop to make it more visual and basically gives it more definition and a more tear like shape. The second point is you need the soldered ends to be very solid so when you drill your hole for the chain it will not come apart – very important lol. Now the hole is a simple part to this necklace but it’s where you drill it that makes the difference, We could have drilled it right at the top so it gives it a longer look but we thought it looked best drilled half way down the join, Just gives it a more classy look with the top of the drop above the snake chain. The last two steps are to give it a damm good hand polish and bung it in the tumbler for an hour or so and there you have it a Personalised sterling silver teardrop shaped necklace. Now on to the next piece!

Tried another ‘etched in relief’ idea – this time with the words spiralling around a central raised heart.  I took rather a lot of fiddling around to get the text flowing around the circle but I really like the end result.  We are offering this as a personalised necklace so you can use the words of your choice to create a really meaningful gift.  Some suggestions include a special song title, part of your wedding vows or children’s names.  I will be doing some more variations of this necklace as I have a few more ideas I want to try out so watch this space!