Faceted, polished, smooth

We recently dropped off an order at Honey and Hazel with some new faceted wooden charm necklaces.  Each of these are completely unique, handmade from scraps of exotic woods. They are cut into a faceted shape, then sanded down win increasingly finer grit paper until they are super-smooth. Finally they are polished with a beeswax based finish that makes them feel downright silky. They have a great tactile sense (for those of us who like to play with our jewelry) and they look cool too!  Right now these five necklaces are at Honey and Hazel, so get 'em while they last!

Fused Copper Ring

We have another new ring style in the shop (I know...they just keep adding up!)  This time it's copper wire fused with a silver nugget.  I like this one a lot, and it looks great stacked with our other rings.  It's made with a slightly thicker wire (16 ga instead of 18 ga--we're testing out some new materials) but, of course we could make it to match the smaller wire of the other rings.  I really like these ones!

It's Gold!

We are proud to present our new ring.  It's gold!  The ends are fused, like our sterling silver rings, and it is made from 10k solid gold wire.  I've wanted to offer a gold version of our rings for a while, ever since I made my ring our of my mother's stepped on earrings, and now we are able to!  Right now we only have a simple fused ring, but we are able to make gold versions of our vine, pebble, spiral rings or any other silver ring we carry.

yay new rings!

Getting ready for this weekend

We made some new rings and they are now in the shop.

You can click the photo to see each description.

Banners and Bust!

We were asked to make a small banner for the Bust Craftacular vendor's page.  I'm very happy with ours, and now I know how easy it is to make animated gifs in photoshop!

You can view everyone's banner here. Can you find ours?

Old Things

We've got a table at the BIM again, and this weekend is the annual steampunk fashion show.  It's not actually at the tent (it's a few subway stops up) but we're going to make a few special pieces anyways.  I am excited to get into my boxes of old, antiquey trash and play around with some new things.   I've compiled some of my inspiration today, and I'll show you what I've been working on soon!

I love this keyhole bracelet from Daniellerosebean:

And these brass filagree bead earrings from EricaWeinerJewelry (but of course I covet everything in her shop):

I love this key brooch from Redheart13:

But the queen of assemblage is Sparrow Salvage.  Her pieces are always fantastically pieced together, and she has a great blog too! (And I'm in love with her new collection postcards)

So I'm going to be using up some of my collection of lace, leather, old chains, brass findings, and bits of broken old jewelry.

This is what my table looks like now:

I'm having so much fun!

Some New Items in the Shop

New in the shop

Our oak branch necklace:

Our horizontal mesquite necklace:

Vertical mesquite necklace:

And new teeny tiny stud earrings!

You can click on the photo or the link to view the listing.  I'm so excited about the wooden pendant necklaces. Mesquite is such a beautiful wood to begin with, and we made some homemade beeswax polish to finish them--it makes the wood look so beautiful.  I went on a furniture polishing rampage throughout the house after I made it!

Home Made Furniture

We needed a low, narrow shelf to fit our overflow of books.  They were literally stacked on every surface, including the couch and the kitchen table.  We had been looking at some furniture stores, and through the ikea catalog, but there wasn't anything that fit the space perfectly (or really at all).  So we decided to make our own.  We went to Home Depot and bought boards and had them cut to size.  We sanded and stained them to match our other bookshelf, and used corner brackets to attach the legs.

The design of the shelf was pretty easy; we measured our largest book and decided the height of the shelves accordingly.  The length was dictated by the length of the boards at the hardware store, and they just happened to fit perfectly.  There are four legs, one on each corner, and two supports in the middle (made up of six pieces, each bracketed to the shelf on the top and/or the bottom).  We were worried that we would miss a measurement somewhere and it wouldn't fit together, but it was surprisingly easy to construct.   The middle supports basically dictated the height of the shelves, and we intentionally left the corner legs a little long to accommodate for any discrepancy in the measurements.

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And look at our new shelf!  I was afraid that the room would be too full, but it works nicely; keeping the top shelf pared down keeps the room from looking cluttered.  

New Crochet Bottles

In case you haven't noticed, the shop is out of crochet bottles.  So I've made some more, and they looked so colorful together, I wanted to get some pictures while I still had them all.  Enjoy!

They are so colorful; I love the blue jar with the worn rim. . . It reminds me of the beach.

Crochet Necklaces

Some new necklaces we've been working on. . . These will be in the shop shortly!

They are all crocheted onto the chain; some of the motifs were made separately and then attached to the chains, and others were directly crocheted into the chain and worked from there. I'm very excited about these new necklaces!

Crushed Blueberry Lamonade

What you need:

1 lemon

a small handful of blueberries (fresh or frozen)

honey or sweetener to taste

ice

seltzer

Place the blueberries and chopped lemon in a glass, and top it with ice. Depending on how tart you like it, you can use some or all of the lemon.  I like to leave a wedge to squeeze in at the end.

Top with ice, and crush everything with a muddler.  I used the end of a rolling pin.  Look at the delicious blueberry juice!

And last, top with seltzer (or water or iced tea or even juice), stir in sweetener to taste (if it's too tart) and there you have a delicious drink!

Hats!

I made a hat last week; I know it's still a bit to hot for hats, but I also know I'll want one before too long. . . We stopped by the Yarn Garden in Portland and picked up this mohair/alpaca blend.  I really like the creamy neutral color.  I didn't have a pattern, so I just went at it starting with a double crochet circle, trying to keep it as flat as possible until  I felt it was big enough, and then I started to decrease.

I'm very proud of the pattern on the bottom: it's front post and back post double crochet, made to look like ribbing.  I have never successfully made this happen before--it's definitely something I'll be playing around with in the future.

And I think (hope) there's enough yarn left to make another, so I'm opting for a slightly more lacy pattern.  If I get good (and fast) enough at making hats, we'll have another offering at the shop this winter!

cards and envelopes

I've been playing with my sewing machine, making cards and envelopes:

This one is my favorite: a stitch sampler card.  While the machine has diagrams of what each stitch should look like, they are actually very different when actually sewn; and some of the uilitarian stitches are actually the most decorative.  I dabbed a small spot of glue on the ends of each line of stitches (inside the card) to keep them from unraveling.