The Emerald Days of May

I love May, the month of my birthday, for its flowers, green leafy beginnings shooting from the ground, and for the life that suddenly moves from inside stuffy houses to the fresh and fragrant outdoors. I always think of it as the month of emeralds, and the emerald is truly an appropriate birthstone for May. I love working with emeralds and I especially like to combine them with other gemstones. Today, however, most of the jewelry pieces that you see here have emeralds mixed only with sterling silver and lampwork beads. The emerald bracelet above is an example since it features only emeralds and sterling silver in two strands. Little charms hang around the bracelet and give it the life that this May birthstone deserves while opaque and transparent emeralds in different shapes and sizes mingle with one another.
One of the things I love about making jewelry is that I can make it affordable. At one time, few people could ever afford an emerald bracelet or necklace or even earrings. But using emeralds of different quality that have been made into beads, I can make a piece of emerald jewelry that you can wear forever - and it is the real thing!
Above, is an emerald bracelet with one lampwork bead that gives it a lively touch, while the emerald bracelet below features three of our nicest lampwork beads as the focal for the bracelet.
And the last emerald bracelet is extremely simple: a sterling silver bangle with four light-coloured fluted emeralds set in sterling scallops.

The earrings that you see here are also genuine emeralds, again mixed with sterling silver. I love the dainty chandelier earrings with three little faceted emerald rondelles dangling from each earring.
Finally, a cultured freshwater pearl emerald necklace with genuine emeralds. Keishe pearls are my new favorite pearl; their iridescence is generally particularly strong and their uneven shapes make them shine all the more.
Don't forget Mother's Day this Sunday! We are offering FREE PRIORITY SHIPPING on anything you buy!




emerald necklace

Gemstones and Hearts!

Valentine's Day is creeping up on us, and I'm still listing jewelry pieces with hearts. I have gemstone hearts I should use, but I've lately been involved with the lampwork hearts that you see here. My favorite necklace with a heart is probably the one (close-up is above) I made with lampwork beads from Lynn Nurge, genuine rubies, and goldfilled beads and charms. The rubies are a generous size, nice and chunky, and the goldfilled components match the flecks of gold in these dichroic beads. Instead of graduating rubies until they were smaller and smaller, or keeping them all large (and thus making a very expensive necklace), I decided to make the ruby part of the necklace like a "collar" and join it to large-linked goldfilled chain.This ruby necklace will be a great Valentine's Day present for someone.
I bought several of these silvery pink Venetian hearts because I was so taken by the colour, the light pink laced with such a clear silvery shimmer. I liked the heart so much that I decided to keep it the star by hanging it from pink suede and adding only a touch of silver and a little faceted amethyst rondelle to the bottom. This lampwork pendant necklace can be found on the same page as the lampwork pendant necklace seen below, another heart pendant, this time from Annie Divelbiss. It, too, is laced with silver; the colours are different tones of blue-purple, and it hangs from a pretty imprinted sterling silver chain from the Karen Hill Tribes of Thailand. I've left most of the chain so that the buyer can wear it about 27 inches or have it shortened to wear as a choker.

Today we had the first snow of the year - or I should say the season, since we had no snow either in December or November. It was a wet, sleety snow, just enough to make driving difficult for drivers who aren't used to driving on slick roads and give shivers to the rest of us. How wonderful it would be to have about 6 inches of soft, powdery snow to look beautiful for a day or so, then melt away. How can it be winter without any snow?



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In the Pink?!

I wanted to entitle this post "In the Pink", but when I consider how I've been feeling lately (see post below about remodeling and dust, dust, dust!), I thought it was probably more appropriate to begin with something green, and to put a question mark after the title.
My green is really wonderful though, as it applies to this bracelet, because I was fortunate enough to get some even more beautiful peridot gemstones than the last batch - in nugget form - and these are practically inclusion-free. I mixed them with lampwork beads by Reeves which also has a very pretty blue aquamarine colour in it, so I added the a few of the blue aquamarine nuggets I have that are really nice. Very happy results.
Otherwise, I have been working "in the pink" as far as gemstones go, with pink tourmaline (see bracelet above), pink Peruvian opal (below) and rose quartz (last bracelet). It has been a good week as far as jewelry is concerned, but the work to do at home (the work we have to do when the workmen leave and we have to get everything sorted out and back to its rightful place) is a bit daunting. The peridot bracelet is already listed and the tourmaline, opal, and rose quartz bracelets soon will be. A short post then as I try to put my closet back together (groan).

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