Holiday Gift Ideas

I'm still playing catch-up in almost every area of my life since the remodeling. Unfortunate because this is the time of the year when I love making jewelry, and wish I could do nothing but about 16 hours a day. It's just beginning to get cool outside (it was only 52 degrees F today at 2:00 in the afternoon and it's supposed to get down to 28 degrees tonight) which makes me glad I'm inside, and there are so many occasions to make jewelry for: Christmas, Christmas weddings, Thanksgiving, holiday parties, New Year's....

But there are many other things to do including shopping although it's not nearly as much fun to shop when you have to shop!
I've made a special page on the Cluny Grey Jewelry website called Holiday Gift Ideas which has some of our jewelry pieces suggested as gifts at certain price points from under $20 to over $100. I plan to add more to it in the next few weeks. The earrings at the top of the page are featured and cost under $30.00. The jewelry I've been working on is varied, unusual for me since I so often start working with a gemstone and make piece after piece from it until I've exhausted my current ideas. Instead I've been working with aquamarine with citrine in the bracelet above, then lampwork with silver, and finally, one of my favorite mixtures, lapis with carnelian, gold and lampwork.
Meanwhile, our blog has been featured in the "Top 100 Fashion Blogs" chosen by the Customized Girl Blog under "Accessories." Check it out!

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Mother of Pearl, Labradorite, and Lampwork

It's a miracle I have any new pictures to post: besides doing custom work and packing like crazy, we have been remodeling our home (new floors in 3 downstairs rooms, a new upstairs bathroom, and downstairs bathroom as well as some cosmetic changes and painting the den). The workers are finally finished and my work has just begun. All the furniture in the rooms we changed had to be moved and while the workers moved the furniture back (my whole closet had to be emptied - shelving and all!) this is a wonderful opportunity to clean, clear out old clothes and all the junk we seem to have collected over the years. Of course, we still have to get a lot of decorating done. Fun, but whew! time-consuming and tiring!
A couple of nights I stayed very late at the studio, and the result is what you see on this post today.
When I started out, I didn't mean to work with mother-of-pearl, but like so many times, these funny silver mother of pearl pieces were on the workbench where I kept looking at them until I had to pick them up and play with them. The result: earrings and a bracelet made with silver mother-of-pearl with an Aurora Borealis coating added and Swarovski crystals in Silver Shadow.
Of course, I love labradorite and work with it any chance I get, so the natural thing to do when I realized I needed to replenish the abalone jewelry stock was to mix abalone and labradorite together with sterling silver and some of my favorite lampwork beads from Robin Weber. It's a combination that I've used before, but one I don't think that I will tire of anytime soon.
The last lampwork bracelet is one of the prettiest bracelets I've ever made. Unfortunately, the picture is one of the worst that I've ever taken. I think that the soft almost opalescent pink on the beads is so subtle that it just doesn't show up well. The lampwork beads are made by Lynn Nurge of Laffingull (she's the beadmaker who makes smaller scale beads that are perfect for bracelets). I've mixed the lampwork with good gem quality peridot and sterling silver. The second strand of the bracelet is a very large linked sterling chain with the tiniest little sterling daisy charms hanging from the links (these don't show up very well either).
To my readers in the Scandinavia and Estonia, I'm sure that you're beginning to snuggle in and get cozy while to those of you in Hawaii (you know who you are), once again, I am so jealous of your climate. Meanwhile, I can see that a fire in our fireplace is in the near future.


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