Wings 'N' Roses

Hello everyone,  Today I'm sharing 3 variations of one of my favourite designs.  I've been meaning to revisit this design for a while but never got round to it.  It's very very very very fiddly work and requires a loooot of patience.  I managed to make 3 pairs!!  Hope you like them :)

In this pair I've used up my last Claire Lockwood moth wings *eek* which hang from my wire wrapped hoops. Sitting above are polymer roses by Neli Da. The fringe/tassel is made up of black plated brass chain, antiqued cup chain and waxed Irish linen cord

Kim Snider wings hang from wrapped hoops with roses on top.  In this pair I've used raw brass chain and antiqued cup chain with sari silk underneath. 

Lastly, enamelled wings by Felicitas Wilhelm with roses and hoops.  The tassel is made of antiqued cup chain and waxed Irish linen cord.  

These will be available in my shared show with the lovely Nicola Morse next Thursday (28thh) in The Jewellery Show FB group.  Hope you can join us.  see you again soon <3

Suhana Hart

Etsy shop: Suhana Hart Jewellery

The Silk Route

I have a HUGE stash of sari silk and I suspect this is true of most of us?! So a couple of weeks ago I dug them out (literally) and had a play.  I made several pairs of earrings.

Porcelain drops by Melissa Gabelle and the wrapped bundle (as one of my customers called it) consists of a brass tube wrapped in sari silk and cup chain.  If you squint your eyes long enough you should be able to see the sari silk peeking out from under the cup chain. I added some Czech glass flowers in blue and dark orange to match the colours on the drops.

Porcelain caps by Melissa Gabelle.  Stacked up on top are Swarovski rondelles, lampwork beads, Czech glass and some teeny porcelain rounds.  Hanging from underneath are my sari silk and chain wrapped 'bundles' and flower drops.

Top 2 pairs are new but I had to share a 3rd pair I made a couple of weeks ago.  Again they feature porcelain drops by Melissa Gabelle, stacked on top are brass caps and tubes followed by hoops and topped with wrapped sari silk. 

Then there are these:

Here I have incorporated sari silk in one of my signature designs. Petra Carpreau Frida drops, wrapped with sari silk and chain and topped with Czech glass rondelles.

Lastly, Petra Carpreau Vermeer drops, slightly asymmetrical.

Now that I have unearthed my sari silk stash - there might a flood of designs featuring the same ;).

I hope you like this week's offerings.  Top 2 pairs will be available in my next online Trunk show and the bottom 2 pairs are currently listed in my Etsy shop. 

Have a lovely weekend.

See you in a couple of weeks time.

Suhana 💜💜💜 

My Etsy shop: Buttoned Up Beads

Building.....achieving

My latest order from Helen Chalmers included quite a few sets of these absolutely wonderful butterfly beads.  Today's post was going to have a series of earrings featuring these beads.  That was the plan and here's what actually happened.

(photo by Helen Chalmers)

Step 1: I wrapped brass squares with seeds and added 4 strands of cup chain on each square.  Let me tell you, attaching those cup chain strands was the most time consuming process ever, I almost gave up numerous times.  I finished them but you won't see me wire wrapping cup chain strands like this again for a while.  I need to get over how many hours I spent on just that one thing.

Step 2: is where I add the butterfly beads to the wrapped squares, and I did....but they just wouldn't work.  They didn't look right with the squares - I forgot to take a photo (oopsi) but they didn't look great.  It was probably the shapes - squares and lentils....
I found these beautiful lampwork caps by Beth Mellor and they were perfect.  This was the second most time consuming task in this project.  You know how you have your mind set on particular beads (butterfly pairs from the first photo in this case) and then how it becomes absolutely impossible to look beyond those beads when they don't work out! Argh, it took me forever to find something that looked just right on top of the squares

Step 3: I still wanted to add more on top of the caps.  I played around with plain brass connectors for a while and finally settled on this.

Step 5: I tested these out (ear wires changed) to make sure they feel and look ok and they did.  they are now listed in my shop <3

Those butterfly beads, well I'll figure something else out for them....maybe for a future post :)

See you again soon <3

Suhana xxx

My Etsy shop: Buttoned Up Beads