Snowflake Earrings - Blog Giveaway!

Finally I've had a chance to get at the wire again - and this time I'm in a festive mood, these little earrings were great fun to make, how I've missed wire-wrapping!

As always with silver and crystal these have much more sparkle than I can capture on camera. I've wrapped sterling rings with fine gauge wire, attaching chain to the centre, and embelllished around the edge with Swarovski crystals and pearls for a very dainty pair of snowflakes!

The earrings measure approx 24mm across, with a drop of 3cm from the bottom of the earwires.

These festive earrings are up for grabs in my first blog giveaway! All you need to do is either be a follower of my blog, or a fan on the Amari Jewellery page on Facebook - if you are on both you will get two entries! Then just leave a comment here by midnight on Thursday 17th December. I will announce the winner on the Friday and if you live in the UK you should get your earrings just in time for Christmas! Good luck!

Christmas is coming!

I must admit, I do love Christmas - I am counting the days down to December 1st which is the earliest I have allowed myself to start decorating the house! A couple of years ago we bought a really nice quality artificial tree which looks almost real - it's the biggest size we could squeeze into our cosy lounge, I really regret having to take it down in the New Year! We also have a small real tree in the dining room - can't beat the smell of fresh pine, luckily it's a laminate floor so we don't have a problem with the needles other than having to sweep up several times a day :)

I'm busy making stock for the shops again - my workbench is a mass of pearls and sparkly crystals at the moment! I'm looking forward to a break to have a play with the wire - I have lots of sketches dotted around but never seem to find the time to create. I just don't know where this last year has gone!

Room With A View

My workshop window (aka the once 'spare' room) overlooks our extension roof, and the backs of other people's houses. Not the best view in the world! The window itself is very small, and although I sit right next to it the amount of natural light is minimal so I have a daylight bulb too, or I would never be able to wrap tiny wires! I'm eventually hoping to move into a studio in the garden, maybe next year if I can get things moving! Watch this space...

However, whilst the view itself isn't always inspiring, here in the UK of course we get bombarded with all kinds of weather conditions - never too much of anything (including sun in the summer, unfortunately!), but it's always changing, and from my little window I'm usually the first to spot the first flake of snow, or an approaching storm. My school reports were always full of 'spends too much time gazing out of the window'. Guess nothing much has changed then! ;o)

Queen of Hearts

Another sterling silver piece hand-sawn from a drawn design. This features a cut-out of the heart shape, and I've added a lovely denim-blue sodalite cabochon.

The pendant measures approx 3.5 cm in length and just over 3cm wide.

Tick Tock Earrings

Some more metalwork this time, from one of the many sketches/designs I have littering my desk! I'm beginning to feel a little more confident about setting saw to silver now, without worrying that I'm going to waste a perfectly good sheet of metal by making a horrible mistake. If I do, so be it! There is only one way to get better at it... :)

Hand sawn, shaped and filed from sheet silver, with black onyx cabs.

These are about 4cm long but still quite lightweight, and I love the shape - they remind me of clock hands.

Spice Trail

I've recently started supplying jewellery pieces to a newly opened local shop, Glacier Arc (in the Buttermarket, Newark -on-Trent - go check it out if you can, it's a beautiful shop!).

These are a couple of things I've sent already, I believe the necklace has already gone :)

Spice Trail necklace - Swarovski crystals and freshwater pearls in lovely autumnal shades of warm copper, gold and rich burgundy, sterling silver and wire-wrapped.

A pair of matching earrings, again with Swarovski crystal and freshwater pearls, wrapped onto handmade fine silver headpins.

More clusters please!

Everyone's crazy for clusters at the moment - it's the one thing my stockists can't seem to get enough of! These long tassel necklaces are really popular, and very tactile too. The headpins on these are handmade - I always make sure the heads are nice and smooth on each pin to make sure they don't scratch the skin or snag fabric.

Earrings to match - these are Swarovski crystal briolettes with a gorgeous bicone mixture in pale blue/sandy colours, with Swarovski pearls.

As always, click on the pictures for a closer view! :)

How do you doodle?

I love reading books on creativity, although I don't seem to have a problem with finding creative ideas just lately - more an inability to stick to one thing at a time!

I've been reminded in many of these books about how a child will pick up a crayon and just draw, without any hang-ups or worries about ' what shall i draw', 'will it be good enough', and the dreaded 'blank page' syndrome many of us seem to suffer from!


So, I decided to start doodling again - something I used to do a lot, usually on scraps of paper or notebooks whilst on the phone. It's a great way to get the ideas flooding!

Inspired by browsing through my Arts & Crafts/William Morris books, I've drawn this tile using a black ink pen, and then watercolours - felt very strange to have a paintbrush in my hand, it's been a long time - but great fun! So much so, I started another - so the second one is work in progress!

Black Onyx Earrings

Some more sterling silver earrings, again hand sawn and pierced. These have black onyx - I love the contrast between the deep black of the cabs and the shiny silver! I was hoping to give the appearance of the stones being 'held' at the bottom - I *think* I've achieved that! :)

Swarovski and Silver

Sometimes I'm so busy trying to get nice, attractive pictures of my jewellery, that I forget how deceiving they can be - especially close-up photos, pieces can often appear huge compared to how they are real life!

So... some fresh photos of these latest pieces, and especially for Katrin! :)