Showing posts with label material. Show all posts
Showing posts with label material. Show all posts

Wednesday, 25 May 2011

What Everybody Must Know about Hand-made and Natural Jewelry

I have been thinking about writing this post for a while but today I felt like it was time.

When people look for and buy jewelry they do it out of fun if it is for themselves just as well as if it is as a present. Jewelry is something you can live without but you don't want to. Nowadays a customer can choose of thousands if not millions of offers on the web and all over the place. You can want almost anything, sooner or later you will find the maker for it.

But if you want natural materials and/or hand-made stuff, your expectations must be a bit different. These aspects are better considered before than after the purchase. Many of them are positive ones of course and don't really wish for considering but some do.

It is easier to sum up what you do not buy with hand-made jewelry: pieces that are produced by the thousand in China, pieces that are made by machines, pieces that mean a compromise for you and that you will see on many others. What you do buy is jewelry made with care, made by taking the time for it, and most of the time pieces that are unique. In my case, you can be sure you will never bump into any duplicate piece anywhere. I can make similar pieces but never duplicates. It is a kind of principle that might sound stupid but for me it increases the value of each item. This can be one of the reasons why I am so happy when I actually meet the person who will wear my stuff - because the person is just as unique as the piece of jewelry she bought.

But you must know that because humans make mistakes and machines do not, your hand-made item might not be perfect in the sense of being flawless. Every jewelry-maker aspires to do their best but we are not CNC-machines to be able to do exactly the same bend or length twice.

In the case of natural materials, this factor is even more important. Nature is perfect in its own way but not in the way machine-moulded plastic pieces can be. Please do not expect a wooden bead to look or feel like it was plastic - fortunately, this is impossible. Do not expect two beads to be 100% identical if they are made of ceramic or shell or wood and so on. The necklace of today is a good example to this: this is the whole amount of this big brown wooden bead that I could get and some are not immaculate. But I loved them and decided to use them. Still, the necklace will not fall apart because of these faults. If you look at the whole piece itself you will see that these small faults will not worsen the overall image.

As you might have already noticed I am fully against anything plastic, for many reasons. First of all, it is artificial and just as much as I don't like it around me, I will not wear it on my skin, after all it is nothing but a lot of disgusting and harmful chemicals moulded into a kind of desired shape. A plastic bracelet is no different from a plastic bag you get for free at the check-out of the supermarket.

As for my items, I am always ready to give as much information as possible. If we meet personally, you can always check my items however you want to, you can try them on, you can compare them, we can talk about them for as long as you want to, I can even make certain modifications if this is your wish. You are not just a customer but a person who holds a piece of my inner self in her hand and who values this effort.

Considering all this, what you can expect from a hand-made natural piece is to be perfect in the sense as anything natural is perfect. You can expect it to be unique, to reflect your own style and to last a certain time.

And besides all this, you can be sure that you will respect, cherish, and love this piece of jewelry more than any other you have bought in a shop never knowing where it was from or who it was made by.

SOLD

Sunday, 20 February 2011

Ugly - but still only raw

Below in the picture you can see the new raw material for my works. I have no idea what this really is, I picked and collected them some weeks ago during an excursion with my boyfriend and the two dogs in the nearby forest. They were all under a certain tree which unfortunately I do not know.

As you see, they are already drilled - thanks Peti!

I know, they don't really look nice at the moment, but believe me, after cleansing them thoroughfully and giving them some protecting lacquer coat, they will just look wonderful on a necklace coming soon!

In case anyone knows what these are, please let me know!

Saturday, 8 January 2011

Green earrings for Kata

To start the blog off I present here one of my very first works which I made not for myself. As for most beginners, I also experimented (and still do of course) on myself to make my technics more polished and find my own path, materials and style. I am still well on my way to get there so please do not get over-critical, but still, any opinion is welcome unless it expects more from me than what I am currently able to do. Hopefully I will improve from one piece of jewellery to the next one, thank you for the patience!



The earring was a present for the sister of my boyfriend whose only request was something green. In the end she only received it for Christmas accompanied by a bracelet as even though we both live in the same city we just could not find the time to meet. I was happy to make something green, this is my favourite colour but after a certain point you just cannot afford to have one more green thing on you without looking like a total idiot.

My overall philosophy is avoiding the usage of any artificial material as much as possible. I prefer working with wooden beads, ceramics, textile, or whatever I can find during the long walks with our dogs in the woods or on fields. The one thing I cannot wear on myself and also hate to see on others is plastic, please do not expect me to work with anything such.

Later on I made another pair of the earrings you see here but this time using pink as the base colour matched with black and of course the small beads were slightly different too. Unfortunately I failed to take photo of that one before giving it to my sister - I might do it next time we visit her at home.

So welcome to the blog and come back again! And do not hesitate to ask for any jewellery you would like for yourself, I wil be happy to make it for you!