Blog of Handcrafted Jewelry and Unique Stuff | Handcrafted Jewelry and Seriously Unique Stuff

Speedup Your WordPress Site

Posted on March 25, 2012

WordPress has all the bells and whistles for an easy DIY website, right? Plugins til the cows come home, you can customize just about every aspect of your WordPress site can’t you? That’s why I’m using it. I’m no code guru, I’m just squeaking by, learning bits here and there, trying to make my footprint on the web. But did you ever notice how slow your site began to be after you started adding all that ‘stuff’? If you’re like me, you’re on high speed internet so you don’t notice it so much, but what I didn’t know was that most people don’t have high speed internet. What I learned was that a lot of people weren’t even able to pull up my site because it was loading too slowly, even on DSL. Continue reading →

Swarm of Bees….Pendants

Posted on March 24, 2012

These bee pendants have become one of my most popular handcrafted jewelry designs, I really had no idea bees were so popular. The bees are another design based on one of my early scroll sawn painted woodcraft projects…these are so much cuter though. Each bee is entirely handmade by me from polymer clay, highlighted in various metallics for my faux metal style, and antiqued for that post apocalyptic aura. I usually put gears in my bees and they all have faux metal straps for ‘stripes.’ All my later bees, like this new batch in the photo, have an antique copper body which I love, gives them a great rustic, steampunk look that the earlier ones did not have. I think I went a bit darker on the wings for this batch and I love that, too!

See my earlier bees here in the Gallery

: Bee Pendants

New Industrial Scrap Pendants

Posted on March 22, 2012

Desert Rubble is home to the original industrial scrap pendants! Starting with that first set of 4, I set a tone and feel for these pendants that are unmistakable. These pendants are handcrafted from polymer clay but they might have been pieces of found metal scrap and hardware in some post-industrial world that was then made into jewelry. Ever drawn to all things post apocalyptic, I love the aura I create with the colors, metallics, and haphazard pieces of faux hardware.

Recently I handcrafted a new batch of industrial scrap pendants and photographed them with one of those first pendants. That early piece was featured on the front page of the April 2011 Polymer Cafe where you can also find a tutorial to make it. It was surprising to me the difference between that first one and the new ones. I always hope I’m getting more skilled and can get better detail on a smaller scale than when I first started but it sure is nice to have confirmation of that. These new ones are smaller, thinner, remarkably light, they’re actually fun to handle because of it, is that weird? I just really love them and think they came out great…..and I’ll share a secret, I actually had to look through that tutorial I made to remember how I got the color combination on those first ones, funny right? I see so many advantages to making tutorials of my work!

Industrial Scrap Pendants

I’m was a bit late in posting these to the blog…I do only have 2 of these left now, This one and this one.

Posted in New Pieces | Tagged handcrafted jewelry, industrial scrap | Comments Off

The Not Quite Anatomical Heart

Posted on March 21, 2012

A new faux mechanical heart pendant! I’ve been calling these little unique, handcrafted hearts my “Not Quite Anatomical Hearts” since my first one. They’re not even remotely anatomical but I try to give them a bit of realism with texture, what they really are is faux mechanical or biomechanical. I’m finding they’ve become popular with heart patients (by-pass, transplant, open heart surgery), their families, and medical personnel (doctors, nurses) and they help to symbolize and mark what a large event it is when someone has heart surgery. It’s such an amazing thing that someone would buy one of my little mechanical hearts for such an important task and I am always so honored when someone tells me that’s why they bought one.

Faux Mechanical Heart Pendant

You can find this in my Etsy shop and in my Artfire shop! Checkout the rest of the handcrafted jewelry and unique stuff in my shops while you’re there and combine shipping, coming soon….a 3dcart right here on my site.