I’ll also FINALLY be adding a new category for new items, so you can easily check what’s been added. Details soon.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Fall fashion in the last few months – heavy textures, metallic details, dark and rich meshes – it’s one luxurious season of trends this year.

According to Fashion Trendsetter, the hottest colors for the season are:

Yes, they’re very dark, but there’s good news – sterling silver is seeing a major surge in popularity with top designers and jewelers turning to the crisp, white metal as an alternative to traditional gold. Add a splash of these rich colors to a silver base and you have an elegant combination while avoiding the winter plague of black, black and more black.

For these earrings I wanted to capture the layered mesh look that’s so hot at the moment. I don’t use hoops very often, but they offer so much great space to work and seemed like an obvious choice. I chose smokey topaz and green amethyst (chocolate and endive are a big color combo trend for the year) and started wrapping them over the hoops with silver wire.

The paleness of the green stops these earrings looking too fiesta-like, while the chocolatey, smokey topaz keep them looking rich.

This was one of these designs where I wasn’t entirely sure about the finished product because it’s so far from my usual style, but everyone I’ve shown them to adores them.

I think they’re one of those designs that really needs to be worn – I like them so much more after seeing Laura rock them.

Sassy and spectacular, they’ll work with layered dresses and cardigans with lots of color, or work as a great focal point with jeans and black shirts.

See the new sterling silver, smokey topaz and green amethyst hoops here.

More jewelry is on the way!

I love pairing these two gems – the green and orange look so crisp together. Add smokey quartz and you have beautiful fall palette; add rose quartz and you have a fresh spring palette – they’re just so easy to blend.

For these earrings I wanted to create a more interesting shape than simply dropping briolettes (the drop-shaped gemstones) from silver chain, so I used a trick that jewelry designers occasionally use as an alternative – I wrapped the peridot as though they were regular round beads, so they form a sort of daisy chain.

From there I wire wrapped the citrine briolettes to spaces along the “chain” created by the peridot so they fan out a little. To finish the look I added a large smokey briolette and added the gems to these really different ear studs. From regular ear hooks or studs I thought they’d be a little off-balance. The heavier studs with the scroll details work perfectly.

See the sterling silver, citrine, peridot and smokey quartz earrings here.

To pass the time I thought I should embark on an extreme wire wrapping project, so I fired up Law & Order from the start and began wrapping multiple colored sapphire into strands.

I’d been looking at a lot of Indian jewelry, and I loved the rich and luscious designs typical of wedding jewelry. Dense strands of gemstones and gold with ornate details are just fascinating to look at. These earrings were definitely inspired by that: they’re 5″ long and each have 13 strands of sapphire, finished with tiny pick sapphire drops. I used the large rings as a way of adding some contrast to the shape, wrapping clusters of the gems to carry the design all the way up the earrings.

All up, they took me roughly 16 hours over three days – and the whole time I kept watching Law & Order!

See the Sterling Silver and Sapphire Chandelier Earrings here.

Pick any jump rings you like for this. Mine were perhaps a little heavy for the light chains I picked, but I bulked up the beaded section to balance it out. Be sure to watch the Byzantine chain video first.

See the video here and don’t forget to check the archives for more.

Pronounced “peh-ree-doh”, it is widely mined throughout the world, including in USA, Australia, Brazil, China, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan. It is a variety of Olivine, and is commonly found in deposits brought to the surface by lava. Gem-quality peridot nearly always mined, and is rarely found at surface level.

Peridot is a protective stone, traditionally used to keep evil sprits away. It is excellent in releasing guilt or obsessions, alleviating jealousy and spite and the stresses they create. It is also effective in sharpening the mind.

Here from Facebook? Click here to view the interactive version.

It’s always flattering to have your work recognized, so I thought I’d feature a couple of Polyvore users who chose to include my jewelry in their pieces.

Lunch date by neeny

Those are my moonstone earrings up in the top right. I love the idea of combining them with a green outfit – it’s not a combo I’d thought of and it looks so fresh and crisp!

Dress like Selena by DancerluvJB(Taking Requests)

My blue tiger’s eye necklace joins this Get-the-Look creation.

Campus Life Rocks! by phatelara

Here’s one for the guys with a college wear-theme, including my silver and copper men’s bracelet.

I’ve found a few more of these, which I’ll post in a later entry. Do you use Polyvore? You can see some of my items here.

Ever since my sister read Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, by Eleanor Coerr, she has collected pretty origami papers and made paper cranes. I’ve always loved everything Japanese, and even took four years of the language in high school (I don’t remember more than about three words, sadly).

For my birthday last year she sent me a pair of lacquered bowls and chop sticks decorated in silvery blue. Never one to do things simply, Laura filled the box with cranes of all sizes made from the most beautiful paper I’ve seen. I strung all but two of them up and now they hang in my window.

Once Laura’s birthday rolled around I turned the remaining pair into earrings by adding sterling silver chain and tiny sapphires. I’ve seen similar earrings before but with her gorgeous choice of paper and my love of gemstones and silver I think they turned into something really special. If I had time to practice with the paper I’d start a line of these.

Ruby is wonderful for energy, and stimulates and balances the heart. It also acts as a powerful protector against psychic attack, and aids in retaining wealth and passion.

Seeing this on Facebook? See this entry with interactive links on the images.

You know how addicted to chain I am, so of course I love the idea of these full torso chain accessories. They looked incredible over tank tops.

Most of the pictures I took were of jewelry stands. I love seeing what people come up with to display their work and I’m always on the lookout for ideas. This designer used grassy-looking patches to work with her leaf-motif.

Getting the right blend of height and shape on a display is really challenging. I love the idea of stacking the neck stands behind earring boards. Most used decorative frames as a way to add height, but placing the necklaces behind creates a far more interesting horizon line, and you don’t have to worry about covering your risers so much. The only downside was that it created too much of a wall between the designers and the customers.

Yes, more jewelry. The trays for earrings and pendants gave this a yard-sale feel without being cheap. Customers love delving for items, always on the lookout for a bargain.

I couldn’t really use my flash, so these are pretty blurry, but the range of colors and shapes were fantastic. This black and white A-line skirt was one of my favorite pieces.

So many of the models were in pink, salmon and plum. While these are all summer outfits, I think the colors are going to be big even in fall. I adore the hat on the left. The slightly different hue between the shirt and the hat make for a better blend, so she looks colorful and bright without looking like she tried to match.

I had such a great time. Thread comes back to San Francisco in November, and I may just have to apply for a booth. Designing in a vacuum is never good, so it’s always wonderful to step outside and get a boost of energy and inspiration from talented artists. What events can’t you wait for this year?

These slave earrings were simple, but fun to make. I haven’t made any slave earrings in a while, so I started digging through my component container for ideas, as I often do. The hoops stood out straight away to me. Similar to the idea behind the citrine silver slave earrings, I thought that having a more conventional earring with a slave earring attachment might be quite striking. I grabbed the sterling hoops and started laying out chain to get ideas for the overall shape.

I love this chain – it’s a standard in my jewelry-making arsenal. It hangs well, is very adaptable, and has such a simply beautiful shape that it adds to almost any design.

I’d figure out how to wrap onto the hoops after making the ruby hoop earrings, so attaching the chain was much easier this time around. I spent a long time looking in the mirror, trying to figure out the best way to segway into the slave earrings and whether to go for a more intricate criss-cross pattern in the chain, and finally settled on this wearable design.

Once the chain was in place, I started looking at beads, A friend had given me a mix of carnelian and I decided it was finally time to try some of it out. The large coin drops worked really well as center pieces to the hoops, while the smaller carnelian rondelles provided an excellent accent to the earrings.

What I love about these is, even if slave earrings aren’t your thing, they’ll easily convert to a pair of regular hoop earrings. Remember, slave earrings are also great of ladies with multiple piercings -  a second stud can replace the non-piercing ear cuff at the top to create unique multiple-piercing earrings.

Expect lots more slave earrings soon. In the meantime, see the carnelian sterling silver slave earrings here and check out the black agate and amethyst slave earrings.