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.

The Family’s Coming
On Saturday my mother and sister roll into town for two weeks. I’ve been trying to get the house in order and since it’s my sister’s first trip to the US, I’ve been spending a lot of time figuring out how to show her the real American experience. From pie and chowder, to Redwoods and museums, I have turned two weeks of planning into an obsession.

Preparing for the Fall Shoot
My sister being in town also means I want to take her on another photo shoot. I got such great pictures of her wearing my jewelry the last time I visited her, that I really want to stock up again. I’ve got about 15-20 new pieces of jewelry waiting to go online, and Laura’s going to be their advocate!

Citizenship
I went for my citizenship test on Tuesday – It’s all done, went well and now I just have to wait for the final confirmation. I don’t know what to do with myself in the car now that I don’t need to play the study cd.

Charity Event
The Best Friends necklaces have been flying off the shelf. Care2 interviewed me about it and I’ve been in full order-filling mode ever since. The response has been so moving. I’m thrilled that people want to help and knowing that there is such a great overlap between jewelry lovers and animal lovers makes me very happy!

And that’s on top of all the usual commitments and goings-on. I’m going to need another vacation pretty soon!

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.

Here’s a little peak at one project that’s just about done:

I’m all excited about fusing again so there has been lots of fun with torches and hammers! More to come soon.

When I was teaching classes at The Bead Shop one of my popular sessions was hand-making small amounts of jump rings in different sizes to make a pair of spiral earrings. This pendant is the same technique, using a larger variety of rings and finished with a large ametrine drop.

Ametrine is a form of quartz and it’s labeled as such when the elements that create the colors of citrine and amethyst form in the same stone. This results in a beautiful purple and orange gem, and this one has a unique fracture through the center which gives it a green tint.

The bail is a Peruvian handmade silver piece. I like how the shape reflects the shape of the stone, and it has gorgeous etching that picks up the look of the chain.

Finally the necklace part of the design is a simple rope weave, one which I’ll feature soon in a video. It’s super dense and feels great on.

See the Sterling Silver and Ametrine Necklace 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.

It’s a good idea to develop a collection of “starter sets” – keep about an inch of each weave in a standard size on a paper clip. Each time you want to make chain you can continue on from what you have, then remove the starter amount. It’s so much quicker and less frustrating than trying to start from scratch each time.

Once completed, Full Persian makes a beautifully silky rope of chain that is super-flexible. Full Persian (also known as Foxtail) is what I used to make my favorite Persian Knot necklace.

Again we’re looking at adjusting what you already know, so go take a look at Byzantine and Queen’s Link first. I’ll show you how to make another tiny adjustment to product a whole new look.

Check out the archives, or get started with Full Persian Chain Maille.

Most jump ring lovers will tell you they have a bag of mystery rings – you find one on the ground, or there are just a couple left over from a project. It seems a waste to recycle them, so you usually just throw them in a central place. It’s great if I need to find an odd size to attach a clasp or fill some other specific need.

This necklace is basically the product of one of those bags. I just linked a long series together into double spiral weave, paying almost no mind to what ring came next. Now and then I’d make a switch if the sizes didn’t mesh with the weave, but it grew happily on its own. Once I had a long length of it I wrapped up some large turquoise and divided up the chain into uneven parts.

The necklace is 36” which is plenty long enough to slip over your head. The beads are so nicely heavy, but the chain manages to fill the space without looking flimsy and without adding too much extra weight.

Turquoise and silver always look fresh together and are so great for summer wear. See the necklace here.

Months after one particular show I found three strands of mixed-color sapphires. The mineral sapphire comes in a huge variety of colors. It’s called sapphire in all variations except dark pink and red, which is ruby, so this necklace technically contains both.

The pendant was the first thing I made. With such tiny gemstones, I love doing tiny wraps and clustering them on jump rings. The basis of the pendant is a little bit of chain maille, in a simple weave I’ve seen referred to as boa chain. I wrapped all the colorful sapphires and grouped them by color, the linked them onto the out rings of the weave the create the bands of color.

Finishing the pendant with a briolette seemed right, but I was unhappy about the idea of introducing a new gem. Finally I found a dark blue sapphire drop leftover from these earrings and attached it to the base.

Next I looked at options for the necklace part. A plain chain looked nice, but the pendant looked a little luxurious against just the silver. I had a whole lot of the clear sapphire left over, since I didn’t want them in the layered pendant. I thought about wire wrapping them, but decided the softer finish of knotting them on silk would be much nicer.

Knotting such small gems is not easy – a tiny, even knot between each one means lots of hours and eye strain, but it turned out perfectly. It’s a single strand on silk, finished with a delicate silver box clasp.

See the Multi-Colored Sapphire Necklace here.