Colorful Toggle Buttons

After making a lot of buttons in brown tones for the past while, I was happy to be mixing up some bright colors again.  These colorful toggle buttons are the small mini type, or as Dave likes to call them, "toglets".  They are a result of another custom request from one of our stores that sells our work.  I was discussing with Donna of Donna's Yarn & Craft in Kamloops about making some toggle buttons and wanted her input.  She showed me a small toggle they had in a plain bamboo and wondered if we could make something similar but in different colors.  She was receiving a lot of requests for these for children's wear and especially for boys.

After working out our technique, the little "toglets" were created in a variety of colors.

Mini toggle buttons or "toglets"

We used a few of the Pantone Spring 2014 fashion colors, Violet Tulip and Placid Blue.  The other colors are favorites from our color system collection.  These mini toggle buttons are now available at Donna's Yarn and Craft in Northshore, Kamloops.

We are also making some new sample color chips for a few of the stores we do custom work for.  This will make it easier for them and their customers in selecting their button colors to match the yarns or fabric they are purchasing.

color sample chips for buttons

Happy Mother's Day

I don't make my geckos as much as I use to these days except for custom orders.  This set was specially made for a mother's day gift by special request in a rich denim blue.

Happy mother's day to all the moms out there and hope you are having a special day.

Home Decor

   

We've been focusing on expanding our home decor art lately.  I find covering switch plates can not only be a lot of fun but also very rewarding as they add a nice accent to the walls.  We are creating a line of designs for custom ordering where the customer can select their type of receptacle cover, pattern and color.

You can see more of our latest designs on our Jewelry for the Home site and more will be listed on a regular basis.

Wedding Bells & Candles

I've been pretty busy with a lot of things these days and looking at the calendar noticed that June is already fast approaching.  Time just seems to be flying and it is time to be thinking about weddings already.

When I

 originally designed my first set of candle collars, it was to add a nice accent to our dining table as well as protect the furnishings from melted wax.  One client saw them and commissioned me to design a pair for the head table at her wedding.

I also had a request for a pair of candle collars without the chandelier pieces (shown below) which are nice as well.

These are fun to do and I've done them in dozens of colors and designs.  It got me thinking about setting up a wedding section on Art Fire and Etsy so check it out.

Earrings Galore!

I was trying to decide what to post on and thought I would do a little advertising.  We get a lot of custom order requests and some were for disc earrings in solid colors.  Here is a photo of some of the ones we've done.  They are textured with a soft-matte finish (can be glossy as well) and finished with either gold or silver wire and a matching bead.

We make them in all sorts of colors and are great for a special occasion such as a wedding.  Imagine having earrings that match the dresses in a bridal party.  You can read more about these in our Wearable Art Gallery blog.

We also get requests for clip-ons.  We now have some new findings that can change any or our earring designs to a clip-on at no extra charge.  These clip-ons are quite unique where they give the appearance of pierced ears.  The bottom photo shows a pair of fun gecko ones I made for myself.  I don't have pierced ears so whenever I make some new design,  I'm always looking for a friend or neighbor to try them on and make sure they hang right!  As our earring designs are becoming increasingly popular you can check out our earring section in our new blog.  You will find them all categorized on the left hand side and we will be adding more each day.

Custom Designs

I love the challenge of creating custom designs for people as it forces me to stretch my creativity and try new things.  One of our latest requests was for a cross pendant (in brown or beige tones) on a brown suede cord with some sort of matching earrings.  I thought of the cross pendant we had made for a friend last year in a mokume gane but decided to try a few other techniques and then let her choose which pendant she liked the best.

This is the pendant she chose and so I made earrings to match.  Because she likes her earrings to dangle a fair bit, we added the sand opal Swarovski crystals which added a nice finishing touch.

The filigree cross pendants shown in the photo below were created by arranging tiny strands of clay to form a pattern.  These were a lot of fun to create as well as the mica shift ones shown in the bottom photo.  A mica shift is a technique where you create a ghost image in the clay.  The crosses appear textured but in fact they were sanded to a silky smooth finish and then buffed to create a satin sheen.

We decided to finish the crosses with some rich velvet ribbons to create an elegant look.