Category: Behind The Scenes

Documenting the process

SIMple Things

Running low on inspiration, but with plenty of motivation to do anything other than what I should be doing, many of my spare moments lately have been spent watching the new series of Ghosts (thank you, BBC iPlayer, for letting me put my poor impulse control to good use), and showing my kid how to play The Sims 4 (how timely, as I’ve just learned that The Sims 5 is on its way!), and it’s all been very fun. Except for when it wasn’t.

Anyway, my kid and I, we both realised that our favourite way of “playing” the game isn’t actually to play the game; creating the Sims and building the houses are the parts that we love most of all. Maybe because by the time everything is made and ready, it’s either time to do something else, or we’ve run out of steam/enthusiasm. So anyway, it’s pretty much become a design tool for us at this point.

Which has given me an idea: to recreate a piece of jewellery I like from The Sims 4. Not with any intention to profit financially from this, by the way, if anybody from EA is reading!

I thought I should make a pair of earrings, so I scoured through all the options and narrowed it down to these three pairs, as modelled below by the series’ newest iteration of one of its most famous characters, Bella Goth.

(side note, I don’t know when they updated the Goth family in the game, but I do know I’m not a fan of their new looks. But that’s another story for another time. And perhaps another audience. Anyway, she’s #NotMyBella)

I decided on the big birdie pair in the middle, and thought polymer clay would be a good medium for this project. It’s simple enough to work with, I can make pretty close colour matches and – perhaps most importantly – it’s lightweight, so the earrings would be comfortable to wear.

The design of these earrings needs to be the same on both sides, but as a mirror image. I was thinking of approaching this in one of two ways: make a stencil/template, or make a cane.

Using a stencil would certainly be the less time-consuming and simplest option – I’m imagining something similar to decorating a cake, which I enjoy doing (likely because I only do it once a year for my kid’s birthday) – but after watching so many polymer clay cane slicing videos online, I kind of want to try that.

In case you’re like myself who didn’t know what a polymer clay cane was until those videos showed up in my Instagram feed, they’re pretty much like a stick of rock, with a pattern or design running all the way through it.

Unable to make a decision out of only two choices, I gave it a few more seconds’ thought. And came to the conclusion that enjoying the look of polymer clay canes is one thing, but I’ve never made one before and if I can’t get the hang of it quickly, I’d soon be fighting my own waning enthusiasm for the project to get it done.

So, it was decided: stencil method. I could get ready to make my very own pair of big birdie earrings.

But wait! There was another decision to make! There are 12 different colour variations of these earrings, and I liked them all.

But, this time I had the power of the process of elimination on my side:

Right off the bat, I ruled out the green and plum ones. I know I said I liked all of them, but I still have a least-favourite.

Next, I nixed the white one. Because no matter how clean you think a workspace is, polymer clay attracts “stuff” like a neodymium magnet. So dust and other bits would show up too easily.

This also applies to the other lighter-coloured ones. So the cream, pale pink, green and yellow ones were gone too.

Black is nice but – like the white one too, actually – it’s all just one colour. So I don’t want that either. A bit plain. However, the turquoise one is also all one colour and that doesn’t look so simple. Same goes for the bright pink. Maybe this situation isn’t all black and white, as it were…

I tend to find it difficult to separate red and green from feeling christmassy, yet for these earrings, I’m not having that trouble. This colour combo is officially the first one on the ‘yes’ pile. And a close second is the blue and purple pair.

Another ‘yes’, this time for the red and bronzey ones. I like the warm, autumnal colours. Even if it does remind me more of a turkey than an elegant, exotic bird. I suppose it would be fitting if I was making them for someone who celebrates anything turkey-related in autumn, though.

And now we are down to a final three. Again.

…

… Stuff it. I’m going with the blue and purple ones.

Colours all mixed, stencils all prepped, I can finally get started! Here’s a quick picture dump, in lieu of a full step-by-step guide:

Tried a few different sizes, and it turns out bigger is better!

And now, the finished earrings:

“BONUS”: Some shots with Instagram Reels ‘Sims’ filters. The Bella one was a fresh shot of nightmare fuel, and the other one gave me clearer skin and a 10-foot neck.

So, final thoughts? I like them. I’m not completely bowled over by them, but for a first attempt off the back of an idea that was completely on a whim, I’m quite happy. And I love the colours. I’d definitely do this again, making something from a game. Particularly this one, as everything does have a simple, cartoony look, so it’s fairly simple to replicate. Plus, it’s an excuse to play it, in the name of research!

So I give these a Pass in terms of how they look, but how about wear? I did mention polymer clay being light. And yes, they are very light and comfortable to wear. I almost forgot to take them out because I couldn’t really feel them! So they get a definitely get a higher score for wearability.

If I did do it again – making this pair of earrings, that is, not just something from the game – my main aim would be to make sure the earrings look like mirror-images of each other. This pair are definitely sisters, not twins. I imagine that’s where learning to make a cane would come in very handy. Other than that, I would add more movement. Maybe thinner layers or separating the tail feathers. They’d make nice clicky-clacky sounds too, actually. Yeah, I’d do that.

If you’d like to see me do something like this again, let me know in the comments? Also, let me know if you also grew up playing any Sims games like I did.

Oh, just one more thing before I go: I’ve not forgotten about my upcoming Halloween make, I’ve just not got around to doing anything to prepare for it as of late. A bit of schedule re-jigging should find me some time.

Right, that’s all for now. Thanks so much for popping in and having a read. Have a lovely rest of your day!

If you’d like to see more from me, you can find me on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, and of course, you can support me and treat yourself in my Shop (and the Sale is still on until tomorrow night)!

Helen x

Tags bridgejewellery, craft, diy, earrings, filters, first attempt, games, hobbies, inspiration, jewellery, jewellery making, just for fun, long read, Project, the sims 4

Behind The Scenes Colour Ideas jewellery making personal what's coming

BACK IN MY COMFORT ZONE

I’ve been trying out different jewellery-making techniques over the past few months: working with precious metal clay and getting to grips with a kiln; trying to achieve that “real marbley stone” look with polymer clay and resin (those videos absolutely dominated my social media feeds for quite some time earlier in the year); prong setting individual stones; reviving my long-forgotten love for chainmaille weaving. But I didn’t feel like there was any real point to the pieces I made, other than serving as a physical reminder that I was convinced whatever the technique was would become My Thing.

The image in my head was always better than the finished product, though. I know it’s likely that all I needed to do with any of those ventures was to stick at it, and it wouldn’t be long before I’d see an improvement, impressing myself with my new-found talent. But I am impatient and I want to be great at whatever I’m trying immediately. So sticking with something I’m not an Instant Pro at, really is difficult.

And then it just so happened that I got my hands on some strands of the most gorgeous, tiny little faceted beads recently, and I’m having a great time.

They’re all precious stones, which is something I tried to keep away from for as long as possible: making your own jewellery is not a cheap hobby, even if you sell your pieces. Plus, though it can be easy to forget, they’re naturally occurring rocks that have to be mined; they’re pretty much a finite resource with a big environmental and economical impact. Another reason I want to find out where I can source lab-created gemstone beads. But in terms of availability, especially if we’re looking at the bead-quality, stringable kinds, natural stones are more readily accessible. Accessible even to me. Me! Incredible.

Although I said “precious stones”, and went on about how jewellery making is not a very bank account-friendly hobby, I should point out that I’ve not omitted any of the Big Four from my little photo gallery above. ‘Precious’ isn’t a word reserved for diamonds, emeralds, rubies and sapphires anymore. I read something the other day that commented on how gemologists are moving away from referring to stones like opal and turquoise as ‘semi-precious’, and I love that. Diamonds aren’t all that. Well, they are. It’s just that so many other gems deserve the love that those clumps of glittering carbon get, too.

Anyway, like I say I’m having a great time, with all the different colours and shapes. Well, not “shapes” plural; it’s all strand after strand of spherical sparklies as you can see. And I think that’s the beauty of it.

Being quite an untidy person, both in mind and in… well, in general, I appreciate a bit of uniformity. It’s quite satisfying to see evenly sized things in even rows of even numbers. It might sound a bit silly, but I think this “sameness” is a key ingredient in making a good-looking piece of jewellery. For me, anyway. Fully content to only speak for myself here. And it’s quick, too! Always a plus. For example, I got three stretchy bracelets done the other night in roughly the time it would take for me to weave a few inches of Byzantine chainmaille. Which is still not very long, but it’s a lot easier to write a product description for my next Etsy listing right after making dainty little bracelets than inches and inches of individually and intricately linked chain.

So stretchy bracelets is where I’m at right now. And rings. Stretchy rings are something I didn’t know I needed in my life. I’m back in my comfort zone of stringing one bead after another after another. Reassuringly predictable: Add your beads until the desired length is reached, tie a secure knot, add a blob of glue, wait for that to dry, and Robert’s your mother’s brother!

In some ways, it might have made more sense for me to make the strands go further by using them more sparingly. Maybe adding a one or two beads onto a pair of drop earrings, or every few inches or so on a chain necklace. But that would feel like treating them as commas or full stops at the end of a sentence, when in actual fact they are the whole sentence.

That could well be the most pretentious thing I have ever written, and I can’t decide whether I’m sorry about it. I’m not deleting it, though.

You should see the bracelets in my shop very soon. And maybe rings, too. I somehow have enough of the beads left that I could get a few more rings out of the strands.

The aim is to have them all up and listed by 10 July. There’s no particular significance for me about that date, it’s just that on the day before I started typing this (1 July), I’d posted on Instagram about them being available in my shop next week. And the 10th is the last day of what is still at the time of writing, next week. Also it rhymed nicely with “sneak peek”.

Right, that’s all from me for now. I still have some more fine-tuning to be getting on with before my newest pieces are ready to be released into the wild. In the meantime, I have a quick question: Could I get a show of hands on who’s interested in the idea of a little jewellery Top-Up/Refresher/First Aid kit kind of thing? Safety chain, spare earring backs, small carabiner clip, all in a nice little fabric pouch? Just comment “Yes” or something if fancy the sound of that.

Thank you so much for popping in and having a read. Have a lovely rest of your day!

If you’d like to see more from me, there are other posts on the blog to read if you haven’t already. Plus, you can find me on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, and of course, you can treat yourself and visit my Shop)!

Tags bridgejewellery, craft, diy, hobbies, inspiration, jewellery, jewellery making, precious stones

Behind The Scenes Ideas jewellery making Project what's coming

“I Could Make That!”

Go on, then! I’ll even get you started.

We hear that a lot – both directly and indirectly – us jewellery makers. Anyone crafty, really. That someone else could make the thing we made. And yeah, they probably could make that thing, but 1) pointing it out is a little rude, and 2) they should know it’s a really lovely feeling knowing that, of all the handcrafted pieces available to them, somebody else chose the thing I made, to own for themselves even though they also could probably make the thing too.

Right now I’m working on putting together jewellery making kits for beaded bracelets and necklaces that you will be able to make for someone special. Yourself can be that someone special, if you like.

There are lots of kits available elsewhere already, but more often than not, once you have your completed piece, you’re left with a load of bits and bobs that might be useless to you and will just end up being chucked away. Also, they tend to be aimed at children or younger teens, so the packaging reflects this.

And it’s the packaging that I gave the most of my focus to when I started jotting down my ideas about the kits. I want it to look “grown up”, but more importantly, I want to be sure that anything left over can be recycled or disposed of with minimal waste.

Let’s start with the sleeve box it all arrives in:

Slim enough to fit through a letterbox; ideal if you’re sending it as a surprise gift to someone else who likes to make things, or if it’s for you and you know you won’t be in to collect it.
Made from Kraft card that is 100% recyclable. And roomy enough to use it to store other bits and pieces, so you might want to keep it for storage. Somewhere to keep other jewellery, pehaps? Makeup? Sweets? Sewing stuff? It’s 2022, we can give the Danish biscuit tins a rest now. Maybe glue a fabric tab on the sleeve to keep it easy to open? You could discard the outer sleeve bit and just use the box as a little tray for bedside stuff.
If you are giving it as a gift, cover it – sleeve and all – with wrapping paper, tie a pretty ribbon around it, et voilà! Now it’s a gift box! And someone else’s problem!
For what it’s worth, my personal advice would be to put the empty box on the floor and see how long it takes for your cat to try getting in it. You should then tag me in any pics or videos you post.

What other packaging paraphernalia will you find in the box?

A little square of Kraft card to keep the beading needles in one place while you’re not using them. Once the jewellery piece is made, keep the little card so you don’t lose the needles, or repurpose it as a bookmark or something.
A cute little velvety pouch which serves as an easy gift-wrap option if you’ve made the jewellery as a present for someone else. Or as something to store it in if it’s for yourself. If you have somewhere else to store your new handcrafted jewellery piece though, there are still plenty of ways you can make use of the pouch. You could fill it with cedar and hang it in your wardrobe to keep moths out. Or keep your crystals in there. Or other jewellery? Not with the piece you made, though. It’s best to store jewellery pieces on their own if you can help it.

And now it’s time to talk about the jewellery you’re making. There will be a few options. Whether you choose precious metal or precious metal-plated, or semi-precious stone beads or synthetic, everything will still have been packed with the same care for quality and ease of use.

As you will know from my previous posts, I’m a fan of a particular type of synthetic pearls, so I want you to be aware that any pearls in my kits or ready-finished pieces of jewellery will be these synthetic ones. For one, it will keep the kits and pieces far more affordable than if they were genuine pearls.

I am looking at other stones – genuine semi-precious stones – and crystals, to include in the kits in case pearls are not your thing. My favourite is labradorite, but I find it makes more of an impact in a piece when used as an accent rather than the main feature.

I want to include birthstones, especially if I can get my hands on the real thing. But April, June and September babies, I will be making sure you get a beautiful alternative. Comment below what your favourite gemstone is, and is it your birthstone?

You can choose whether your kit will be for a bracelet, a necklace, or both, or even an anklet, and it will include pretty much all you need: thread, beads, clasp. If this feels limiting, it is intentional. Taking into consideration both the reusability and user-friendliness of the kits’ contents, it is important that things are kept as simple as possible, so you won’t need to get hold of any specialist equipment just to make these one or two lovely pieces of jewellery.

That’s all from me for now. I still have some more fine-tuning and R&D to be getting on with before my kits are ready for you. In the meantime, I want to say thanks so much for popping in and having a read. Have a lovely rest of your day!

featured image by AlisonHShaw (via canva.com)

Tags bridgejewellery, coming soon, craft, diy, hobbies, jewellery, jewellery making, what's next

Behind The Scenes jewellery making personal

CHOKE[R ON] HOLD

Part 4 of my current series, All Choked Up, is not happening this week: I’ve hit a bit of a snag, you see. I have completely lost all the lovely red beads I bought back in Part 2. My house is generally upside-down anyway, so I’ve pretty much been left with no choice but to turn it right-side up in looking for them.

I don’t know how they could’ve gone missing: they are (mostly) bright, red, beads, in a padded white envelope.

Because I don’t want to miss a week and just not post until I have something to update, I was debating with myself as to whether I should talk about a message I received from someone who wanted to take my necklace away from me. I’ll give you 3 seconds to see if you can guess which side of this internal argument won.

You might remember that, at the end of Part 3 I was saying that I like the choker how it is, and maybe that jinxed it for me? Maybe it’s supposed to be unfinished? Because apparently, it’s not just me who likes it in its current, unembellished state:

I didn’t respond to their last message, even after posting this. But I was curious, so I did go to their profile, and saw that they do indeed have more than 2,500 followers. And 10 posts, all seemingly unrelated. Posts that have no comments and about 30 likes, tops. Suspish, right?

I had some questions: Who are they? How did they find me? Do they also read my blog? Why did they want an unfinished piece?

Ultimately, it’s pretty whatever. I left their message unresponded-to, and blocked them. They didn’t follow me anyway, which I am glad about. But yeah, I’m not entirely sure why they wanted to try their luck with me. Maybe they just saw my follower count was lower than theirs and thought they could use that to their advantage?

I think it threw me off so much because this hasn’t really happened to me before. If I get a DM, it’s about 10% someone asking me to be a “brand ambassador” for them, and most of the rest will be about which of the jewellery pieces in my shop are made with semi-precious stones. Hint: if it’s in my shop and involves solid sterling silver, it’s semi-precious. Anyway, I get to keep my necklace, so that’s all I really care about.

So yeah, that’s as eventful as my week has been: the loss of tens of pounds (sterling, not weight) of red beads, and an annoying string of messages on Instagram from an entitled someone or other. Hopefully I’ll be back on track by this time next week; Hallowe’en is just over a week away, and it’s half term now, so it definitely going to get very busy here very quickly!

That’s all for now. Thanks so much for popping in and having a read. Have a lovely rest of your day!

There’s more to come as this project develops, and while I work out a more consistent schedule for this blog, so please subscribe if you don’t want to miss future posts. And of course, if you have any ideas about what that DM situation was all… about, your comments and thoughts on that will be muchly appreciated.

If you’d like to see more from me, you can find me on Instagram (where you’ll find me most of the time), Twitter, and Facebook, and of course, you can treat yourself and visit my Shop!

Tags bridgejewellery, jewellery, jewellery making, reflecting, take a break

Behind The Scenes jewellery making personal

IT’S ABOUT CONNECTIONS…and what else?

Post author By bridgejewellery
Post date 14/07/2021
2 Comments on IT’S ABOUT CONNECTIONS…and what else?

This one’s a bit navel-gazey.

One of the main reasons I chose Bridge as the name of my, erm, brand, was because it means connection. Even the tagine for this blog is ‘It’s About Connections’.

But beyond that, I’m wondering what my ‘brand’ itself even is. For one thing, none of the jewellery I make has little bridges on (but maybe it could? Once I’ve finished this post, I might Google some interesting ones and see what happens). And for another, I only opened my shop a few months ago, so there’s much yet to be established in terms of who My Customer actually is, vs. who I imagined would buy from me, and what sells best, etc. So am I at the point where I can call it a brand yet?

I have ‘branding‘ – colour schemes, fonts/typefaces and a logo – but this is all very surface level. I’m yet to develop a particular style or something I’m known for.

That will come in time, I’m sure. But I’m impatient and would like to just be at that point now, please.

Coming straight here from Instagram, how I’m presenting myself online is at the forefront of my mind. And actually, that’s one of the reasons I started this blog: there’s only so much personality and information anyone can get across in the captions on social media posts that nobody reads anyway.

How much of myself do I want to be tied into my brand? Knowing there’s a human face behind a business is reassuring to the customer, of course. That’s what is so great about buying from small businesses. But I honestly just really enjoy making the pieces, and hope to make it my full time job. So I mostly want you to buy my jewellery because it’s well made, and that you like how it looks and appreciate the time and care that I’ve put into it. You can ascribe your own meanings and reasons for wearing/sharing it once it arrives through your front door.

I have many ideas about where I would like my ‘brand’ to go. And at the same time I know that the best chance I have of making it a success is that it goes in the direction that both you and I want to take it.

So it’s about achieving balance. That’s what else it’s about! Problem solved. Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? *ahem*…

That’s all for now. Thanks so much for popping in and having a read. Have a lovely rest of your day!

This blog is still very new so there’s lots more to come as I work out a more consistent schedule. Feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss future posts. And of course, likes and comments are muchly appreciated.

If you’d like to see more from me, you can find me on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, and of course, you can support me and treat yourself in my Shop!

Tags branding, personal, reflection, self-reflection, small business

Behind The Scenes Colour Ideas jewellery making

MIXED & MATCHED

Something that helps me to relax is sorting out the various bits and bobs in my jewellery making stash. The neat and tidy end result – seeing all the findings, wires and beads in their little stacking pots – is about as satisfying as putting all the jumbled bits into little groups.

It also gives me the chance to think of new design ideas. One of the few times I’m not doing something else completely unrelated when inspiration strikes, and can actually get started on it right then and there.

The last lot of beads I added to my ever-growing stash were some lovely strands of heishi beads, made from polymer clay. I bought them rather than making them myself, as polymer clay is something I’m yet to work with. Maybe I’ll get round to that one day; it looks quite versatile, and it would be a great excuse to buy new tools!

I was surprised at how light and bendy the beads are. Well, I say ‘bendy’; you couldn’t exactly roll or scrunch them up and expect them to return to normal, but being clay I assumed they would be quite delicate and brittle, especially in these thin disc shapes. But there’s definitely a bit of give in them. That explains the ‘polymer’ in ‘polymer clay’, I suppose.

Anyway, some of the bead strands were solid colours, but my favourites had a whole mix. However, an idea I’d had in the back of my mind only needed a few of the colours, so I had to take those beads out to get working on it.

So, I removed the beads from the strand, and sifted through the pile to find the colours I wanted. And then I realise I wanted them all. They all looked so great together that I’m saving my original idea for later (and it’ll have to be much later, unfortunately; as I write up this blog post, I realise I’ve forgotten what the original idea even was! Whoops!), and this will now be a colour block necklace. So I carried on until all the colours were separated, and threaded them back onto a length of beading thread, securing the ends ready for a clasp to finish it all off.

Now I have brand new, colourful necklace to wear! And all it took was a willingness to sit patiently for a few hours, hunched over a pile of literally hundreds of tiny discs, making sure I’d not confused about 4 different shades of off-white for any other. I had. And I was almost halfway through re-stranding when I noticed. But it’s not weird that I’d happily do it all again though, right? Right?

That’s all for now. Thanks so much for popping in and having a read. Have a lovely rest of your day!

If you’d like to see more from me, you can find me on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, and of course, you can support me and treat yourself in my Shop!

Tags craft, diy, hobbies, jewellery, jewellery making