Stuff I made...!

Just showing you off some stuff I made well actually... last week. We changed our internet provider at home and it's way too slow to load photos. The only 2 places that provides me with descent internet is at the office or at starbucks. So, if I'm a bit slow uploading photos in the next couple of weeks, that would be why.

I also gave up taking acceptable photos with my pocket camera. I'm trying out photo-shopping my pictures until I manage saving up to buy a better camera. No cut and pasting involved, don't worry. It's mainly to do justice of the colours more than anything. Enjoy! =)


"Spring This Year..." simple jewelry set with crystal, pink jade and faceted light green serpentin. I use sterling silver chain, earwires and a heart rhodium toggle. Light, simple, sweet and stylish!


"Cornelian Dream" Long necklace. An interesting mix between cornelian stones, crystals and biwa pearls. A great piece if you like dangly necklace.


"Sundusk" is a 2 tiered choker necklace using various cornelian stones, sterling silver chain and wire. This piece is slightly experimental, I imagined it, sketched it, failed some experiments and finally came up with this necklace hence the out of the ordinary result.

The following jewelry is heavily influenced with the copper vintage look. Materials are mainly swarovski pearls, swarovski crystals and chains.



"Copper constalation" matching bracelet and necklace. The pearls and crystals are placed randomly but making sure that they are placed in balance. It requires a little bit of putting out and replacing pearls which chews up a bit of time, but I really can't help myself... XD



"Classic Beauty" bracelet, adorned with vintage-like rose charms and other dangling beads. I love this bracelet so much and very tempted to keep it for myself... it's... so... preeetty...



Want to see more pictures or more info? They're all being kept in my Etsy shop so drop by for a visit if you like. Go to www.beadsforpeace.etsy.com and just click on the "New This Week" Link in the shop sections on the right hand side of the page.

Good day everyone! =)

My First Jewelry Wedding Gig

I was SO fortunate this year that my awesome friend, Sienna had recommend me to do a bridal jewelry for her sister, Garmisch who is now happily married to her husband, Tim in Australia last month.

It was my first bridal request so it was VERY exciting and lots of new experiences had been learnt. Since I’m currently living in Jakarta, Garmisch and I communicate a lot via emails. She’s the best client anyone would ever want really. She sent me so many helpful pictures of what she wants that when I finally did come up with some jewelry, no further alteration was needed. When trying to come up what sort of jewelry I'm going to make, color theme is my no.1 concern. The design, and all the rest comes second. I asked about her flowers and what the bridesmaids are wearing. In this case, Garmisch is wearing white, and her flowers and bridesmaids are going to be yellow.

This is one of the picture Garmisch had sent me of the Bridesmaids dress to let me have an idea about what sort of 'yellow' is in her colour theme.

When I went to Australia for holiday, I used this opportunity to discuss the details with her in person. I also took measurement of her, and her bridesmaids wrists to get their bracelets properly fitted. We meet up in the city’s café and she even brought her dress over!!!

These are the final result of the jewelry:

For the bridesmaids, I use predominantly peach rice pearls to match their dresses.

Fo Garmisch, she requested a chandelier style earrings and a matching 3 layered bracelet. After looking at many photos and conversations, this is what we came up with:

A few weeks ago, Sienna sent me a link on to the photos from the wedding. These amazing photos are taken by Tate Needham on the courtesy of t8photography (www.t8photography.com) So amazing in fact I'm considering him to do photos for my own wedding now. So, If you're getting married in Canberra, he's your man! ;)

This is a photo of Sienna wearring the peach earrings.

Misch looking absolutely stunning in her dress, flowers and the jewelry.

I’m not there at the wedding, but seeing my jewelry had made it there in those photos made me feel like a piece of me had been there at there, especially when I saw this photo here:

A big congratulations to the new Mr and Mrs. Riley! And thanks Sienna and Garmisch for your friendship and support! You guys rock my world…!!!

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A couple of weeks later I was approached by another customer, Carrie from Ohio, USA. She requested to make 3 sets of necklace/earrings set for her bridesmaids. Her wedding is in May. She loved a necklace I had made, but wanted the colors to be predominantly black, red, pink and

white.

Then there’s a hiccup, my supplier had run out of those oval hoops, so I had to buy hoops that are larger. After experimenting with it a couple of times the result wasn’t very good.

So I went back to the shop and looked around for other alternatives. I found round hoops that I quite like, so I made these Christmas necklace to test it out:

It was really cool because Carrie ended up liking this one better than the original oval hoops! Yay for both of us! But there’s another challenge. Carrie requested that I use non- iridescent swarovski crystals rather than the iridescent ones that I use. So I rang up all my suppliers, and none of them supply a 6mm round non-iridescent crystals. I found that rather irritating because personally, I also prefer non-iridescent crystals, and I think they used to have it. They also stop ruby colored crystals coming in… and I like to use a lot of ruby. That’s the downside of the bead market in Jakarta. They like to stop supplying whatever that doesn’t sell without any warning.

I happened to be very lucky this time because I had to go to Singapore to attend a 3 day conference. I have a bead shop over there that I normally go to, so I bought the non-iridescent crystals over there.

So this is the final outcome! Carrie said that it looked exactly as she imagined, and that made us both very VERY happy! Yaaay! =D

Looking back at this project, it did take a long time for us to work this pieces of jewelry out, and there are times when I feel that the nature of my suppliers are very unstable that I’m going to hit a dead end several times. But God has been extremely good to me. With a lot of faith, it’s just so amazing to see how it all just work out by itself in the end.

Thanks Carrie for your patience and trusting me with this project! I really appreciate it. I also can’t wait to see the photos in May of course! =)

Finally thanks to Etsy for making it possible for me to work with people from around the world. I absolutely LOVE it…!

Gettin into Wire!

I’ve been spending a lot of time on my beading desk, as a result of an excessive amount bead shopping. I feel rather motivated to get all the money I spent back. I mean, it is almost Christmas, and I have to be prepared in expecting the best out of my sales. Plus my ideas had been flying around everywhere ever since I got more familiar with wire.

I’ve managed to get a few rolls of artistic wire during my last trip to Aus. For Au$9 per roll they are very dear, but the colours are so great I can’t just stick with the usual silver or gold. I got like, 10 rolls of different colours and different gauge, and at that stage, I’ve never even coiled a wire in my life. Now I’m glad I got that many wires because they’re running out very fast.

Summer is approaching in Australia, and my friends had been out (even in the midst of their essays and exams) flying kites, swimming in the lake, going for barbecue picnics, late night games, movies and such. Being alone in Jakarta makes me miss them even more knowing that they’re having fun. Though, like Proverbs said, there is a time for everything. I’ve had my 3 weeks of fun when I visit them, and it’s time to sit on my bum and try to earn some again. I can’t complain, cause making things with wire is a lot of fun too.

If I was living in Australia, I’d be too tempted to go out fly a kite, swim in the lake and stay up with friends instead of staying at home making jewelry. Now that I think about it, maybe that’s why I didn’t do so well in uni. Uni was driven entirely by pressure, I'm not fased so much about what I'm going to do when I grow up so I'd much rather be out playing around. I have to admit, I’ve done some pretty stupid pointless things (for some reason having a race of rolling down commonwealth hill comes to mind). In a way I think I did the right thing, I knew those days weren’t going to last forever.


Here's a photo from 2006, taken right before we decide it'll be a good idea to race rolling down the hill... aaah memories...!

This time around, tempted or not, I’d rather be spending time at home, being in touch with my creative senses, interacting with my ideas.

It started out with a bunch of failed experiment…

I figured that it was silly to experiment on expensive wires, so I did a couple of sketches to plan ahead and use cheaper wire to make sure the idea worked. (yes I use my keyboard as a bench... I just don't have that much space in my room for all my stuff. I don't think my keyboard is very impressed with me right now.)


And then doing whatever it takes to make those sketches work.

I wrote a sign in front of me on the mirror that says, “Clean up mess after each session” in bright red. But it’s not working, only sometimes when I’m out of ideas and getting a little bored, but a the moment, there’s wires flying everywhere!

And so, voila!
(All these can be found in my Etsy shop of course!)



I’m drawn in, I’m immersed… I think I’m addicted.