Whereas some costume jewellers of the late 20th century are happy to exploit artificial materials to create a contrived and sophisticated look, the dawn of a growing awareness of the value of natural products — like wood, paper and leather – means that strong references to all that is natural are now influential too.
Inseparable from [...]
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The design sources of many of the jewellers whose work is illustrated are as diverse as can be, but their inspirations derive from four broad categories: the materials they use; historical influences; looking at what is around them with an open mind; or a strong commitment to a concept that they want to encapsulate in [...]
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Flowers make ideal subjects for clay jewelry. Their delicate and fragile structure can, with a little practice, be fashioned into delicate pieces to be fitted onto brooch mounts or on a smaller scale onto ear-ring or ring mounts. Make them to match fashion’s romantic mood of the moment and to complement your prettiest clothes.
The rose [...]
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Brass wire is an excellent medium for starting to create designs with metal before going on to use the more expensive silver wire. You can experiment with any wire you can find as most are suitable for making jewelry. In any case, it’s good practise and should something turn out particularly well, you can always [...]
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These attractive and original necklaces are made from oven-baked clay beads, painted with bright enamel paint and threaded or linked with jeweler’s wire. The beads can be left plain, interspersed with bought beads for contrast, or made in a variety of shapes and sizes to create individual and unusual jewelry.
The red choker
Make 26 clay beads [...]
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Wire wrapping is a jewelry technique which is mainly used for displaying polished or unpolished stones and is another way that wire can be used in conjunction with other materials not only as a means of linking them together but in fact to enhance the appearance of the finished pieces.
To link the stones use wire [...]
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Using backing plates
Metal backing plates come in two parts ; one part is covered in holes, the other has a plate to support the clasp and claws to hold the two pieces together. The two parts are joined by the claws after the beads are attached and this serves to cover up untidy wire ends [...]
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Although many beads are worked on string a surprising amount of bead jewelry is made using metal pins or wire, and once the basic principles of wire jewelry are understood, necklaces, bracelets, earrings and brooches of apparently complicated natures become as easy to work as the simplest design. Furthermore, old jewelry can be re-styled or [...]
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Jewelry from polished or even unpolished rocks and pebbles is probably the oldest and most fascinating of all the crafts — and your involvement can be as simple or as extensive as you like, and almost as cheap or as costly as you decide.
You can go out and collect stones yourself or buy them at [...]
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Necklaces
Another use for twisted wire is to make it into links for a necklace. An interesting range of permutations for these can be achieved, as the examples indicate. The necklaces make use of beads which can be bought, or made from clay, and links from silver tubing. This tubing comes in a variety of shapes [...]
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