Altered Designs

Dragonfly Pendant

One of my steam punk pieces arrived last week and It was amazingly wrapped in tissue paper and done up with a ribbon like a present. It is so nice when ebay sellers take the time and care to make your purchase memorable.

The piece is a heart and dragonfly combination on a long brass chain. Other pieces like this can be found through her ebay store "Altered Designs" and are quite affordable if you are looking for something a little different.

Cameo

I have also purchased a cameo today that looks old fashioned enough for my tastes. I fear it is not "real shell" as stated, but still it might end up being one of the cheaper plastic cameos from up to 50 years ago as it looks like the setting is cast metal. While it is missing a stone in the corner I hope to either be able to replace it cheaply or fix it either by taking out the one in the other corner and adding cogs to give it a steam punk feel, or taking out all the stones and replacing them with something appropriate. I guess I shall see when it arrives in the post!

Earrings

I wanted something special for a Christmas present. Then I was going through my old jewellery and found my pearls and amber and remembered at the same time I'd bought a few different gemstone beads, so I decided to make something.

Difficulty: Easy
Total Time: 1 hour

These aren't hard to make, they're just fiddly. I never knew that hand crafted jewellery could look this good though. I really like using jump rings and head pins. I bought myself some earring hooks and silver chain as well as the pretty heart spacer charms and put it all together with some real garnet and real peridot. The only other things needed are two pairs of small pliers and a bit of patience coupled with some creativity.

The first set are garnet (2 x 6mm and 18 x 4mm), 2 heart accents,  10 head pins, 12 jump rings and 2 earring hooks.

The second set are peridot (2 x 5mm, 6 x 4mm), 2 jump rings, silver chain and 2 earring hooks.