Polymer Clay Explorations and New Jewelry

I've been dabbling a bit in polymer clay with the goal of making my own beads and having another way to add color to my jewelry (because I'm a jewelry control freak and I want to make everything myself!)  Now I know that there are REAL polymer clay artists out there making crazy amazing stuff, so don't scoff at my sad little beads, but I do like the color combination possibilities they open up.  Here are a few samples, soon to be available in my etsy shop! 

A Jewelry Geek's Reading List: Victorian Jewelry Design by Charlotte Gere

 

I have a natural inclination to geekery.  I was a band geek in high school.  I like to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Now that jewelry making is one of my many jobs, I find myself descending further into jewelry geekery.  It started with reading "On Divers Arts" a medieval manual on metalsmithing and other arts by a monk named Theophilus.  Did you know if you keep a goat in a huge jar and feed it nothing but ferns, its urine will be ideal for quenching your metal?  Now you know. 
Anyway, I'm continuing my jewelry geek educaton by reading "Victorian Jewelry Design" by Charlotte Gere. For those of us interested in the history of jewelry design the Victorian era is an especially interesting period, when jewelry designers were inspired by a wide range of historical and archeological sources, and increases in mass-production significantly changed the way jewelry was made and sold.  Published in 1972, this book is text-heavy, with a decent number of illustrations in black and white.  Definitely for serious jewelry geeks only.

Metal Clay Hoops

Here's a prototype of something new I'm working on- hoop earrings in metal clay. I fired these flat and then bent them and added sterling ear wires. I still have a few bugs to work out but I think they're pretty promising. It's hard to tell from the photo what they look like on so I will have to get a photo of that soon.