TaBou Treasures at the 7th Annual Holiday Hit List...

On Sunday, December 8, 2013, I'll be a vendor once again at the 7th annual Holiday Hit List sponsored by the San Diego North Park Craft Mafia, where I will be selling my handcrafted jewelry. Avoid the malls and the big box stores - come on out and support handmade!         

http://sandiegonorthparkcraftmafia.com/HHL/index.html

On my bench right now

Well over a year ago now, I purchased a beautiful pair of chrysocolla cabochons from a lapidary artist. They have been sitting quietly in one of my many bead and cab boxes, just waiting for a chance to get out and spread their wings (they look a little like wings, don't they?)

I thought about making a couple of rings with them, or some kind of butterfly pendant, but in the end I decided that I'm going to turn them into a pair of earrings. Most of the time, I make dangle earrings, but for some reason, these cabs look to me like they belong in post earrings.

I played around with a few designs that I drew up. The first one in the square backing is too geometric and for some reason reminds me of the 80s (I can almost hear the Miami Vice soundtrack in the background).

This second design with the beaded wire around the bezel is ok, but a bit, I dunno, blah.

Now with this third design, I feel like I'm getting somewhere, but it's still missing a little spark of something.

I pawed around through my faceted gem collection, and found a nicely matched pair of round peridots. I think the spring green of the peridot plays nicely off the greens and blues of the chrysocolla and pulls out some of the lighter greens. Plus, I like combining transparent faceted stones with opaque cabochons.

I'm not 100% done with my design yet, but I think I'm getting pretty close. Keep an eye out on http://www.taboutreasures.etsy.com/ for the final piece :o)

Playing at the Studio Bench - Testing Spinner Rings

Well, this is my first blog posting, so if you are reading this, please bear with me as I get settled in :)

So, where to start? My name is Tanya, and I live in sunny Southern California with my wonderful hubby and currently his 2 kids are also living with us. I started out making jewelry nearly 4 years ago. The first piece I ever put together was a necklace made with strung glass beads. Soon after, at my friend’s urging, I tried working with metal (sterling silver), and it’s been a love affair ever since. I’ve tried several different jewelry-making techniques, such as stringing, wire wrapping, precious metal clay, and traditional fabrication using metalsmithing techniques – this is by far my favorite technique cuz I get to use lotsa cool tools and I love to torch metal :)

Fabricating rings out of sheet metal is relatively new for me; I’ve only made a couple of pieces in a class setting so far. This evening, I was about to start working on a sterling silver ring at a relative’s request – she had already drawn out some designs that she wanted me to bring to life. But given my limited hands-on experience fabricating rings from sheet metal, I thought I would do a little test run in copper first, to ensure I got the sizing right. Well, I kinda set aside the designs she sent me, and fixated on making a spinner ring. I knew the “theory” behind making one; I just hadn’t executed it yet on the bench. So, off I went and soldered a wide band ring out of 20 ga copper sheet. Then using some sterling silver wire in my “scrap box”, I quickly made a couple of “spinners”. And so next thing you know, I made my first spinner ring, as shown in the above photo. I have not pickled it yet or anything, so it looks a little rough. I tossed it in the pickle pot before sitting down in front of my computer – hopefully I won’t forget it in there! It was fun to make and actually deceptively simple, I think I will be making more in the future.