byZarah.comProjects | byZarah.com

Making My Own Jewelry Brand

Zarah — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 08:31:19 +0000

I’ve finally decided to start working on my own jewelry brand. There has been many ideas for a name but I will consider the alternatives a bit more. The name of a jewelry brand is very important of course, so it has to be appropriate now and yet durable for later on… Don’ t worry I will come up with something.

I’m so happy to share this with you now because it’s the new project I will be working on. Yet the best part of it is that I will be blogging about it!

Find Brand Name

I’ve made up my mind not to be stuck just because I didn’t decide on the jewelry name yet. Whenever decision anxiety appears, it needs to be eliminated quickly!

After the name is decided then I will be needing a logo. I’m really excited about that, I wanna see how an idea develops into the shape of my new jewelry logo. Here I’m thinking something sophisticated and modern, but also something personal.

Selling Jewelry in Web Shop

I wanna make my own jewelry brand because that I need a better way to sell my jewelry. I love making all the jewelry pieces but sometimes there is not enough time to go out and sell them.

Designing the brand will be one aspect of this project, another one will be to find a smooth web shop where I can list all the pieces I want to sell.

I will be sharing everything about the new jewelry brand making!

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Making Drew Barrymore Diamond Hoop Earrings

Zarah — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 22:50:11 +0000

Found these pretty diamond hoop earrings online one day, then later on I saw Drew Barrymore wearing earrings in the same hoop style earrings. Then it was clear to me, I just had to make my own Faux Diamond Hoop earrings!

Hoop earrings like these are so useful when accessorizing for a dinner or an evening out. Diamonds are a girls best friend and they sparkle for you all night! But to limit the costs for my own hoop earrings I found my “faux diamonds”, that’s to say crystal beads!

I always love to see what celebrities are wearing, there is so much cool designs to be inspired by. Be creative and make your own take on the designs you see because it’s much more interesting and personal not to copy the whole thing.

As for these diamond hoop earrings, they are inspired by two designs actually: The sterling silver hoop earring version and the Drew Barrymore hoop earring version.

Free Earring Tutorial

My Diamond Hoop Earrings are very easy to make. I think I spent 15 minutes in total. And here are the supplies you will need making them.

The assembly

Fasten each one of the beads to a head pin.
Form a loop at the end, cut the excess wire.
Attach the two 12mm crystal beads in the centre of the hoop and the other beads at the sides.
Fasten the hoop with all it’s beads onto the fishhook ear wire. Voila, you’re finished.

Diamond Hoop Earrings

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Dog Tag Necklace in Metal Clay

Zarah — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:04:15 +0000

I’ve just finished my first dog tag necklace in metal clay, that was soo fun! It turned out to be a splendid idea to use the ball chain to my dog tag made with metal clay, and with the help of metal clay and letter stamps you can make any statement you want. A name or just a meaningful word is fierce on a chain necklace!

Have been waiting a few weeks for some sterling silver chains and findings ordered from Sweden, the ball chain was one of them. It was so worth the wait. They were very pretty I must say, and good quality too. A dog tag necklace like this can’t be a more personalized piece of jewelry!

Make Your Own End Cap

By accident I forgot to get sterling silver end caps for the ball chain, what a bummer. Now what to do, I can’t finish the chain… So I just sat there for a while and started thinking. What about making my own end cap, how would that be possible? I had bought some eye pins along with the sterling silver findings, maybe I could use them? And then it hit me: This is how to make end caps for a ball chains!

Bullet Chain End Cap Tutorial

Fasten the “eye” on the eye pin to the last space between the ball on the chain.
Bend the other end back towards the last ball, adjust the length of the eye pin.
Finally shape another loop at the end of the eye pin and fasten it there next to the first loop.
Flatten the pointy bow created by the eye pin. Left over wire from the loops are also wrapped around the empty space in the ball chain.

This is what the end caps would finally look like in the ball chain.

Supplies for Dog Tag Necklace

Metal Clay for the pendant.
Letter Clear Stamps to stamp the metal clay.
Ball chain with clasp or make you own from the tutorial.

Dog Tag Necklace

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

1 Minute Kidney Earwires in Gold

Zarah — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 23:12:06 +0000

Got these super cool extra long golden kidney earwires about a year ago, but didn’t know what to do with them. Finally I found the perfect match…with two golden elephants! The best part is that it took less than a minute to make these earrings with the kidney earwires.

Kidney ear wires are very light to wear and so comfy! Since the golden elephants were already decorated with sparkling rhinestones, I didn’t need to make any other additions to the earwires. Big kidney ear wires are lots of fun because they are quite visible but never “too much”.

Tutorial:

How to make Kidney Earwires…

On kidney earwires you can attach any special beads or charms you have. Ear wires don’t mind crazy colors or shapes, they love it even! Both gold and silver big hooks are stunning. Lift your design by chosing beads with vivid colors or patterns. Suggestions on beads for kidney earwires can be:

Filigree connectors
Glass beads
Charms (like my elephants)
Polymer clay beads
Metal beads

… with Charms & Connectors?

Chose your Charm.
Open the kidney earwire, add a jump ring and attach the charm to the earwire.
Repeat step 1-3 for the other earwire. Simple as that!

…with Beads?

If you use a bead of some kind, polymer clay, metal, glass or filigree.

String the bead onto a head pin of the correct length according to the bead.
Form a new loop and cut of the access wire.
Now attach it to the earwire. If a jump ring is needed, add that in between the head pin and the ear wire.
Repeat step 1-3 for the other earwire.

Here is an example on silver earwires I’ve made and then attached a polymer clay bead, read the original post here.

Have fun with making your own earwire earrings!

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Black Headband with Flower

Zarah — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:37:15 +0000

Check this out! I found this shiny black headband and couldn’t resist decorating it with black feathers and a black flower. A black headband is always handy, you could wear it with any clothes you want and spice them up that way! Oh my, this black headband is perfect to wear to work… I will do that for sure!

It was a really quick project, but very fun actually. I guess it took like 3 minutes to glue the feathers by layers and then fasten the flower on top of the headband. I love these kind of things, a girl’s gotta accessorize you know.

To make a black headband like this you need:

Simple headband
Black and white feathers
Flower of some kind, the one I used is made from leather.
Suitable Craft glue

There are lots of things you can use to make you own headband. Cover it with lace, put on your favorite items like flowers, butterflies, beads or rhinestones. You can use other colors than black, that can be very cool, let the imagination flow free…

My black Headband with Feathers and Black Flower

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Beaded Jewelry with Acrylic Pendant

Zarah — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:53:13 +0000

It’s fantastic how much amazing jewelry you can make with beads! Although I’ve beaded for some time I’m only now beginning to fully understand the width of beading and jewelry making with beads. Beaded jewelry is different today since you can custom-make everything from scratch if you want! I mean, the sky is the limit…

When it comes to making jewelry you can make you very own handmade components. This means everything from beads, pendants, connectors and more. You’re able to truly make your own dream beaded jewelry!

Especially when you’re a jewelry designer this is such an eye opener. With the help of the beads you can practically shape anything you see in your mind. When I did this beaded necklace i had a sweet fairytale in mind. The paper used in the pendant comes from a paper stack called Once Upon A Time. These papers are lovely and so perfect when you make paper beads or acrylic pendants like the one here.

Make your own acrylic pendant

The acrylic pendants are completely transparent, so you can place any pattern you want to display on paper behind it. This is what you need to do to make a pendant like this:

Cut out your chosen paper in the same shape and size as the the pendant you want to use.
Cut out the exact same shape again from the sheet of double-sided adhesive.
Place the double-sided adhesive onto your chosen paper.
Finally place the acrylic pendant right on the adhesive surface with the paper underneath.
To seal the pendant, paint a layer of decoupage glue on the back of the pendant.
Now you’re ready to add the pendant to any beaded jewelry, or attach it to a chain. I might add that this double-sided adhesive is also suitable to use with fabrics with the same technique!

Supplies for Purple Beaded Jewelry Necklace

These two beaded necklaces are made of a mix of purple fire polished beads, golden crystal pearls, golden freshwater pearl beads, and some pink pressed glass beads. They are strung with Illusion cord, which enables the necklaces to move naturally. There is so much joy around beads so don’t hesitate to make your next fabulous beaded jewelry!

Double strand purple beaded jewelry

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Kids Polymer Clay Projects

Zarah — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:34:36 +0000

Me and my sisters kids always have a great time when we are do polymer clay projects together. We made polymer clay animals with the help of a wonderful book. It turned out to be a chicken, a mouse and a snail. It was very easy to follow the step by step pictures in every project in it. Helping each other out making all the small parts in the animal projects makes it more fun for everybody involved.

But we did more than animals, we made jewelry pendants, refrigerator magnets, and links for bracelets. We are always very careful with polymer clay, and it’s should since it’s not a special kids clay.

It was a great idea to use small cookie cutters for the pendants, made it much easier for everyone to layer polymer clay to make flowers for example. Because of that they didn’t need to struggle to make their edges even, which was very helpful.

The cookie cutters we use for polymer clay projects

Hehe, it’s funny to see that snakes are always so popular when children play with polymer clay and clay in general. I think we made like 10 or 15 snakes all together! Mother snake, baby snakes, yellow snakes…

For this polymer clay project we used Fimo soft, that one makes a bit easier for them to work with it.

I also think they have so many bright color varieties in their color palette. Fimo has several polymer clays with glitter-flakes in them, those are so cute…

For the smallest one we had a kids set with play dough clay instead, and he was happy playing together with us too.

Happy kid for polymer clay projects!

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

5 Minute Precious Metal Clay Silver Earrings

Zarah — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:32:25 +0000

I found this great video on how you can make a pair of silver earrings in only 5 minutes made from precious metal clay! It’s incredible, and the video tutorial has great quality too. When you follow this tutorial you will end up with a pair of great looking silver earrings.

Take this perfect opportunity to try out precious metal clay! If you have already have, check this out and learn that it doesn’t have to take hours to make precious metal clay silver earrings like these.

With the time it takes to dry the clay it might take a bit longer than 5 minutes, but still it is very fast.

Make a pair of silver precious metal clay earrings for your self or as a gift. Metal clay silver earrings like these can be used at any occasion you want, very versatile. The triangle shaped precious metal clay silver earrings above I made with the same simple technique used in the video tutorial.

Supplies for 5 Minute Precious Metal Clay Silver Earrings

Metal clay start kit
Kiln or Butane torch. If you work with low fire silver metal clays like precious metal clay 3 (PMC3) or Art Clay 650 you only need a butane torch to make pieces weighing less than 25 grams.
Texture sheets or clear stamps.
Basic tools like nail file, non-sticky working surface and acrylic rod.

Great book tutorials

Its’s amazing how many great silver earrings you can make with only texture sheets or clear stamps and your precious silver metal clay. There are more stunning silver earring and jewelry projects in these books. Doing metal clay jewelry is the best thing I ever did, it’s so fun!

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Silver Necklace from the Laguna

Zarah — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 15:05:24 +0000

With this Silver Necklace from the Laguna I started out with a completely different pendant at first because I couldn’t get the right ideas for it. To fix that I changed my focus to other complimentary colors and this round metal clay silver pendant, and that did the inspiration both for me and the necklace. The pendant I’ve used in this silver necklace comes from the book Metal Clay in a Day, one of my favorites on how to make metal clay silver jewelry.

I had a blast when I beaded this silver necklace and I got so much inspiration along the whole experience! Not sure from where exactly but it came to me, just like that. Makes one think you have to be grateful when that happens

Inspiration is a funny concept. It might come on it’s own, but you can also encourage it to happen. You can stimulate your inspiration by taking action, for example gather your beads and supplies and just play around. You could also use your favorite fashion or beading magazine to get new ideas. Then, when you see the colors, the textures and the shapes inspiration will kick in along the way and then you can just go for it!

Silver Necklace with metal clay pendant

It’s an amazing feeling as you see the beads falling to place in front of you. The perfect tool for that is the beadboard, there is no better way to make necklaces, bracelets and such. Because you can see in advance how the beads will fit together without stringing them first. One of the best inventions ever! And a great time saver.

In this Silver Necklace from the Laguna I have used sea foam glass beads, green agate gemstone beads, sterling silver spacer beads, silver plated soft flex wire and a metal clay silver pendant. Something which I never regret when I make jewelry is to use the magical crimper. It Makes shiny silver crimp beads like a charm. The finishing touch always looks great! Remember that the details in your necklace design means so much in how it will be experienced eventually.

Trying on the necklace

I must have had thoughts and inspiration about the sea or water when I made this necklace, since that’s all I can think of when I see it now afterwards. Could it be the dream I have about going to a real laguna some day?

Imagine you’re walking in a deep forest. It’s hot but when you move some branches you discover a turquoise laguna with a flowing waterfall… After a breathtaking moment you can’t resist taking a swim it it… That’s how pure inspiration feels like

Using durable and pure metals such as sterling silver or precious metal clay silver in your necklaces or other jewelry is always appreciated when customers value to buy them or not. As for for everyone with allergies, (like me) it might not even be an option to wear anything else than pure silver or niobium necklaces and findings.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Metal Clay Silver Jewelry for Men

Zarah — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:00:03 +0000

This is the metal clay silver jewelry piece for men which I made last night. And guess what? It’s for my guy! Just had to make it because I love to see new jewelry on him. I was thinking it could be a versatile necklace for him. With black beads and the silvery metal clay as the colors, he could wear it with anything.

I’m also so happy to finally got the chance to use the metal clay silver leaf pendant which I’ve been saving for some time now. I’m pretty sure I made this pendant in early spring actually. Today felt like a special day, some days are just better than others! Also when you make a pendant like this you want to be sure you get the necklace just right for it.

The pendant is made with 3 cards thick metal clay, then I made an impression with a leaf shaped Clear Stamp. After the pendant being fired I have polished the surface with wet/dry sand papers in various grits. Finally I’ve made a faux patina with black acrylic paint. Letting it dry on it just a little bit, then wiping it off to leave enough to get the right effect.

Materials for Silver Metal clay Jewelry

Click on the necklace to see how the beads are strung.

Metal clay jewelry for men

Nothing is like making your own pendants, beads or whatever with metal clay and then finally assembling it, in this case a jewelry for my special man. It’s definitely taking your jewelry making to a higher level! Now days there are so many great books on making silver metal clay jewelry, so all you need to do is to get one and get started.

When you want to make impressions on metal clay I recommend clear stamps, they are the best suited stamps for metal clay without a doubt. I have so many already, and I’m using them all the time. If you’re also into scrap-booking, card-making or paper in general, you can use your clear stamps perfectly for that too!

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.