What's New - March

February has been a very creative and productive month for me :) Getting new tools and supplies always inspires me to lock myself away at my desk and try out new things.

12 gauge wire

First up: I decided to try getting a much thicker gauge of wire and seeing how that could influence my designs. I wasn't entirely sure which gauge I wanted to go for, all I knew is that it had to be thicker than 18 - the thickest I currently have. In the end my decision was made for me when 16 and 14 were sold out... so I got 12. I didn't anticipate quite how thick it was going to be, I could barely cut it when I tried!

That detail aside I love this thickness for hammered projects and have 2 shop-worthy ones so far:

Hammered Dangle earrings

I'm still working on a good
picture for this one

After finally finding a bracelet design that looked good but wasn't a spiral clone of others out there I was encouraged to come up with more ideas. The result was this matching set bracelet and earrings in carnelian.

Wiggle earrings

If you read my recent post New Tools you will know that I also recently acquired a blowtorch and all the necessary paraphernalia for soldering. After making my husband's wedding ring I turned my efforts to simpler tasks, starting with circles.

I also picked up some aquamarine beads, the birthstone for March, and decided they were perfect for my new project, even tying in with my icy inspiration post from January: inspired by an old earring design but much improved - another matching bracelet and earring set:

Bubble earrings

Bubble bracelet

Look out for a future post explaining how I made these.

My final items to share with you are also circle inspired. Now I can use solder to close joins and make full circles I was able to update the design for my triple hoop earrings so they hang much more naturally.

Inspired by these earrings I decided to create a matching necklace using the same circles but a much more complicated design. In this piece the circles are overlapping and I have brought chain into the design as well.

Expect to see all these new items (and the updated old ones) in my Etsy shop over the next week!