It seems I've been in a naturey mood lately. Maybe it's just gardens? Or maybe I need to get outta the house more... anyway here's some of what has hit the shops this week:


In other news, I finally got started today on a new collection. It's been quite difficult because the horrid weather this whole week has been making me feel 101 kinds of inactive and like all physical, mental and respiratory functions automatically shut down once 33°C and/or 70% humidity is/are reached. Am still not entirely sure I bought the right findings but we'll see what happens when I try to oxidise them *nervous and deliberately vague*

Last of all, here's an Etsy treasury I made a couple of nights ago. Rather a profound waste of time... I could've spent the 1.5hrs catching up on my reading in bed or something, but once I started I couldn't stop and it was kinda gratifying to finally complete it:


Till next time!

Hello.

What's up with your front page? Yes, the photos are great and all, but I always feel like I'm looking at a mouldy thrift store, y'know, or one of those snooty art collectives that exclusively trot out members' wares.

Your number of sellers has seen astronomical growth over the past few years, but on the contrary, it seems like Etsy has just gotten so much smaller and less diverse - if it were even possible. Because it's always the same old sellers on the front page, whether or not they use stock photos, or have questionable skills, or spend 20hrs a day tweeting yapping.

Man... I feel like such a broken record.

But of course, I only speak as someone who has been a member for four years. Your new suckers members wouldn't know any sordid back stories to make them think anything other than what I described in the first paragraph. Your changes and "enhancements" are baffling. You really have a problem with prioritisation.

Oh well, many are now jaded. What hurts is that they were the ones with standards and integrity. I weep for the future of handmade.

Love,
The Ingrate

Remember my last ring-obsessed post? So... I did order the Anubis Ring, and went to pick it up from the post office this morning. Check it out:


This unique ring is one of Italian designer Arosha's signature pieces. He makes these in 18K gold or sterling silver, with a choice of stones. Mine is in matte-finished sterling, set with a black zircon.

Anubis is a jackal-headed god associated with mummification and the afterlife in Egyptian mythology. No particular reason why I picked this, other than my loving the elegant and modern stylisation of an ancient symbol. Well, and maybe my interest in history and mythology.

Happy weekend! Avoid going to town at all costs - National Day rehearsals causing mass mayhem!

I love rings. No wait, I LOVE RINGS. There.

Unfortunately, the type of rings I like is beyond my current expertise. I am happy enough to gawk and covet, though, and if I can imagine myself wearing them enough on repeated occasions then that justifies a purchase. And I can blog about them. Here are some recent faves found on Etsy:


Some are old favourites, some from newer shops. Generally, I like solid, bigass, abstract statement rings with contrastingly subtle colours or finishes, and modern, geometric, curvy or nature-inspired shapes. I also like large polished rocks with natural banding/inclusions like muted agates and jaspers, as well as labradorite (of course), larimar, amazonite and rhodochrosite (I have a really lovely one but I don't wear it so often because it's, well, pink). As you can see I'm not crazy about sparkly gemstones, but if I had to pick I'd go with any blue, red or black gems. Absolutely no pastels. Small ones.

Share your faves! Anything you like from here? I think I'm gonna have to get that Anubis ring (if it can be made in matte silver)!

Seeing that most of my customers are American, and given that tomorrow is Thanksgiving, I just wanted to say a few things about what I'm thankful for:

• Family (of course) - who are still ever so understanding about me not having a Real Job, whilst letting me sponge off their kindness, generosity and food. Without them I would probably have been able to generate some electricity by now from continuously running in the giant hamster wheel.
  
• Repeat customers - you know who you are, you rawk and are totally appreciated. Without you, I think would have completely given up long ago. I'm sorry I haven't been very productive lately.
  
• My nerdy web & PM background which has proven quite useful in DIY design/e-biz/marketing situations.
• Yoga for keeping me sane. I am so guilty of not practising often enough.
  
• That I actually don't have to rush out to buy, stuff, baste and roast a turkey or any other fish or fowl, vegetarian or otherwise. Yay.
  

Things I am not thankful for (you knew this was coming, right?):

• That the USD continues to suck shit while I have an unprecedented amount festering in my Paypal balance that I could so spend on other things that would make me happy right this minute.
• That Etsy continues to repeatedly promote their own pet favourites and add features we don't need whilst conveniently ignoring the valid requests sellers have been making over the years.
  
• Copycats. All kinds, not necessarily those who only replicate designs. Shame on you.
  

After a rather uninspired and unproductive past few months, I'm finally back to assault you with some new pieces. That's the way I work around here... in extremely brief bursts. I really admire people who can physically create new pieces every week. And it's not for lack of ideas - I do have loads - I mean, each batch of gems has been purchased with some ideas in mind. A lot of times, I just don't feel like turning them into reality. I'm a lazyass procrastinator. But now, I do have something I want need to work towards: gotta buy some stuff, and in order to do that with a clear conscience, gotta sell some stuff!

First, a couple of bracelets to add to the miserable number left in store:


The one on the left, Flame of the Forest, made it to Etsy's Gift Guide for Mom - I have no idea why or on what criteria they pick these things, but since then it's also been on the front page and enjoyed a rather staggering amount of hearts and views, seeing as it was only listed like 24 hours ago. Guess I got lucky huh :P


If the pinkness above (rose quartz and rhodochrosite - phwoaaarrr love the faceting) looks familiar, that's because I blogged about them way back in June. Yeah, that's about how quickly things move around here.

My photos today were quite disappointing, no thanks to the haze-filled, blinding white sky. Also all those facets... urgh. I hate all the white spots in the pics but I suppose there's nothing for it unless I shift location or use the light tent, which is now a bit grey instead of white. Everything turns grey in my house, even the jewellery busts. Right.

But anyway. I hope to create as much as I can in the next couple of months. Nothing groundbreaking, but I hope you stay tuned.

/pimp

Perfect for fall/winter - simple, dainty necklaces in easy-to-wear neutrals. More are on the cards; look out for some yummy briolettes next...


P.S. At the moment these are available on my Etsy shop but I'm working towards adding these and several other vintage pieces at tellurus online. Some housekeeping is in order, I just need to get around to it :\

P.P.S. Yes, if you've noticed, there's a LinkWithin widget under each post now. Just an interesting thing I'm trying because I have occasional bouts of narcissism in which I like to read old blog posts. Who knows, you might come across something you've missed. However, I've no idea how they rate relevancy, and really - I blog about everything and not just jewellery, so in the event that the recommendations turn out really, superly unrelated and annoyingly intrusive, I'll remove them.

Well, I guess I nearly fell off the face of the earth last week. I've been either drugged up or passed out, and generally not in the best of spirits. The silver lining on my personal raincloud is that most of the poxy pustules - especially the seriously oversized and disgusting ones - are hidden from public consumption. Like I said before, I already look like a post-childbirth wreck in the buff, so what's a dozen more unsightly scabs, huh? For some months now I've suspected myself of exhibiting signs of possible bipolar activity... this morning while I was putting away the laundry, I looked out of the window and experienced a fleeting but sublime moment of incomprehensible joy. Fleeting, it was. Déjà vu, it also was. So I promptly crashed back into a reality full of flaky skin, clogged scalp and general state of dishevelledness that the care of not-popping-blisters necessitates. So, yuck - I'm unforgiveably gross right now.

In other news, since I have only 2 doses of acyclovir left, I returned to "work" today, sorting and cataloguing my latest vintage bead haul, and making a few pairs of really simple earrings. I have been getting increasingly sick of gemstones during the past few weeks - I don't want to look at them, nor hear or read about them, and definitely much less fondle or salivate over them. They seem to be becoming slightly homogenised... to me anyway... peridot is peridot is peridot, a briolette is a briolette. Large, gem-quality peridot briolettes are hard to find. And so on and so forth - peridot is just a random example, being August's birthstone. I'm bored already.

Aaaaanyway, enough of me ranting. These vintage goodies (and perhaps more if I'm so inclined) will be making their way into my Etsy shop this week:

Today I set about making the matching necklace - it's a lariat, my favourite style because I am seduced by asymmetry [except where earrings are concerned!] - and as the rain came down outside, I was cocooned in cosy AC with Sinatra-type oldies playing in the background. I should kick myself for missing lunch; I always bark at people for skipping meals or not eating properly. But in truth, I was just lulled into laziness and kept procrastinating the lunch hour until it eventually became time for dinner.

Seeing as it's been a little cloudy the past few days, I've been using a white reflector (and practising better metering) - with great relief. Otherwise the prop shots below would be half bright, half dark and so badly exposed that no amount of Photoshop would make them look vaguely natural. Almost looks like they were done in a light tent, huh? Nice to learn stuff every day :)


The Pavone pieces are composed of limpid green emeralds, electric blue apatite, deep purple amethyst and silky lilac tanzanite. 24K gold vermeil pins and ear studs, and the rest is 14K goldfill. The necklace features a glorious Swarovski crystal brio in graduated peacock shades, which I felt were so apt for the theme. The hand-forged loop is also modelled after the feather-like shape of the ear studs. Both are one-of-a-kind and available in my Etsy shop now.

There are lots of designs in my head right now but I'm not the sketching or note-making type where creative work is involved. Sometimes I wish I had a slave to churn out things that I dictate because I have a short attention span and little to no patience. Guess I'll just work through them one by one and hope I don't forget what I got the beads for in the first place.

Have a good weekend!

Update: The Winter Reflections bracelet is now in my Etsy shop.

As luck would have it, today is much too hot and sunny day to be writing about winter inspirations. But I don't want to wait any more - here is the final piece in my Four Seasons of Bracelets series.


Why reflections? Obviously, winter is cold and when things are icy, they get reflective. Ditto the mood - I won't say winter comes at the end of a calendar year, but the season usually marks the end of a natural cycle. Time for reflecting on all that has been, and what is yet to be. And since "reflection" also suggests duality, so the bracelet has two very different sides: one composed of large, faceted crystal clear quartz, and on the other side of a Thai hilltribe fine silver hammered circle, clusters of apatite and aquamarine rondelles in varying shades of aqua-blue. All icy and suitably sparkly, lots of symbolism (to me), and - I hope - magical enough to end the series with.

Will update this post later when the bracelet has been listed. Meanwhile, I'm supposed to be getting something done about my hair today. Absolutely no warranties made with regards to the success of this venture.

Something I worked on today (just finished!) and have yet to photograph properly. Still undecided about a matching necklace, but the earrings should be in store sometime later this week. And it's the first time I've used Colombian emeralds.... the colour is absolutely gorgeous.

Oh my... it's already June. And you know what that means: I've just picked and contacted the winner of the Chiara necklace! Find out who it is here.

In other news, I've been trying very hard to stay alive and sane in this wretchedly blistering weather we've been having in Singapore for oh, about 3 months now. It's no fun stepping out of the shower to feel yourself get icky after a few minutes. The humidity is just brutal here in the tropics. And I am so not a tropics person. Combined with temperatures in the mid-30s.... I'd say one has 2 options here: either be prepared to spend a bomb and burn up more fossil fuel to stay cool in AC, or sweat it out and very possibly offend anyone with functional olfactory organs within a 2m radius.

Aaaanyway, here is a new bracelet I made today - originally, I thought of calling it Winter Coast (how I am dying to be standing along one now) and releasing it as the final instalment of the Four Seasons of Bracelets challenge I set for myself. But no... a necklace and some earrings also demanded to be made, and the trio will simply be titled Seaswept, one-of-a-kind and listing sometime this week in my Etsy shop (along with the Fleurs de Mai pieces!).

-- updated May 19th, 1:20AM --

It's been a while - and I got sidetracked with gems along the way - but I finally got round to making the third in this series, and it has now been listed in my Etsy shop.


We don't have autumn here in (wretchedly hot and humid) Singapore, so I love to travel during spring or autumn (more so the latter) where places are actually have nice cool weather, nothing too extreme. Far from the fiery shades of fall foliage, the colours I prefer for this season are muted and more subtle. So I fell in love with these adorable lucite leaves - they have fantastic contoured detail and gilded etching on both sides, and make a soft tinkling when you move about. On a hand-linked solid brass bracelet, and fastens with a large leaf charm ~ which is not shown here so you'll have to see in the listing itself :P

--- Update April 21st: this item has been listed in the Etsy shop :) ---

OK, I was going to wait a bit but the first one, Kyoto Spring which launched a couple of days ago, already got reserved so I feel bad. This is a sneak preview of the next one which will only be up in my Etsy shop probably next week or whenever I get round to preparing the listing.

Summer Sorbet was the actually one which started me off wanting to do all four seasons. I wrapped the glossy rounds to each other to form the chain (oh gawd this took longer than expected - it's not quite so effortless to wrap with thicker gauge wire!) and finished off with a large slab of aventurine, tangerine jade (which is not actually jade - only jadeite and nephrite are true jades - but some other stone, damn I forget what BUT it's still really pretty and vibrant!) and a handmade swirly hook.


The combination of colours was too juicy not to make me think of an icy cool sorbet on a hot day. Such relief! Yuzu would be my first choice. And, you might find it nerdy but I actually like lemon gelato. So let's see... in the bracelet above I would imagine tangerine and yuzu of course, but I also see blood orange, grapefruit, lime, pineapple, and even mint!! What do you see?

And this kicks off my "Four Seasons of Bracelets" series... I love making bracelets. Unlike earrings, they don't need to be perfectly symmetrical (in fact even better if they're asymmetrical), and unlike necklaces, they aren't quite as tediously long. Lots of interesting things can happen when you design for a single 7-8" piece, and it's even more fun when I make it OOAK because I generally dislike churning out repeats.


Kyoto Spring is a romantic allusion to cherry blossom season in the ancient Japanese city in a charm-style bracelet dripping with nature-inspired baubles: coral pink 5-petal flowers and blue-green pods in glass, really lovely and lustrous white freshwater pearls, faceted prehnite rondelles in the palest of greens, as well as tiny freshwater pearl buttons in baby pink and shimmery bronze. Available in my Etsy shop, one piece only.

Do stay tuned for the next instalment :)

P.S. Yes I am trying to model the bracelet there... it is SO hard it's not even funny. I might have to start training T to take the pics for me :\

So apparently a treasury my (recently rephotographed) Princesse Bracelet in (I think?) made it to Etsy's front page last night when I was already dead to the world. I went to look for it today but couldn't find it. What I did find was a couple of other gorgeous ones! I am SO chuffed that I will now spam this post with the aforementioned treasuries. Thank you lunadog and noblegnome!

More simple pieces to add to my everyday essentials collection. I did set aside several bead recipes for later work but for now they are just cluttering my table. I think I'm reaching the point where said clutter is affecting my ability to concentrate.



For now, I'm slaving over some UI designs in a separate project, and didn't have time to list new items in my shop till last night. You can now find the latest pieces there, and they will be coming to my Etsy shop soon. Speaking of Etsy, I've been getting more and more disillusioned with the renewing and now listing (new items) fiasco. It's so bad that even new listings get buried so quickly I don't get any views until my Twitterfeed picks them up. Plus, I didn't even know the Latest Jewellery feed (over there on the right, below the shop banner) was broken till recently. Sigh. You guys need to tell me these things, OK? ;)