New Irish jewelry in Irish marble and sea pottery

Busy with work and part-time study, it's a rare pleasure for me these days to make some new pieces for my Etsy shop, Handmade by Amo'r.  Last night I gave in to the creative call and made a few pairs of earrings and some pendants to refill the virtual shelves with modern Irish jewelry.

Connemara marble and silver Celtic heart earrings

Made with Connemara marble and Celtic heart beads, 'Forever' earrings are unmistakeably Irish. This green marble is found only in the West of Ireland and comes in a wide variety of greens. These specimens are a rare shade of gooseberry with lime highlights. 

Read more about this indigenous Irish stone HERE.

This rustic, Connemara marble pendant with Celtic spirals has yet to be named and listed. Equally neat on both sides, with different types of spirals, it is fully reversible. The slab of stone is truly unique and gorgeous. 

You may keep one eye on the Connemara marble jewelry section of my store to find out when it becomes available.

sea pottery pendant from Dublin

Also waiting to be named and listed is this sea pottery pendant. I found this cute piece on a Dublin beach. It has been well buffed and leached by the ocean so it must have been rolling in the waves for decades. There is something nautical about it: the hint of blue looks like the sea in the distance with the sandy beach at the fore. The wire wrapping is secure and neat. I had the sails of a yacht in mind, but it somehow turned out like the letter A. Perhaps I secretly want to claim it for myself!  

You can learn a little about sea pottery HERE.

Cork red marble pendant (heart)

Here is a sneak preview of a Cork red marble heart I made yesterday. This stone is even rarer to find in jewelry pieces than Connemara marble is. You are more likely to see it in churches and cathedrals. This particular specimen is of the paler pink variety and is the last of this type of pendant I am likely to stock in 2015.

You can read a little about Cork red marble HERE. 

G is for Glass & Green, ABC of Jewellery

As we continue with the ABC of Jewellery, we've reached part 2 of the letter G. This is a not-too comprehensive guide to jewellery techniques and materials I use as well as design styles and inspirations. A few days ago I posted about Gemstones, including Garnets. Part 2 looks at Glass and the colour Green.

Glass in its many forms is very popular in jewellery. I don't use every type of glass bead available so I'm going to concentrate on those I do; sea glass, crystals, Czech glass, ceramic and seed beads. 

      

White sea glass angel ornament     Wire wrapped sea glass pendant

My favourite is sea glass.That is glass that has been naturally smoothed and frosted over a long period of time while tumbling in the ocean. The salt water leeches minerals, notably sodium and potassium, from the glass. This gives it a semi opaque and icy appearance. 

Spot the difference? With a tiny bit of practice, you can spot a fake that has been artificially tumbled as it will be very smooth and evenly frosted. The piece on the right is naturally frosted by the ocean. The difference is clear....or not!

Irish sea glass pendant (sold)

Genuine sea glass will have c-shaped dimples or pitting in the frosting and/or a crusty appearance. The more obvious the pitting, the longer the piece has been in the water. A heavily frosted piece could have been rolling in the sea for as much as 100 years.

'club sauce' sea glass bottle stoppers

Half the fun of working with sea glass is collecting it on the beach. The best time to find sea treasure is after a storm. It can be back breaking but it's worth it when you spot a real beauty like these bottle stoppers. To learn how to clean sea glass and sea pottery CLICK HERE

   

                                      Swarovski revoli crystal          Swarovski emerald
                                                                                   (with Connemara marble)

Rhinestones and crystals are also a type of glass. I don't work with the former, but do occasionally like to use European crystal. Crystal are a high quality of glass that give off a beautiful sparkle. Swarovski crystals from Austria are a superior brand famous for their quality and uniformity of size. You may see them described as having AB shine. This stands for aurora borealis, a type of highly reflective, sheen finish. The Swarovksi revoli cyrstals seen above have a rainbow-like effect.

 

Czech crystal  earrings, with smaller topaz gemstone beads

Czech crystal beads are also considered of good quality and can look like gemstones. The blue  Czech crystals in 'Yours Truly' earrings look very similar in structure to the tiny topaz gemstones and reflect the light even better than the little stones do.

Ceramic & faceted glass bracelet       Pink crystal fairy                       

 

Ceramic and Czech crystal heart        Blue Czech glass butterfly fairy

I  very occasionally use other forms of glass beads including ceramic and faceted Czech glass, which is not as sparkly as crystal but still reflects the light. Glass in any form can lend lightness and colour to any piece of jewellery.

blue and rust seed bead eyeglass chain 

Glass seed beads are tiny, usually 2mm to 4mm and are great fun though a little pesky to bead with. I use them as spacers between gemstones, but as they are available in a vast array of shades you can use them for all sorts of beading projects, including embroidery. Tiny glass seed beads are often easier to string, wire up or sew than tiny stones as the hole is usually a tad wider and more uniform. That reminds me G is also for Glasses and you can hold on to yours with a beaded eyeglass chain like this one!

close up of Connemara marble

Green is a colour that is usually abundant in my shop because I use a lot of Irish Connemara marble.  I've written a few previous posts about this rare, indigenous stone:
About Connemara Marble
Bright Connemara Marble
Up Close and Personal with Connemara Marble

Connemara marble samples

This increasingly scarce marble really does come in 40 shades of green, usually with several tones in the same small piece.

The green serpentine streaks in the limestone marble are caused by the presence of various minerals.

some varieties of green sea glass

Sea glass also comes in several shades of green. I will leave the letter G here and refer to a  previous post on the various shades found and their frequency of occurance: Shades of Green Sea Glass.

***

A  B  C  (plus C for Crimping ) D E F  (plus F for Findings) G, 1

Jewellery Inspired by Irish Bog Landscapes

Lough Tae (aka 'The Guinness Lake') Wicklow Own photo

Much of my jewellery is inspired by Irish landscapes.  Though we are famed for the lush green of our countryside, for such a small country, we do have a wide range of scenery to lift the soul. Much of the midlands and East of the island are covered in bog made of peaty soil. Peat is mostly rain water mixed with solid material: ancient bark and plants that decomposed over thousands of years. The result is a reddish, cocoa brown earth, often dotted with colourful plants including white bog cotton, purple ling heather and moor grass, green and brown mosses and a variety of hardy yellow flowers.

Here are a few typical examples of my jewellery together with the places that fueled the passion to make them.

Ticknock, Dublin. Own photo

Ticknock on the outskirts of Dublin was the inspiration for this scenic jasper and copper necklace:

'Dublin Hills' scenic jasper and copper necklace

The smooth jasper evokes the rich hues of the countryside. The stones display a stunning array of shades in cocoa bean, russet, coppery reds and chocolate. There is even a touch of sand and grass in the mix. 

bog water river, Bohernabreena, Dublin, own photo

'Nature' jasper gemstone necklace

'Nature' necklace was also inspired by the peaty soil of the Dublin and Wicklow hills where I go hiking, and especially by the chestnut brown water of the bog streams and lakes.

The sterling silver wire work represents the flow of a river. This was done freehand with a simple round-nosed pliers, not with a jig. Then I hammered the silver to make it rigid.

Lough Dan in Co Wicklow, own photo

peat-stained water of Lough Dan

The water in many of our lakes is as brown as a pint of good ale, or even as dark as a Guinness. The water is clean, just stained by the peat in the soil.

'Chocolate drop' earrings were also made with the bog in mind. The rich cocoa of the mahogany obsidian stone is very peaty. When I was making them I remembered the big bags of peat moss my dad used to buy as a soil conditioner for his vegetable patch. 

Let's not forget though, that Ireland is the Emerald Isle and you will usually find a lot of green, Connemara marble in my collection too.

Powercourt waterfall

'Landscape' Connemara marble and silver pendant

The green wilderness co Wicklow, just south of Dublin, inspired 'Landscape' pendant in a soft sage specimen of Connemara marble. The wire work emulates the flow of  the waterfalls found in this 'Garden of Ireland' county.

Read more about nature-inspired pieces by clicking HERE

Fresh Greens. Connemara Marble and Irish Sea Glass

Handmade by Amo'r Etsy store recently got a fresh injection of green as it was running low on Connemara marble  and other lush verdes.

rare, Connemara marble pendant

Found only in the West of Ireland, Connemara marble is unique to our island. This ancient stone is over 600,000,000 years old and comes in a wide range of greens from the palest whitewash, through the limes, grasses and sages to the darkest forest green. Often, you will  find several shades in the marbling, even on the smallest specimen. To read a fuller article I previously wrote on this native, Irish stone click HERE

  

This is a rare piece of Connemara marble cut into a coin shape. It reminded me of my photo, taken in Lough Dan, Wicklow. So when looking for a matching round bead, I carefully selected one with brown veining to gently represent the distant mountains. Naturally, I had to name the finished pendant  'Wicklow'. 

kelly green, Irish  sea glass pendant

Bringing in a more intense, kelly green, I also recently listed the above sea glass pendant wrapped in silver wire. Sea glass usually changes in colour intensity according the light source so it can be a bit chameleon-like.

 'Ocean Jewel' is made from genuine sea glass found on a Dublin shore. It is fully frosted so must have been tumbling in the water for a few decades at least. It is part of  a bottle neck. I wonder was it beer or wine?  If it came from a beer bottle, then it is quite possibly, close to 100 years old. 

(Borrowing from my own previous post about sea glass bottle necks) 'Around 1930 it was discovered that brown glass did a better job of preserving beer and so green glass was discontinued for this purpose. Yes, we use green bottles again today as we have better refrigeration and nowadays beer rarely needs to be stored for a terribly long time at that. However, if this were a modern piece of sea glass it would be smoother, with very little of the tell-tale, crystalline frosting that occurs only after decades in the sea.'

The genuine 'crusty' frosting appears only after a long period of time exposed to the ocean water. It leeches the soda and lime creating the more opaque appearance. While smooth frosting can be faked in a tumbler, the 'C' shaped pitting in the surface cannot. Whether this rim was from a beer or wine bottle it has been in the sea for an extended period. 

  

I'm  slowly replenishing my stock of Connemara marble earrings. I try to have a few different styles in my Etsy shop at any given time. 

And coming soon, something a little bit different....

Connemara marble star earrings