Adventures in jewelry

I've always enjoyed making things.. especially jewelry.  Lately I have been interested in salvage jewelry construction.  Joe & I go to flea markets and antique stores as a Sunday ritual {along with good coffee!} and I have been picking up vintage jewelry, adornments and ephemera.  Joe noticed and has been helping me find cool vintage items and surprised me on Christmas with these two beautiful books.  He knew I was collecting all these trinkets but wasn't yet sure how I would make them into wearable pieces of art.  He found these books at Barnes & Noble, and they are so very me.  Funky, eclectic, salvaged and vintage inspired they provide a lot of tips and techniques as well as inspiration.  Enchanted Adornments and Semiprecious Salvage both read like beautifully written novellas.  In Enchanted Adornments, Cynthia Thornton tells the story of an artist who is hired to create individual pieces for the friends of a rich woman.  Each piece of jewelry is accompanied by both the how-to and a magic back story of inspiration.  Filled with stunning ink drawings as well, each page reads like a journal entry- one for each woman who inspires the piece of jewelry.  Semiprecious Salvage also has wonderful text to accompany the tips and techniques.  Stephanie Lee writes about finding and uncovering the pieces that are to be made into beautiful pieces of wearable art.  Lee also has an amazing ability to make difficult jewelry making techniques extremely easy to understand and visualize.  I've also found it difficult to work with many how-to books because they aren't well written and the images don't match the descriptions.  This is not true for either book, as both are well written with easy to follow {and modify} techniques.  Enchanted Adornments does not has as many pictures to accompany the techniques, but is still very easy to follow.

If you're at all interested in found art, jewelry making or utilizing the techniques of jewelry making for other crafts, I would strongly encourage you to look into both of these books.  Semiprecious Salvage has more found art jewelry pieces while Enchanted Adornments has a larger focus on whimsical and handmade pieces.

When I get my camera out from its dusty case and charge it, I will take some pictures of the jewelry I have made thus far.  Drawing on inspiration from both books, vintage finds and paper crafting, my jewelry is quite eccentric- just like me!

write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow