Jackie is a medical technologist in Upstate New York. Her full-time day job is working in a hospital lab, but that’s not where her heart is — she’s hiking in the Adirondacks.

And she’s turning the inspirations of nature into jewellery, twisting wire around beautiful stones and pearls and beads to create striking bracelets, necklaces, earrings.

You can find them for sale on Etsy and get a peek at projects in progress at Jackie’s blog, A Keeper’s Jackpot.

Like most beaders — like most craftspeople, in fact — once Jackie started creating her own jewellery and found that others love the pieces too, she starting exploring new ideas and new materials. From basic beads, she went to wire and stone, then branched out into working with polymer clay, and now she exploring decoupage techniques on some of her pendants…

But you know what? It’s the stone necklaces that really get me.

And I’m not even going to try to explain the emotion effect, the thought process, the “how come” of why I was so immediately taken with Jackie’s work, when her mother-in-law told me about her — I’ll just let the jewellery speak for itself:

Serena Smith, glass artist of Oregon, caught my eye on Etsy with her gently rounded feminine figure beads, all earth mothers and goddesses, and floral beads that are tiny fantastical garden gems — but I think it was really the sinuous perwinkle-blue-tailed mermaid who made me an instant fan.

Serena’s been making beads since 1991, and graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1996 with a degree in glass. A member of the Oregon Glass Guild, International Society of Glass Beadmakers, Glass Art Society and Portland Bead Society, she is a self-supporting artist and craftsperson, “occasional teacher” of the fine craft of glass lampworking.

You can find images of Serena’s beads in several books and magazines, including the gorgeous1000 Glass Beads published by Lark Books — and you can find the artist herself at Serena J.A. Smith Designs. She sells her beads on Etsy at serena29.etsy.com.

Michelle Zink packs good humour into every polymer bead she creates, from retro Flower Power beads to fairies and clown faces and jungle or farmyard critters.

You’ll find Michelle at home in a small coastal Oregon town with 2 dogs, 4 cats, 11 chickens & Petals, her goat (oh, and a couple of teenagers, too)… and you’ll find her original polymer creations on her website, Michelle’s Clay Beads.

Right now I’m crazy about the Chunky Princess beads from her Fantasy beads collection. And please don’t get me started on her silly bee beads, or those tiny polymer ice-cream cones…

Tie down your wallet, crafters! Yes, she does take custom orders.

When you’re looking for a craft tutorial, nothing’s better than a good clear how-to video. This one, from Rochelle Dahl, shows a simple way to make polymer beads. The project is easy enough for beginners and kids, but the results — as the video shows — can be stunning and quite sophisticated.

Tutorial Summary:
Polymer clay is formed into a ball, pierced with a needle, and pressed between a pair of matching stamps to texturize it on all sides. (One key tip is to use talcum powder or cornstarch to prevent the clay from sticking to your tools.) Bake the beads in a toaster oven and then, as Rochelle says, the fun part begins! Using craft paints, colour and decorate your polymer beads in any way that your imagination suggests.

Jo Brooks (of Lampwork Art, where I discovered this bead-making video) reports that she tried this with her kid a few days ago, and the family bead-making project was a great success.

For today’s guest post, how about a bit of bling to usher in the Holiday Season? Please welcome Pelf Nyok — and she’ll introduce us to Malaysian jewellery designer April Yim whose opulent designs are inspired by the culture and folklore of the East… ~ Jen

April and her Hand-made Jewellery

Malaysian lass, April Yim, started making some really adorable polymer clay earrings about 2 years ago, and a year and many pairs of polymer clay earrings later, she ventured into jewellery-making where she experimented with real beads and pieces.

And what started as drawings on paper turned into jewellery-designing and making a natural process for April, who now owns a website — Vanity Vault — where she showcases and sells her products.

“Vanity Vault is not a real profit-making business. It started off as a way to fuel a girl’s obsessive hobby and I really intend it to stay that way. It also keeps me from staying in a healthy activity and de-stresses me…”

The expensive hobby

To date, April must have spent thousands of ringgits* on the raw materials for her jewellery. She was still a student when she picked up the hobby two years ago, and it was undeniably difficult on her pockets. In fact, a huge portion of her first pay cheque went to purchasing the raw materials (beads and stones) for her jewellery, which were imported from a variety of places.

“Each region of the world specializes in different parts and pieces. Cultured pearls are imported from Japan, China and the islands in the South Pacific, Swarovski crystals direct from Swarovski, Austria, and of course semi-precious stones are from all continents of the world.”

Each piece of jewellery can take as short as 5 minutes and as long as 5 days to complete. In fact, according to April, jewellery-making is definitely NOT a solitary craft because it requires a collective set of skills (such as beading, wire-work, moulding, painting, needle-work, metal-works, glass-works and of course, design). Moreover, the time needed to complete a piece really depends on the set of disciplines involved and how complicated the design is.

April’s favourites

Despite holding a day job, April manages to make an average of 8-10 pieces of jewellery per month. And 3 of her favourites are:

• Favourite necklace –
  Ultima

  There are more than 36 ways in which you can wear this convertible necklace. It is completely changeable into a necklace of different lengths, 3 different bracelets, a belt and a bag charm.







• Favourite earrings –
  Aethelwyne

  It features a very intricate design on a gold leaf shaped filligree, nylon coated gold wire, mirror beads with gold rim coating in green, black pearls and Aurora Borealis Czech glass beads. Note how the colours blend so well with the feature of the design.




• Favourite bracelet –
  Cleopatra
  The colours are in sync with one of April’s favourite ancient dynasties.

If you haven’t noticed it, besides designing and making jewellery, April is also a huge fan of names (did you see how she named the bracelet Cleopatra?!). She feels that each name should give each individual piece its own character and individuality. In fact, a lot of the names for her jewellery have been derived from stories she’s heard of or read about. Besides, she was sometimes inspired by the local and foreign languages, characters from ancient folklore and catchy quotes or phrases.

The other side of April Yim

In the past, April had donated some of her jewellery to raise funds for another Malaysian blogger, Yvonne Foong, who has Neurofibromatosis Type II (an incurable genetic disease). April also sponsored some of her items to raise funds for other charities and to help the less fortunate.

She would definitely love to work with more people in the future, so if you are organizing a charity event or fund-raising activity, do remember to contact April!

Note: The current foreign exchange rate is 3.3 Malaysian Ringgit to 1 US Dollar.

Pelf Nyok, the author of The Giving Hands, is a grad-student who is trying to save the turtles, the environment and humankind. Charity, conservation and volunteerism are things that are very close to her heart.
pelf-ism is contagious!

When jewellery-crafter and artist Tracy found out that she had breast cancer, she felt like she had “fallen in a hole, and couldn’t get out — couldn’t get happy again”… 100% understandable, with such life-changing news.

It was her husband who had the idea for a representation of a ladder, an image that helped Tracy to climb out of that hole of unhappiness while she created a stunning piece of beaded art.

Mostly done improvisationally, this is my first completed bead embroidery piece. Miscellaneous seedy-beads, some Swarovski crystals, and one special (to me -– thank you Sander!) faceted hessonite garnet.

As we move toward October and Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I think of my sister-in-law who just got that diagnosis that every woman dreads to hear… and I think of Jane, my friend lost to breast cancer, of whom I’ve written before… and Tracy’s brave beautiful beading declaration of hope and strength — the glittering ladder reaching up to the stars — is just tremendously moving.

The bee on the left is one of my own honeybees. She lives in a nice white box in my yard and flies about visiting the flowers.

Notice that the gentle honeybee, unlike wasps and hornets, won’t sting unless she absolutely has to, to help defend the hive or the honey or the queen mother bee… If a bee stings you, she will die.

But she’ll always put the well-being of the colony ahead of her own interests and safety — it’s her instinct.

Even more gentle and sweet is the bee on the right. She lives (on a black satin cord) in my jewelry box.

This is one of a pair of lampwork-glass bee beads that came as a sweet surprise from their creator, Josephine Brooks (Lampwork Art). So cute!

I had visions of using them to make a pair of glass bee earrings…
But last night I gave away the other bead.

I gave it to one of my best girlfriends, also a beekeeper, who has had a very tough year — she needed a happy little bee-beady surprise. Yes, it was hard, hard, hard to give up one-half of my two-bee treasure. No question about it — I had to struggle with a bit of natural greed before I could say “This one is for you.”

Funny how things work out:
My friend’s delight, in the end, made my own pleasure in Jo’s gift all that much greater… and I’m willing to bet there’s a Life Lesson here.