Jewellery is a Girl's Best Friend...

A little while ago, while at my parents-in-law’s place, I was thinking about jewellery making and how to develop my skills with this.

My basic stuff - you can just see a couple of pairs of earrings I made.

I have some very basic stuff, like stone beads, copper filled silver wire, and a small set of basic pliers. I did a very basic wire work workshop some time ago at Queenbeads in Princes Risborough, and I’ve made a few things using the techniques I learned there, such as these earrings, plus a few others I don’t have pictures of that I made as gifts for people.

These earrings were blogged about here.

However, I was feeling frustrated because I wanted to develop this further, but didn’t have enough money for the courses I’d seen, and didn’t see the point in buying more specialist kit without knowing what to do with it! I would still really like to learn more at some point in the future, but I really wanted to do something new in the meantime.

Then I thought, why not employ a skill I already have? Why not combine a couple of different crafting techniques? Why not – da da da DAAAAAH!!!! – crochet some jewellery??

I went onto Pinterest for inspiration, and of course plenty of people have thought of this before me… but I got a few ideas in mind, and had a practice. I used 100% cotton yarn, and I used nickel-free gold- or silver-plated findings, depending on which colour I thought looked best with the cotton colours.

I made some pretty simple ones – just circles joined together with jump rings, and then I made some a bit more fancy; some like stars, and some inspired by Indian style designs. I also had a try at adding beads, but I’m not quite happy with how they turned out – more work needed there!

I soon had a little collection together that I was pretty happy with, and I wondered if other people would like them too…

I got the decorative birdcage from a charity shop

Well… my mother in law is having a stand at a craft fayre this weekend, and she will be putting my earrings on her stand! I’ve never offered anything I’ve made for sale before (although someone did ask if they could buy the Safi Baby Blanket when I took it to the Bakewell Wool Gathering to work on – that felt quite flattering!) so I’ll be interested to see if anyone likes them… Personally, I would definitely wear them: my favourites are the deep burgundy ones with the gold findings (the ones that have come out purple in the photos!). I won’t be sad if no-one wants those ones :)

Fingers crossed that at least someone will take a shine to them! I'll have to let you know how it goes when I hear back from my mother-in-law after the fayre :)