Carnelian – “Red sky”

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If you are interested in carnelian as a healing stone, you can find its properties here.

Hello all! I am actually still alive! I have been dealing with the young adult life responsibilities of finding a place to live and working in a graduate job. It has been a few months since, but I think I have finally reached a comfortable routine in my life now, and I have a wonderful work area set up for my crafts, so I hope to be sharing more of that with you!

Anyway, on the topic at hand, here is a lovely dark red carnelian cabochon that I bought at a local market. Looking at the shape of it, I knew exactly how I would frame it. However, the end design differs slightly from what I originally wanted; the wires weren’t long enough to cover the front, so I adorned the frame instead.

I had felt a bit bad about not creating anything new for a while, so I had put everything else aside to sit down and design this in one night. I hope you like it as much as I do! Although I am slightly annoyed that I let the stone fall slightly to the side when I finished the frame, haha.

I also bought some rose gold chain to go with the copper wire, I like it a lot more than the dark copper I have been using so far.

Materials: carnelian cabochon, two 4mm topaz Swarovski bicones, 0.80mm copper wire

Modular – Isolde Sonobe

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I chanced upon this book at a Waterstones shop a few months ago called Zen Origami, written by the well-known origami creator Maria Sinayskaya. It is a really nice book containing designs and instructions for 20 different modular origami projects, as well as 400 pieces of folding paper in 10 different patterns. A perfect size for taking with you on a journey!

The first project I have done (over the course of moving house and getting settled into my new job!) is the Isolde Sonobe. Many Sonobe units can be interlocked together to form larger modular objects, and the units themselves can be varied for different designs.

I folded the pieces using purple-patterned paper and attached to it some twine, beads, and Yoshizawa butterflies.

Serpentine – “Still Waters”

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I made a pendant with serpentine previously – see here!

By the way, I got this cabochon as a gift, so I determined that it could be serpentine. If someone could tell me otherwise, that would be great!

This pendant is named for the still waters you see in lakes that are tinted green with the colour of the surrounding forest. Sometimes the ocean can have the same colour.

For the first time, I used a wire weave to hold the stone in place, since the stone is a round stone with a flat back. Not the neatest weave, I know!

Since the stone was round, I couldn’t hold it in place properly, so I affixed some wires at the back to provide some support. I tried to add a sort of butterfly idea, but it squished together a bit much.

And lastly, I asked some people for advice on my first wire wrap, and I got a suggestion to tuck the wires on the front more closely whilst keeping the loop in place. This is so it doesn’t snag as much and ruin everything. I do like the new version anyway, and I do tend to go overboard with design over practicality, so I appreciate the advice!

Materials: Serpentine cabochon, 0.80mm and 0.40mm sterling silver wire, one 4mm emerald Swarovski crystal bicone

Braided bracelet set

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End of July post. I’m back! I was out for a bit dealing with a few health issues, alongside starting crafts projects for my blog, only to find out that I lacked a certain type of bead or material. Not the most lucky person, here!

However, during my most recent visit to my local bead shop (which has now closed, I am very sad about that…) I noticed that one could buy rattail and cord threads for very cheap. I decided to start knotting some bracelets, and received a request from a male friend to make a set of bracelets. They had to be something masculine, and red and black in colour. This was a new challenge for me!

I wanted to make the first one using a kumihimo style. I have made these before using rattail and silver caps, which looked quite feminine. To make it masculine, I used black Chinese knot cord and used 8-thread kumihimo. I left a long tail so that the owner can use a square/reef knot to secure it.

The next type was a macrame bracelet using red and black Chinese knot cord. The red is used as the base of the cord, so it doesn’t show through as much. I attached a sliding fastener and black beads to the ends.

The last bracelet uses the fishtail method for the chevron pattern. It uses equal amounts of red and black Chinese knot cord. The ends are knotted and plaited, so that a square knot can be used.

The set will be gifted to the person, hopefully soon. I used it as a way to get better. Now I’m off to make more bracelets!

Materials: Chinese knot cord (red, black)