Thursday, August 25, 2011

A knotty affair with a gorgeous sun-stone

Knot Bracelet
©2011 Nayna Studios™
Copper, Sun-stone cabochon



          A few months ago, I had received this beautiful sun stone as a gift from the vendor who sold me some Lapis lazuli cabochons, and it lay forgotten in my bead drawer for a long time. Recently I bought a new jewellery how-to book and came across this knot bracelet idea and immediately thought of  this little cute Sun stone to go in the centre. Now that its looking so good I am thinking of creating earrings to go with it. I believe I may have some of my mother's old Sun-stones lying around, just about to start digging around the cupboards!! I have also seen some gorgeous blue Sun-stones at my bead guy hopefully will get my hands on them the next time :)

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Four tips to find design inspiration

           As someone who was used to working on one piece for the duration of two weeks thinking of a concept, sketching, putting together the metal pieces, wires, enamel colours and spending hours applying colours in between firings, I was used to taking my own sweet time working on my enameled panels.
           But since I started working full time on my jewellery it suddenly hit me 'I needed to have at the very least three to four ideas in progress at the same time!! Also I needed to have a bank of ideas complete with the planning for the process,all set in my sketchbook in advance since making jewellery is so much more complex with regards to the various components that go into the manufacturing process. I need to keep one eye on my supplies while designing making sure that I have the required gauges of wire as well as sheet metal, not to mention my bead drawer!!
So where do I look for inspiration ? My four fail-proof design triggers
Enamel and filigree necklace
Copper, cloisonne enamel
© 2011 Nayna Studios™



  1. My favorite bead store! There is a shop in Mumbai, that can single-handedly offer up hundreds of ideas, they have glass beads, cabochons, pearls, metal beads, semi-precious stones, donuts you name it!! Every time I go there with the intention of spending only a few hundred bucks and end up completely blowing my budget :D My recent captured series is a great example of this. I had bought the glass pieces with no idea of what I was going to do with them but I ended up making these cute pendants with them.
  2. Individual components are just as good as design triggers, sometimes I will look at a particular clasp or a finding and weave a complete design around that component. At other times the way a particular component (and I am partial to clasps here) is used changes the entire look and turns the design around.
  3. My old work, yes it helps to jog your brain by looking at your own old work, no idea about the logic there but it works. I look at an old piece a necklace maybe and it suddenly occurs to me why not work on this on a different scale, vary a technique or maybe make a bracelet with the same technique. 
  4. Last but not least looking at other artists work, this one never fails to start the cogs off! Of course a good amount of time is spent wondering whether I will ever be as good as them but quickly enough that itch to get into the studio and get my hands on some metal take over :)
Drop a line if you have any more ideas, would love to hear them :)
P.S. Can you figure out where the clasp is on this one??

    Thursday, August 11, 2011

    Captured-Glass cabochons

    Glass cabachons, copper, copper wire
    © 2011 Nayna Studios™


                 One trip to my gem dealer and I end up with so many stones beads and unknowns ( some of the stones and beads I am not entirely sure of yet :D. ) This time I ended up picking up what clearly appears to be glass but it so beautifully cut that I could not resist!  Just one problem with the pieces, they had been drilled right through :( .
           As I had wanted to make pendants and not just link them through, I thought of creating wire and metal bezels around them, but as it turned out they are transparent and I wanted to use this as part of the design.
                So I ended up texturing some bases and using wire in one, I am especially proud of the copper roses on the oval one, what do you think too much or maybe needed something more? 
    I let the trapezoid have an open back so that one really gets a bi-colour look , should I have let one of them have a complete open back? Any thoughts??

    Monday, August 8, 2011

    Dress up your fingers with leaf rings

    Leaf ring 1, copper
    © 2011 Nayna Studios ™



    Lately I have become quite interested( actually fascinated is more like it :D ) in fold forming, but as I am out of the required 24 gauge metal to experiment with it, I thought about creating some pieces with just trying to 'turn' the metal with my hammer , so here is what I came up with : I used some copper scrap( 22 ga) cut out some shapes and for some reason all of them seemed to resemble leaves in various stages of drying up !
    To make them more interesting I soldered a few of the nuggets that I periodically save from my  electro-forming experiments ! ( great way to use scrap rather then just sell it to my scrap guy - yup I got a scrap guy too :) gives great deals !)


    While creating the band I was not really sure about the size so I have kept them adjustable so any body can now enjoy them! :) Thinking of calling them 'leaf rings' what do  you think, do they remind you of leaves?? Dried and folded up but definitely the third in the series reminded me of a lily pad what say?
    Leaf ring 4, copper
    © 2011 Nayna Studios ™

    Leaf ring 3, copper
    © 2011 Nayna Studios ™

    Leaf ring 2, copper
    © 2011 Nayna Studios ™