Monday, June 9, 2014

Jazz up your hands - with nail ornaments

Recently I ran a fun contest by uploading a picture
Blue opaque enamel being crushed
Nail ornament with crystal beads
of enamel colours being crushed and asked if anyone wanted to guess as to what it was, one of my friends and former painting student guessed it correctly. Now this girl is also soon to be leaving the country for further studies. For her prize for guessing correctly I wanted to create something fun and more her style which could also double up as her going away present, so I came up with this nail ornament.
So why a nail ornament or nail ring you ask? for one she is very fond of nail art and is forever experimenting with various nail colours and designs, and also I thought it was time to come up with some fun designs that would also prove to be a little challenging for me in terms of design and technique.

Friday, June 6, 2014

Blue Sea creatures

The Gorgeous but trying Agates !
     Finding inspiration for new designs is always a challenge and it is even more challenging when well meaning friends and clients start suggesting subjects for you to work on. The problem is sustaining an idea enough to work it out. Recently I was going through my gemstone collection and noticed these flat Agates I have had forever. So I came up with an idea to create a piece in blue patina to overlay on the stones. Now these stones have the weirdest holes pierced off to the ends of the agate piece. The holes are really tiny and by the time I was done piercing out the design in copper ( I made a copper sea horse ) I realized there was no way I was going to be able to rivet or attach the sea horse in any way to the agate :(
So I put away the little seahorse and decided to think about it at some later date.
Octopus being sawed
Then recently going through my scrap pile I found the little copper seahorse and decided to complete the piece and add more sea creatures to the range so taking some really sweet ideas from my Facebook friends I came up with the following creatures, in addition to the seahorse; crab, mermaid, fish, dolphin, octopus, squid, three kinds of shells, jelly fish and starfish .
Also this time I decided to make this into a three part project , part 1 : pierced designs and finished with blue patina
part 2 : repousse` with an antiqued finish and last but not least
part 3 :  cloisonné enamelled
Some of the pieces freshly cut and cleaned

Recently I completed the first of the series, that is pierced and finished with blue patina . This lot consists of an Octopus, a Seahorse, a Starfish, a Fish, a Squid, a Dolphin, a Mermaid, a Jelly fish and three different shells
All done complete with blue patina

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Blue patina rings-part 1


Blue gold  signature series - hexa
Copper, Brass and blue patina
©2014 Nayna Studios™



Blue patina colouring has truly become a passion with me, what began as an experiment to see whether I could even develop the actual colour has now become a signature series of my designs. Having created pendants, earrings, bracelets and cuffs I simply had to try out a blue patina ring. The only problem was to develop the blue patina, the metal has to be sealed in with the chemicals required inside an airtight plastic box, and everything inside gets the patina! Huge problem if you only want certain areas to be covered in the patina and the rest a gleaming shining gold! 
Solution? patina only the ring top and rivet it to the nice shiny brass shank ! :) Although riveting seemed like a great idea the problem was I could not reach into the tiny space of a ring shank with my hammer so I had to use one of my repousse tools ( so glad my old college professor was not around, not sure if that is correct tool etiquette :P) Anyhow here is the first ring, I will post the rest of the designs in patina rings -part 2 :)

Friday, February 21, 2014

A hearty twist on a traditional design.

Heart series 2
©2014 Nayna Studios™
Copper
      One more in the heart series, this time I wanted to go ahead and create something completely out of my usual pattern of either ear wire or stud earrings. So this time I decided to do a take on traditional stud earrings, that come with attached gold anchors. My mother used to have these seven stoned studded traditional earrings with a thin gold chain that went all the way from the front of the ear to the back, and was then secured along with the stud with a little butterfly catch. 
          With that in mind I created these extra long earrings, that actually do have a butterfly catch at the back, and to balance the length of the earrings , I gave them copper chains at the back. These chains in addition to holding the earrings in place also give them a very elegant look. Perfect for an evening out and also perfect for formal parties, :D 

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

The tree of hearts

While I have never attempted to try creating heart jewellery, this time I wanted to give it a try. Unfortunately I had a few design orders that required me to truly stretch my brain cells, and so  I could not complete the heart designs in time for Valentines Day :( But hey I figured ‘Love’ does not need a special day , does it? Love can be expressed any day at any moment, so here is my expression of love :)
Go ahead and drop a line if you want to buy any of these. I will be updating the shop section soon with these designs but meanwhile do show some love :)
The tree of hearts
©2014 Nayna Studios™
Copper and Brass
The first in this series is ‘The tree of hearts’ earrings, The base of the copper wire tree is a single plump heart ( I do love plump hearts even if they aren't red! ) and the tree is topped by a tiny heart, almost like a fruit. Cutting out the tiny hearts was a bit of a work, but then they looked so cute and perfect I actually added them to a few more designs.  These earrings are meant for pierced ears and are just 2.5 inches long.