When turquoise met jade

Ten items have been added to the shop and instead of a regular here's-a-photo post, this one is a here's-how-it-happened piece. Twitter followers (at @ARIAindustries) will already know... First, it started when I drew a little design one day. It was a rough sketch that captured the general look I wanted to create: Then I played with the details... What kind of hoop to use? How to connect the dangling stones to the hoop? What order to connect them in? These were my two hoop options:
In the end, I went with the brushed oval hoop and separate connections in an alternating cascade via jump rings. Here is the end result:


The style is called Anjali and is available at aileen.etsy.com.

Original Jemima

As promised last time, here is the original design for the Jemima earrings:


In the meantime, things have been busy in the ARIA INDUSTRIES studio... Several pairs of earrings have already been made including the Iris, which features turquoise and capiz shells, and the Agnes earrings, which are even fancier than the Jemima. Stay tuned for some previews of the new pieces!

Jewels for a goddess

Eleven new items will be posted to the shop at aileen.etsy.com soon including this pair of stunning chandelier earrings. Named Lullia, I first wrote about them a month ago. Here is the finished design:

Clash of titans

Red and pink are often not allowed to play together, but I just couldn't resist the combination for this very special pair of earrings. They have the same sterling silver chandelier components as the Yara earrings, but the change of stones gives the style a whole new look. Here they are in progress:

On the blue blue waters

One of the upcoming pieces is the Zura, a showy yet featherlight pair of earrings. The design took several forms before I settled on the final look and they are in order here from left to right:

Goodbye Elaine

When one of my coworkers informed us she would be leaving us for a job closer to home, the rest of us wondered what departing gift to give her. We knew she loved necklaces so it did not take long to decide! We hammered out the details: it would be a little bit like the Carmen, but would use smoky quartz, green amethyst, and crystal quartz. These are the notes I made at the time:


When I started to work on the necklace, I realized that having two smoky quartz beads next to each other would not look great because there would be too much darkness surrounding the crystal quartzes. Thus, the design was modified and the resulting Elaine necklace has alternating light and dark elements with beautiful green amethysts added to the mix:

Salome, finished

And here it is, the finished version of the Salome... After the last post, I added some tiny crystal quartzes that were connected to shiny 6mm jumprings to give the earrings some extra shine.

Salome, in progress

Further to the previous post, this is what the Salome earrings look like currently:


I still need to add some extra cluster elements to make the design flashier and will post another photo soon!

Colours: neutrals

My most recent shopping trips netted me two different types of coin-shaped beads and it is high time they joined forces. Here is one of my favourite combinations, citrines and smoky quartzes, in the "before" stage of a pair of fabulous earrings:

Design evolution: Kasia

After a month long break following the Steveston Christmas Craft Fair, I have started working on some earrings again. The palette for my latest design was inspired by a lovely colorboard post at 100 Layer Cake and I picked peach moonstone, crystal quartz, and blue calcite as approximate matches for butter, sugar, and seafoam. I expect to have one or two more crystal quartzes in the design and hope to finish these earrings soon.

Design evolution: Shandra

My newest design took a while to nail down, but I am quite happy with the final look. I knew as soon as I got the clover-like findings that I had to link them up somehow, but I faced the challenge of them collapsing downward until I added the horizontal bead to space out the upper clovers. From there, it was just a matter of using the right number of jumprings to connect all the parts together. However, my original design also had a large crystal quartz briolette hanging from the bottom (as pictured) but the proportions didn't look right so I went without. The Shandra earrings therefore have only three beads and three clovers.

Design evolution: Carly

The Carly is finally done and below are some photos to show the design evolution...

When inspiration hit, I was somewhere between Istanbul and Vienna last fall and I did a quick sketch of the design on some Hilton notepaper:


When I decided to turn the sketch into something tangible, I modified the design a little:


And here is the finished piece:


Clearly things don't always turn out the way they looked in my head or on paper, and the Carly was no exception. I ended up going with the original length of chain for the large round beads between the draping, while the small beads connecting the draped chains had to be adjusted for the side drapes to take into account the way the necklace sits on the body. Regardless, I'm pretty happy with how the piece turned out and have to say that it looks much better around a neck than on a flat surface!