Took the Plunge - 1st Oxidised Sterling Silver Ring, Simple Steps, Hard Boiled Egg

Guess this is the natural progression in my wire jewelry journey - oxidizing my pieces. I have been thinking about it for a while. Actually since I purchased my first sterling silver wire few months back. When I reached home yesterday evening, I headed straight to the kitchen, took out an airtight container and start boiling an egg. So, here are some pictorials to show the whole process of oxidizing my wire wrap sterling silver sparkly ring...hmm, almost whole process except for the polishing part.

Items needed:

An airtight container.

An egg - hard boiled. Sterling Silver Ring in the container, waiting for the egg ***Yummy***

The Process:

Egg shell removed.

Smashed egg and place both ring and egg inside the container. The egg should be hot.

Covered the container tightly and left for about 15 minutes. Notice steam inside. Result after 15 minutes, golden brown. As the color is not dark enough, egg was reheated in the microwave and placed back into the container. Left it for another 15 minutes.

Tada!! The result after 30 minutes. Darker.

.....and yucky! :)

After cleaning it with water. No more shine! Now, I wonder how do I polish this ring? Someone suggested polishing cloth and another steel wool. The problem is, I don't have both...and not sure where to find them......duh! Any suggestion where I can find these two items or you have other suggestions on what can be used (household items?) to polish it. All suggestions are welcome.....Thanks in advance :)

Stones from Hong Kong

Yippi! So happy today as I got these goodies in my mail. They are from my sister. She got them during her recent trip to Hong Kong.

Garnet - flower shaped and round.

Not sure about the light blue stone but the other two are labradorite and jasper

Pearls, I love pearls especially the coin pearls

Cat's Eyes - all perfectly rounded.

Beautiful Aquamarine and Tourmaline

Paid quite dearly for these Tourmaline and Aquamarine but I can't resist them .......hmmmm..........They are my favorite gemstones. "smiling from ear to ear" but got one big hole in my pocket.........

They Are Here - Stones fm Szarka

No wonder this evening I feel like rushing home as soon as the clock strike 5:30pm. That must be my sixth sense working. When I arrived home the first question I asked was "Is there a package for me?" Sure enough, the Priority Mail envelope was sitting on the counter. Yippe! They are finally here! My gemstones from Szarka. I opened the wrapping slowly and very carefully and she really wrapped them securely. Thank you Szarka for such beautiful gemstones. They look exactly as shown in your ebay store. The pearls are so beautiful. I have never seen something like that over here before. And I am in love with the teardrop labradorite. I should have purchase more! :D And thank you for the additional moonstones. You are very kind. I will make something beautiful with them......

Went Shopping Today

I went shopping this morning and look at what I have gotten for myself! Aren't they beautiful, especially those Labradorite Rondelles (10mm) and moonstone (8mm). Other than that, I also purchased two huge agate (oval) that have surface that look like fish scales. Really special this stones but quite heavy due to the size - about 3 in long. Other gems I bought include a strand of freshwater pearl (baroque-shaped), 2 button pearls, faceted teardrop smoky quartz, 3 pieces of free form black onyx and some metal spacers. I am in love with the labradorescence!

Copper Wire All Coiled and Neat

Finally I managed to sort out the copper wire salvaged last week. Weigh about 500g. Feel sad that I have to throw away about one quarter as they are badly tarnished and bend. Meanwhile, got to think of some projects for this wire.

Recycled Copper Wire

I managed to salvage some copper wire from a water pump "armature" few days ago. Meters and meters of them. This time the wire is not coated. All copper but they need some cleaning. Half of them may not be usable. Hopefully not. Wanted to take some pictures of them but didn't manage to yet. 

Cabs and Crystal Purchase

Not much happening yesterday. Bought some stones (cabs) and two strands of mixed crystal. Only after I took these pictures did I notice that they are all in natural colors.....just me I guess.

Native Beads of Sarawak - Old and New

Here are some of the native beads that I managed to dig out from my box. These were bought from the Kelabits in Miri when hubby was there few years back. Too "sayang" to use them! These pictures below are similar beads I bought in Kuching recently. Not sure how authentic they are but nevertheless, I still like them. Here is an interesting article on Sarawak Beads if you have the time to read - A Tale of Beads. The first picture on top left looks like the Lukut (Rosette beads) mentioned in the article.

Malaysia Craft Promotion...cont.

Last night's migraine was really bad. Made me feel week one moment and nauseous the next. The pain was right on top of the head. Just got to live with it I guess. It visits me at least once every month, sometimes twice....must be the hormone acting up. Getting old already! Luckily it was gone this morning. Today is another unproductive day in terms of wire jewelry making. Morning was spent doing marketing at the 3rd Mile Bazaar (wet market), then I went off to the Sunday Market for some magazines....again I bluffed the boys that I am going to work...on a Sunday!!! Late morning we all went container hunting. Containers for my beads and stones of course. My stones and beads are all over the place that sometimes I found it difficult to concentrate on my addiction. So this afternoon, I spent about three hours sorting them out and keep them in proper storage containers. That done, hopefully I can come up with more wire jewelry soon....... Continuing from last night's entry, here are some more pictures taken at the Malaysia Craft Promotion last yesterday.

Visitors to the Craft Promotion venue

A wood carver busy at work Intricate embroidery by the Kelabits of Sarawak Coconut shell necklaces and pendants

Coconut shell earringsBaskets...baskets and more baskets...

Malaysia Craft Promotion

Normally weekends are reserve for my addiction - wire jewelry - but today I didn't manage to make any new piece. I only managed to restring two of my mom in-law's bracelets and one of her friend's. However, the highlight of the day was my visit to the Malaysia Craft Promotion at the Waterfront, Kuching, this morning. Hubby was out fishing since last night and I bluffed the boys that mommy is going to work (on a weekend!...hehe!). So off I went and I spent more than two hours there.....alone....without the normal "mommy, i want this! mommy buy this!....". I didn't count, but I think there are about 20 stalls displaying and selling jewelry. Mostly are bead works and stringed pieces. None on wire jewelry though. Nevertheless, I still managed to buy some native Lun Bawang clay beads. The Lunbawangs is one of the ethnic groups of Sarawak, mostly found at the northern region of Sarawak - Lawas & Limbang Division. By car, it will be more than 15 hrs drive from Kuching, not taking into consideration the time taken to check through four immigration checkpoints in Brunei as well as on the Sarawak sides - I am not going into the details here though!. These are the clay beads that I purchased today. More pictures in my next entry as I my migraine is coming to visit again and I can't concentrate anymore.

Talking about Dream

I just mentioned about my dream and this is what I came across at home furniture - storage beds. This platform bookcase bed comes with plenty of storage, dresser, mirror and night stand package. Plenty of additional storage space within the bed frame is unique and I can imagine how useful it is for my wire jewelry tools, beads and pretties. The bed is of quality hardware, solid wood and classic oak finish. Talking about dying surrounded by beads (my previous post), this set will be very suitable for all my beads, cabs, gemstones as well as my wire jewelry work. This is much! much! better than the old building in my dream!

The first thing I notice about Furniture From Home is its neatness, clean looking and navigational friendly site. The pages download time is quite fast for a site with lot of pictures. It is very easy to look around and find pieces your are interested in. The main menu is categorized into Bedroom Sets, Living Room Sets, Dining Room Sets, Home Office Furniture, Leather Furniture, virtually every furniture you need for your home is available at Furniture From Home. If that is not easy enough, the site also offers searches based on room, style and color categories. From the Home Office Furniture, my favorite is the Rustic Black Traditional Home Office Desk. This set will be very suitable for my work as well as hobby or jewelry work. It can function as a two in one set - for work and for hobby. An their Living Room Furniture, there are more than 100 sets. Its hard to make up your mind with these many choices. Pricing is a bit on the high side but it goes hand in hand with quality. There are also many items on sale with discount up to 50% on certain pieces such as the Queen Storage Bed I mentioned earlier. The furniture tips at the bottom right hand side of the page is very useful especially if you are planning to buy from Furniture From Home or you just want to find practical and cost saving ways to take care of your furniture.

Beads! Beads! and More Beads!

These are my new beads from Canada. What a beady day I had when I got all these from my sister in-law the other day. There are handcrafted glass beads, cracked glass beads, fire polished glass Czech beads in various colors, amber glass accent beads, spacer beads and lampwork glass beads. Back in 2006, she also sent me some beads through friends who came back for holidays. Up till now I have not used them up yet. There are so many ways I can wire wrap them into jewelry. But I have to put them on hold until I finished with commissioned pieces and special request pieces.