Creating Glass Squid in Resin

Itsy Bitsy Specimen Jars

I've been busy working on new ideas for jewelry lately, including casting transparent Glass Squid in resin. While I was creating the first one I made videos of the process from sculpt to molding to casting. The first three Glass Squid necklaces should be available in the shop next week.

Also joining them will be the first 3 pairs of new Specimen Jar Earrings! Check out this photo of the finished jars before I attached the earring hooks. They are super tiny, less than half the size of the jars I use for the Specimen Jar Necklaces.

Glass Squid Pendants

And  now for the videos. I hope you enjoy seeing how these necklaces came to be.

New Line of Squid Jewelry

This is one of those strokes of luck when a customer requests something that you've been putting off doing so it spurs you to do it. I was contacted by a customer to create a custom squid necklace for a friend of hers. Now since I already make cuttlefish and octopus the logical next step is of course to do squid. However cuttlefish and squid are pretty similar so I'd been putting off figuring out how to do a squid that is sufficiently different from my cuttlefish. This custom request made me actually site down and do so.

It took me some planning, sketching, and looking at squid photos to make up my mind but I'm happy with the results. I hope this new line is as successful as my cuttlefish and octopus have been so far.

Squid Jewelry

Been Busy This Week

When I'm stressed I work even more than usual, it gets my mind off things. My uncle is in the hospital and this are just generally awful with that. So this week I did quite a bit of work.

First some jewelry stuff. Here's the list:

• Green Trilobite Necklace
  
• Blue Trilobite Necklace
• Round Ammonite Pendant
• Teardrop Ammonite Pendant
• Blue Trilobite Earring Drops
• Green Trilobite Earring Drops
• 4 Watermelon Cuttlefish Earring Drops
• Watermelon Cuttlefish Pendant
• Jellyfish Earring Drops
  
• Faux Fossil Fern Pendant
• Wire Wrapped Faux Stone Pendant
  
• 8 little polymer clay cabochons
  

Second, I've been working on the sculpture commission some more and it still looks all rough and weird but it's coming together some more.

Brand New Jewelry

So I've been busy this week making jewelry. First are a brand new design I made using some new premo frost along with purple and yellow premo and some pearl ex pigments. They are tiny little jellyfish earrings and they are quite translucent and almost glow when back lit.

I also sculpted 10 cuttlefish pendants and 30 tiny cuttlefish for earrings (told you I was busy). Here are the first batch I've finished painting. If you notice there's onyl one pair of earrings, that's because I ran out of earring hooks and need to buy some more this week.

From left to right. Top row: Violet Cuttlefish Necklace, Watermelon Cuttlefish Necklace. Bottom row: Mechanical Cuttlefish Jewelry Set, Midnight Cuttlefish Necklace.

I also put together this little video of some of my cuttlefish jewelry. These are all slightly older ones since I did it before finishing these new ones.

Article on Photographing Jewelry

I just had this article published with Associated Content, I wrote about the best ways I've found to photograph my handmade jewelry. I hope you find it useful.

Tips for Photographing Your Handmade Jewelry

Learn how to take beautiful photos of your jewelry creations to use when selling online or just to show them off on your website.

Batch of Cuttlefish

I finally feel like I'm getting back to normal. I finished up 4 sets of cuttlefish jewelry last night. I'm not done though, I'm working on a few more pendants and pairs of earrings that will be sold separately rather than as sets.

These are so fun to make. You can check out all my Cuttlefish Jewelry here.

Trilobite Video

Hey, look at that two posts in one day. I'm bored out of my mind because I'm sick with the flu and when I'm sick I can't concentrate (or stay awake) long enough to work with clay. So instead I played with slide show software today and put together a little video of my trilobite jewelry.

Lots of Itty Bitty Cuttlefish

I don't know why but I haven't had the patience to work on any big sculpts lately. I blame my brother, he's home on leave from the Air Force for a month so it's been a lot busier here than usual. I love having him home, I've missed him a lot but my ability to concentrate has gone on vacation.

So I've been working instead of lots of little projects, mostly jewelry. The past couple days I've been making these adorable little cuttlefish earrings. I like them so much that today I'm making a pair for myself to wear that will look like the green ones. Of course they are up for sale here: Cephalopod Earrings

I think these guys are probably too cute for anyone to call baby Cthulhu like my Perma-Pets have been.