Featured Artist: Karen Troeh of CourtlyCharm on Etsy

Bumbershoot Supplies' latest featured artist is Karen Troeh of CourtlyCharm! Karen creates unique designs inspired by actual pieces from the medieval period through the Elizabethan era. Her years of experience creating pieces for renaissance festivals and plays is readily seen in these designs. 

Karen uses many different materials to create her designs, including set rhinestones, beads, filigrees, and wire-work.

Karen is very skilled at mixing metal work such as layered filigrees with pearls and rhinestones to create an opulent look. Many of her pieces are designed from historical pictures of crowns and jewelry worn by royalty.

Karen has shared a huge collection of her previous designs on her Pinterest board. We highly recommend perusing them for some regal inspiration. 

Be sure to check out Karen's shop! Whether you are really royal, or just wanting to look like it, you're sure to find a piece that will show the world how majestic you truly are.

October's Birthstone: Opal

Vintage Fire Opal Harlequin Round Cabochons. 

October's birthstone is the opal.

The gemstone opal comes in many different hues, including warmly colored "fire opals" as well as striking blues. Vintage glass also displays a rich variety of hues made to mimic the various types of gemstone opal. We have a large collection of faux opal glass at Bumbershoot Supplies and Bumbershoot Designs. Typical among this style of glass are those that have a colored base, speckled with different colors of glass and foil, often with a layer of clear glass on top to provide a magnifying effect.

Vintage Ruby Red Fire Opal Pear Cabochons.

Vintage Blue Green Opal Cabochon.

Common gemstone opals, with their distinctive milky opacity also have inspired glass makers, resulting in a type of glass that is translucent with a golden glowing and sometimes fiery presentation. This type of glass is sometimes referred to as opaline, and the degree of fire varies from subtle to flashing.

Vintage Japanese Cherry Brand Opaline Glass Beads.

Vintage Opaline Leaf Cabochons.

You will also sometimes find these two types of glass worked together, a milky glass layer applied over a foil studded and speckled base.

Vintage Opal Glass Teardrop Rhinestones.

Opals have been the source of much folklore and superstition over the years.  Sometimes said to provide good luck and clarity to the wearers, they also have been associated with bad luck and death. 
 

Vintage Fire Opal Gold Filigree Cocktail Ring.

In 1870 Tiffany & Co. published a birthstone poem in one of their pamphlets. The poem for October goes: 

"October's child is born for woe,
And life's vicissitudes must know,
But lay an opal on her breast,

And hope will lull those woes to rest."

For hopeful inspiration, we invite you to browse our vintage faux opal collections!

Opals at Bumbershoot Supplies

Opals at Bumbershoot Designs

New at Bumbershoot Supplies: Cheery Cherry Brand Vintage Japanese Beads

Here at Bumbershoot Supplies, we've been 'oohing and ahhing' over a new shipment of gorgeous vintage Cherry Brand beads. With bright cherry reds, vintage turquoise and creamy pastels the bead colors look like they've been picked while standing in front of a candy counter. (Please don't try to lick them though!) Cherry Brand beads were handcrafted in Osaka during the late 1940s -- you can read more about their history in our blog post here.

In addition to regular round beads we also have 'baroque' beads. Unevenly formed with lots of interesting texture to the surface, these beads will truly enhance any design. 

We're drawing out the last days of summer with these bright beads. Guaranteed to brighten anyone's day! 

Shop our Cherry Brand Collection at Bumbershoot Supplies.

Miriam Haskell Bracelet Update: Russian Gold Plate Flower Filigree Identification

I’m busy sorting through our recent purchase of metal findings from the Miriam Haskell warehouse, see my blog post here.

And guess what? I found some of the same filigrees that are used in a Miriam Haskell pearl bracelet I am fortunate to own. See my bracelet blog post here.

Here are the filigrees together with the bracelet filigree… We have a match! 

In this bracelet, the Haskell oval plaque is soldered to one filigree. There is a second filigree on the back, both held together with jump rings, right before the clasp.

Both my bracelet filigree and the Haskell warehouse filigrees are plated with Russian gold plate, a type of 24K gold plating used in vintage Haskell pieces. The bracelet filigree and the warehouse filigrees are dramatically different in color, showing how this type of plating can age over time.  For more, see my blog post about Russian gold plate here.  

We now offer new antiqued brass tiny flower bead caps just like those in my bracelet…

And we also carry various vintage Miriam Haskell glass pearls, also originally purchased at the Miriam Haskell Company warehouse.

I’ll keep researching our Miriam Haskell findings to see if I can discover examples of how they were used, I’ll keep you posted!

2012: The Year of Tangerine Tango

Happy Tangerine Tango 2012!

Pantone has chosen Tangerine Tango as the color of the year for 2012.  On the Pantone website, "Tangerine Tango, a spirited reddish orange, continues to provide the energy boost we need to recharge and move forward."

Sounds like a good start for a new year, yes?

Tangerine Tango caught my attention because so many of the vintage coral colored supplies sold at Bumbershoot Supplies are pretty much tangerine tango by another name. 

Sometimes orange can be a bit of a challenge to execute in designs or in personal adornment, but these vintage shades are really accessible and may add just the touch to reenergize your designs and creative process as we enter a new year. 

You can learn more about Tangerine Tango on the Pantone website, try here and here.

You can search Bumbershoot Supplies using the term "coral" to see all of our vintage coral items.

Bumbershoot Supplies Vintage Bead Giveaway With Beading Arts

Want some free vintage beads? Head on over to Beading Arts, Cyndi Lavin's blog, where Bumbershoot Supplies is sponsoring a giveaway! Cyndi has used some of the beads in the above photo to make an embellished skeleton key pendant, for which she will be posting a tutorial, check it out. The rest of the beads are up for grabs!

Leave a comment on Cyndi's blog so she knows you are interested.

The winner will be selected on Oct 19, 2011.

The day I pulled together this selection of beads, it was a glorious fall day in Seattle, a beautiful blue sky, gorgeous red orange dahlias outside my window, and just a hint of frost to come. Those were my inspirations for this particular color palette. You can learn more about the origin of this selection of beads in this blog post on Cyndi's blog.

Vintage Glass Beads from Kaufbeuren, West Germany at Bumbershoot Supplies

I’ve written elsewhere about the history of our beads, buttons, cabochons and rhinestones that were made in the US Zone of Occupied Germany, between 1945 and 1949.  In that blog post I also mention the various names for Germany over the decades.

Often the supplies we source arrive in original wraps. If the place of manufacture is stamped on the wrappings, the country name helps in dating the supplies. “Western Germany” and later “West Germany” were the common English names used for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), which existed from 1949 until the reunification of Germany in 1990.

We sell our supplies in our Etsy shop and on our website.  The Etsy policy regarding labeling items as "vintage" is that they must be at least 20 years old.  That means that anything from 1991 and older can now be labeled vintage on Etsy. It also means that anything made in Western Germany or West Germany is now considered vintage by Etsy’s definition.

I must confess that 1991 does not feel vintage to me! Plus, we would like to determine the age of our beads more precisely within the 60 year time period that West(ern) Germany existed.  I’ve written previously about the various approaches we take to determining the provenance and history of our supplies, but sometimes you just get lucky.

Many of the vintage West German glass beads currently offered at BumbershootSupplies have a clear provenance. They were made in Kaufbeuren, in southern Germany, southwest of Munich. They were made in the 1950’s and remained in a warehouse there for decades, until the warehouse was closed and the contents of the warehouse were purchased by the supplier who provided the beads to us. Not too many steps involved, and a clear provenance.

We currently have a total of 28 different beads from this warehouse. You will be able to identify the Kaufbeuren beads most readily on our website, because over the next day or so, Jim will add a link to this blog post to the description of each of the beads.

Products related to this history can be found right here at Bumbershoot Supplies.

Bumbershoot Supplies Vintage Bead Giveaway with A Bead A Day

Want some free vintage beads and cabochons?  Head on over to A Bead A Day, Lisa Crone's bead blog.

Bumbershoot Supplies is sponsoring a giveaway on A Bead A Day of all the items you see in the photo above and below. Leave a comment on Lisa's blog so she knows you are interested. The winner will be selected Friday, Sept 24, 2011.

And while you are on Lisa's blog, I hope you will enjoy a look around and also check out her book, A Bead in Time: 35 Jewelry Projects Inspired by Slices of Life.

Our daughter Emma and I were inspired by all the amethyst and purple tones we saw in the fall fashion issue of Vogue magazine to curate a collection of amethyst vintage beauties, complemented by a selection of our vintage glass pearls. As a group, these beads and cabochons date from the 1930's to the 1950's. You can learn more about the history of the round amethyst sew ons here.

The winner will receive the beads shipped directly from Bumbershoot Supplies, with our standard shipping confirmation email, and a tracking number if you are in the US.  Of course, international participants are very welcome to participate too!