Monday in Seattle. Picture and Quote for the Week, Origami Stars

Cluster together like stars.

~Henry Miller

With thanks to Emma for the stars.

New at Bumbershoot Designs. New Designs With Vintage Pearls and Vintage Rhinestones

I've been busy in both Bumbershoot Supplies and Bumbershoot Designs, ensuring the shops are stocked and ready for the holidays! At Bumbershoot Designs, I've been able to offer several new designs, with more to come over the weekend.

Above is Margo, with fabulous ivory glass pearls from 1950's Japan.

Below is Dragonfly Pearl, a necklace to match my Dragonfly Pearl earrings...



There are a couple more new earring designs, including these vintage crystal rhinestone earrings, with rhinestones from occupied Germany, 1945 to 1949...

And these brass and flower earrings, featuring vintage brass floral stencil dangles, with delicate pink flowers from 1950's Japan...

Everything you see here can be found at Bumbershoot Designs. 

Until next time, wishing you a great weekend!

New at Bumbershoot Supplies. 23 New Vintage Beads, Cabochons, Settings, and More Since November 15

Since our November 15 newsletter, we have added 26 new items and restocked 2 at Bumbershoot Supplies, including these lovely "real gold" vintage mercury beads from Japan.

Jim and I are busy putting the final touches on our web site, http://www.bumbershootsupplies.com/ to enable shopping for our vintage supplies directly. To preserve our time for that activity, today I'll just show a few of our...

new settings... new cabochons… more new pretty glass…

I invite you to come on over to Bumbershoot Supplies and have a look at all these new vintage treasures. 

Until next time, wishing you a great weekend!

Tutorial: How to Set Vintage Rhinestones in Pronged Settings

Here are some basic tips for setting a pointed back rhinestone into a pronged setting.  We offer many vintage rhinestones and antiqued brass prong settings at Bumbershoot Supplies, and it is so satisfying and fun to set these vintage jewels and quickly create dangles, earrings, pendants, embellishments for jewelry and mixed media art.

You will need:

pointed back rhinestones

pronged settings to fit the rhinestones, with open or closed backs

wide flat nosed pliers

And perhaps: pointed flat note pliers, wire cutters (to address mistakes, see below)

There are also special prong setting tools, but I can’t speak about those since I don’t own one. I use the pliers shown.

1) Place the stone so it is sitting level in the setting. Ideally the edge of the stone will be just above the top of the setting. This sounds straightforward, but it is not always easy to fit vintage rhinestones into contemporary settings, even when both are supposedly the same size. You may need to open the prongs a bit, bending them gently out and away from the center of the setting. See tips section below for more on this process.

2) Firmly hold the stone in place with your thumb and index finger of your nondominant hand. Depending on the size of the stone and your thumb, yes, the prongs will stick into your finger a bit. Hold the stone in the middle so it stays balanced in the setting.

3) While continuing to hold the stone firmly, push down each prong with the wide flat nosed pliers. It is important to hold the stone firmly so it doesn’t slide or move around while you are setting it. I like to get each of the prongs (often 4 total) down and then go around again to tighten them.

Some Additional Tips:

1) Be careful if working with open backed settings so the back side of your pliers does not scratch the back of your stone.

2) Sometimes to fit a vintage rhinestone into a setting, you may need to open the prongs a bit, bending them gently out and away from the center of the setting. It’s sort of like hyper extending the prong. If you need to do this, go slowly and gently. Open all 4 prongs just a bit, see how the stone fits, then repeat. You want to manipulate the prongs as little as possible so they don’t weaken. You may even have to do this with rhinestones that come from the same lot – one may fit the settings just fine, the other may require more manipulation.

3) Don’t press too hard on the prongs first time around. You can chip and even break stones by pressing too hard, not that I would know anything about this personally, of course… :)

4) Try pushing prongs down on the diagonal. Often there are 4 prongs in a setting. Start pushing down one prong, then do the one diagonally opposite it, then finish with the last 2 prongs. This can help hold the stone level in the setting.

5) With practice, you will find the motion to push those prongs down. It’s sort of a rolling motion, with the pliers positioned towards the base of the prong, and the movement is pressing forward and down.

6) When you are learning to set stones, and even when you have been setting them for years, settings can get scratched, stones can slip and sit crookedly in settings and so on. In these circumstances, you may want to start over and reset your rhinestone in a new setting. I am told that a special prong setting and lifting tool works for lifting prongs up so you can reposition the stone to reset it. But like I said, I don't have one of those tools, so here is what I do: Sometimes I use a pair of narrow, pointed flat nosed pliers to lift the prongs enough to remove the stone and start again. Sometimes I actually use wire cutters to clip the prongs at the base where the prong attaches to the setting, in order to remove the prongs so I can get the stone out. I use just the tip of the cutters and go slowly so as not to scratch or cut the stone. My default is always “save the stone”. The reason I often decide to sacrifice the setting when my stone goes in crooked is because with repeated opening and closing, the prongs weaken and can snap. If you are repairing or replacing stones in a piece of costume jewelry, of course you must work with the existing setting. Otherwise it’s your decision: you can try to reuse the setting, or you can sacrifice it and start anew.

7) When you are learning, expect to lose a few settings and stones. There is nothing like practice to improve your ability to set all shapes and sizes of rhinestones in all kinds of settings. But no matter your level of experience, you will occasionally scratch settings, chip stones, have to reset stones, and so on. Be sure to have enough patience and supplies on hand to account for these occurrences.

8) If I want to be particularly careful when setting a stone, I use a small piece of quilting cotton and press the prongs down using the cotton as a barrier between my pliers and the setting. This takes a bit of practice, since you can’t see the setting as well, but it can decrease the chance of scratches to the setting and to the back of the stone if you are using open backed settings.

When I was teaching my daughter Emma to do this:

1) We started with octagon stones in the 10x8mm size. The octagons are essentially rectangles with rounded corners and they give the eye a direction for where the prongs ought to go. Plus you are pressing a straight edge (the prong) against another straight edge (the stone). Emma also found this size to fit easily with her thumbs and fingers.

2) It may be counter intuitive, but I taught Emma using the more expensive stones – she actually learned on vintage machine cut Swarovski crystal stones, such as the green turmaline shown above. This is because these stones are so precisely cut that they fit really well into contemporary settings, unlike many other vintage rhinestones that are more roughly molded and may require some finesse and patience to set.

3) One thing to consider is using raw brass settings for practice stone setting. I do not recommend using raw brass for most jewelry designs for various reasons (and that is the subject of another upcoming blog post) but raw brass settings are the least expensive to purchase and may be a good choice for practice – sometimes you can feel a bit better about gaining experience when it costs a bit less. If you don’t want to use raw brass settings in your jewelry, you can just plan on removing the stones from the settings after you’ve practiced with them.

We did have to throw away a few settings, but using stones and settings that fit well together, and using the octagon shape, Emma was setting stones in no time – literally within minutes.

And if you want something even easier, at Bumbershoot Supplies, you will find a small number of glue-in settings designed specifically for larger pear and oval pointed back rhinestones. If you choose to glue-in instead, there is a tips for gluing tutorial on my blog, here.

Many thanks to Emma for serving as demonstrator for this post!

And here is what we did with these rhinestones:

Progress Report 2: Ethereal Bangles Online Class with Kristen Robinson

I am still working on the Ethereal Bangles online class offered by Kristen Robinson. I've completed 4/5 bracelets, and I'm still working on the 5th.

I'll show 2 of the completed designs in this post.

I did not purchase a kit - I worked with my own supplies, and I have not yet got around to making any resin charms, so my bracelets are not exactly like what Kristen taught. I do have all the components for the resin, and one of the things I like about this online learning experience is that I can break the steps down just as small as I need to in order to move forward.  Next step is to identify a spot with a 60 watt lamp for the resin to cure undisturbed for 24 hours.

In the meantime, I used my vintage components to complete the bracelets.

The first one is sterling silver wire, hammered, antiqued, and embellished with silk ribbon and a selection of vintage components from my personal stash and from Bumbershoot Supplies. I haven't worn this one yet, but I can say it looks beautiful on my daughter Emma.

The design for this second bracelet involves a half bangle of antiqued sterling silver, finished with vintage rosary chain and charms.  I had to modify this design.  It turns out that I have really large hands and narrow wrists.  As a teenager, I worked in the local dairy in our town, scooping up ice cream cones in the dairy bar. I can scoop 9 double dip cones in one hand. So I need a large bangle to get over my hand, but then because my wrists are fairly narrow, the bangle sits too low on my hand to be comfortable and for daily function.  So for this design, I incorporated a clasp so I could have the bangle be small enough to sit where I wanted on my wrist, but easily go on and off.  Normally I would antique the clasp and jump rings also, but I decided to try out this design modification first, and so this bracelet is really a prototype. I think I will shorten the length of the silver wire also. This modification works really well for me and I love wearing this bracelet! It feels so light, truly "ethereal".

Monday in Seattle. Picture and Quote for the Week, Be True

To thine own self be true, and it must follow,

as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.

~William Shakespeare

Vintage Design Inspiration Board #9 with Creativity Quote

It is better to create than to be learned,

creating is the true essence of life.

~Barthold Georg Niebuhr

Inspiration Board #9 features:

vintage autumn velvet millinery flowers (Japan)

vintage glass pearl drops(Japan)

vintage glass pearl leaves (Japan)

vintage coral celluloid leaves (Japan)

vintage coral rectangle glass cabochon (Japan)

vintage coral initial cabochon (Japan)

vintage labels from button packages (Austria)

vintage paper labels from beads (Japan)

vintage pumpkin satin rayon ribbon (USA)

vintage burgundy silk floral ribbon (Japan)

vintage glass cameos with rhinestones

vintage metal buttons

antique silk embroidery floss

vintage pearl hair pin

vintage linen tea towel

mounted on 6x6 inch gallery wrapped canvas base

New at Bumbershoot Supplies, Holiday Shipping Schedule, USPS Holiday 2010 Shipping Deadlines

We are down to the short strokes with our website, www.bumbershootsupplies.com, turning it into a location for selling our vintage supplies.  This is occupying much of our time, but since last Friday, we have loaded additional glass cabochons, many more of our vintage style antiqued brass settings, some lovely mother of pearl roses, more rhinestones, and a glass bead and glass pearl or two into Bumbershoot Supplies on Etsy. There's just a few photos shown here.

Also, let me reiterate our holiday shipping schedule for both Bumbershoot Supplies and Designs.  We'd love to have you visit either or both shops at any time during the holiday season. And yes, we do combine shipping between both shops.

We always ship the same day if payment is received by 10am Pacific time, otherwise we ship the next business day, Monday through Saturday and we will follow this same schedule through the holiday season.

Specifics:

Friday Nov 26 and Sat Nov 27: Yes, we are shipping

Dec 1-23: Shipping as usual.

Dec 24, 25, 26: No shipping

Dec 27-31: Shipping as usual

Jan 1, 2011: No shipping

From the USPS web site, here are the USPS deadlines for receipt by Dec 24:

US Domestic First Class Mail cut off date: Dec 20

US Domestic Priority Mail cut off date: Dec 21

Canada First Class International Mail cut off date: Dec 10

Europe First Class International Mail cut off date: Dec 10

Asia/Pacific Rim First Class International Mail cut off date: Dec 10

Australia/New Zealand First Class Mail International cut off date: Dec 10

Until next time, wishing you a good weekend!

Happy Thanksgiving.

To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble,

but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven.

~Johannes A. Gaertner

Look What I Found. Crystal Glass Flowers, Vintage Beads on Wire

One of my favorite types of vintage glass beads are the glass flowers that come with embedded wires. Sometimes the wires are already looped and sometimes, like these, the wires are long. I was told these particular spiky spider mum-like flowers were made in Italy. Their crystalline character seemed appropriate today for Seattle, as we are in our 3rd day of shutdown due to ice and snow...