Amy Abrams Designs

Wow, it’s been a while since I last posted!

I spent the better part of Saturday scrambling to take some professional-looking photos (as much as I am capeable with limited practice and knowledge) to submit to a jury for a show.  I can’t believe in all the years I’ve been making jewelry I haven’t either sent jewelry to a professional photographer or goofed around more to practice taking my own.  Oh well…

I received a new light tent that I ordered on eBay and promptly melted the lights that came with the kit.  The directions say to not leave the lights on for more than an hour, which I didn’t, I turned them off every time I set up a shot and then on when I was ready to take the shot – anyways… melted lights.  I dug into my show box to get my little clip-on lamps to use for this purpose and one of the bulbs was burned out so I used one of the little clip-on lamps and a larger, very old clip-on lamp.  My feeling from this session is that I could’ve probably used a bit more powerful light source, but at least I didn’t set the house on fire.

I used photographic mirror board as my background and while I like the effect, it is a pain to use.  It attracts every spec of dust, every piece of lint, every strand of cat fur – you can wipe, wipe, wipe but it will never be gone.  I wound up doing quite a bit of clean-up work in photoshop, using the spot-healing brush and clone stamp tools to remove all the bits of flotsam and jetsom that appeared in the background.

I photographed several pieces and these are, in my opinion, the best of that session.  I submitted the “Heart’s Whimsy” necklace, the Chinnoisserie Disc V-Wire Earrings and the “Morning Glory” necklace as my jury photographs.

Morning Glory Necklace

The “Morning Glory” necklace is a newly made piece with an older pendant.  I wrapped dozens of little faceted quartz and kyanite briolettes and faceted rondelle aquamarine, zircon, apatite, and kyanite with sterling silver and strung them onto beading wire with really pretty silvery freshwater pearls and finished the necklace with a lovely twisted wire extender chain.

Heart's Whimsy Necklace

The “Heart’s Whimsy” is from my personal collection, it is the original and first of a limited series (there have been a total of 5 “Heart’s Whimsy” necklaces of differing motifs made).  It also is from the first group of silver clay jewelry that I ever made on my own (outside of classes).  I used syringe clay to pipe the motif on a sheet of clay that I cut the design with a cookie cutter.  The edges have a “broken” look that I’ve never been able to repeat again.  I also hadn’t bought my tumbler yet and opted to antique the piece with liver of sulpher to finish rather than try to achieve a highly polished look – all polishing was done with an agate burnishing tool by hand.  To match I antiqued all the wire, chain and findings I used to put the necklace together.  I haven’t made an antiqued piece since that small group that I made early on.

Chinoisserie Disc V-Wire Earrings

The Chioisserie Disc V-Wire Earrings – why do I call these Chioisserie?  I used to work at a very unique store in NW Washington DC.  They went out of business a few years ago but at the time they were the “largest east-coast importer” of vintage Japanese textiles.  They also sold Japanese antique furniture, Chinese antique furniture (this was before China placed a ban on shipping furniture older than 100 years out of the country), basketry from the Philippines, they had their own clothing designer on staff and at one time or another produced a clothing line in Bali and then in India.  It was basically a grand mish-mosh of stuff – a treasure trove of some really interesting person’s attic.  I digress.  I had the opportunity to buy for this shop – I bought jewelry, clothing, accessories, etc…  Among some of the items I bought were some beautiful vintage Chinese textiles – there is a style of embroidery and quilting that the Chinese did on these textiles that is very distinctive and the motif of the button that I cast a mold of for these earrings reminds me nostalgically of those beautiful textiles.

Egyptian Lily Earrings with Blue Topaz

I just love these fantastic twisty-cut faceted blue topaz don’t you?

Oval Flower Doorknock Necklace

To see these pieces live and in person please subscribe to updates or visit my website,  I will be posting information about where I will be showing my work as I confirm show dates.