One style will never be completely out of fashion - that's the vintage style. It's easy to see why. Vintage style can be about anything, and you can always pick your favorite. Many if not most of us are dreaming of better times, and memories of when we were more careless are not difficult to evoke. If everything was indeed so careless and so much better, that's a whole different question.
I can be hopelessly nostalgic myself while readily admitting that the old times were not necessarily times I would have wanted to live in. I appreciate my washing machine, thank you very much, and that's not the only thing. Other modern things I can very well do without, though.
An easy way to pick from the past just what you want are accessories of a time period you like. They don't even have to be real vintage which is not always easy to come by or may simply be too expensive, there are beautiful items out there created in a vintage style.
Here are some of them from our latest Jewelry Artisans Community Oldies but Goodies Challenge. I hope you'll enjoy them.
1 and 6 The Crafty Chimp
2 and 3 Cat's Wire
4 and 5 RioRita
I do like playing hidden object games. Puzzles, a nice adventure story, that's just what I need sometimes (nomograms are another one of my passions) to shut out the world.
What do those games have to do with jewelry making, however, you may wonder now.
The stories of the games I like playing best usually take place in some kind of medieval, fairy, wizard, magic, or maybe period drama (20/30s are fun) etc. setting. One of those, you know, that look great, but that you probably wouldn't like to live in although that may be open to discussion. The backgrounds are very detailed, especially in the puzzles in which details are important to make the hidden objects more difficult to pick out.
I wish I had paid more attention from the start when jewelry was shown in those puzzles. Now there's no way to say how many pieces there actually were over the years. Because you know, this was obviously handmade artisan jewelry that was shown there, wire woven or beaded, and that was what made it so interesting to me.
After a while it made me wonder if the persons who designed those scenes were always the same and if they drew the inspiration from pieces they had made themselves or had seen elsewhere. Latter would mean they had to study them closely.
Not that I see how I could ever get an answer to that.
Now I'm a little mad at myself for not making screenshots every time. Once I got aware of these pieces, I intended to do so each time, but then I forgot and didn't bother to go back to the scene or couldn't even find it anymore. Okay, so it's not a matter of life or death, but doesn't a little collection sound like fun?
For now I just have this one picture of a peyote piece for you, and unfortunately I forgot which game it belonged to (I will write it down in future). Depending on how many more I'll find, I may either keep this post up-to-date or I'll set up a new page for it on this blog.
And how knows - maybe others will help growing the list.
And it starts ...
If pictures look blurry to you, by the way, the reason for that is that I had to take a picture instead of a screenshot
From "Nevertales: Smoke and Mirrors" - bead embroidery
From "Whispered Secrets: Everburning Candle" - wire weaving
This year one of the old jewelry stores in my hometown shut its door for good after about 100 years. While it hadn't been a store I used to frequent myself - in fact I can only remember one time I asked about something in there - I often walked by it on my way to or from the train station, and I often had a look at the windows because they didn't just offer modern jewelry, but also had displays of vintage jewelry and even loose stones or pearls.
Before they closed, they had a sale, and my sister and I went in a last time to have a look.
Next to the counter they had a big glass bowl with small cabs and faceted stones, some real, some synthetic. The lady said they kept those for children coming in with customers which I thought was a sweet idea.
Even though I am not a child anymore, I took two small jasper cabs as a memory with the intention on making something from them eventually.
When I was asked about a sheep a while ago, I remembered these two cabs that had finally made it from my purse to my stash drawer and thought that one of them would make a cute little sheep prototype in copper. When will I learn that tiny doesn't mean easier to make? ;-) The whole pendant including the bail is just 1 inch high and 1 1/3 inch wide!
At least I learned a few things from it for the next sheep. As I said, this is a prototype that I will keep, so yes, there are tool marks, the ear is a bit too small and the head maybe a bit too large. I still think it's kind of cute :-D
After skipping last week due to technical problems we are back with some amazonite and more for this Jewelry Artisans Community Oldies but Goodies Challenge.
Since the rules are not too strict, not all of those stones are amazonite - all of them have the aqua blue color, though. Can you find out what is what? Not that it really matters, important is how soothing and lovely that aqua is to the eyes. What comes to your mind when you see today's entries?
1 and 6 Cat's Wire
2 and 4 RioRita
3 and 5 MC Stoneworks
