Wood, Bone, and Bamboo Cord

Everything I make is composed of all-natural materials. It's something I've always believed in -- the closer to nature, the better. That's why I use only stones that are natural and undyed, and why I only use gold and silver. Well, now I've broadened my repertoire.

Last week I started playing with wooden and bone beads, and bamboo cord. I also found some lovely wood-burnished nangka wood crosses from the Philippines. The dark wooden beads are not stained -- that is the natural color of the Korean boxwood. The bone beads are hand carved and then treated with a preservative that makes the bone less brittle and accentuates the carving. They are from China and it is cattle bone, probably leftover from the food industry.

The first one is an Irish penal rosary, the second one is a traditional Catholic rosary, and the last one is an Anglican rosary.

Mariner at Etsy

Rustic at Etsy

Driftwood at Etsy

Olive Tree

Here's something different from all those rosaries lately.

Olive Tree on Etsy

It's a pair of earrings that I made last year when I was trying to impress someone, who, unfortunately, turned out to be a real jerk. That's okay, it gave me a chance to work on my self esteem and my boundaries. God really is a loving, teaching father, even though the learning part can be pretty darn painful sometimes.

I bought these little carved jade leaves back in 2004, and I really wish now that I had bought more of them. The color is a beautiful moss green with a bit of natural veining in a lighter green shade.

I knew that I wanted to make these little leaves dangle prettily from someone's ears and be able to "blow in the breeze" like leaves would, so I devised a system of graduated 14k gold wire rods to suspend them from.

Then I realized that it needed a bit more color, and a bit of something more, so I added some Swarovski crystal "berries" near the leaves and then the topaz crystals above them to really set off the motion of the earrings and give them some more sparkle.

Yes, these are very sparkly! And I hope you enjoy them.