AdornmentCraft

Silversmith Lee Skalkos has established a truly original, creative business: She fabricates custom pins based on children’s artwork.

Customers can email, FAX, or snail mail their kids’ masterpieces to Skalkos’ studio, where she transforms them permanently into high-quality jewelry.

These unique keepsakes are guaranteed to hold special sentimental value for families. They’re an example of the “meaningfulness” that jewelry can have beyond fashion.

By embracing that meaningfulness, and making it the focus of her business, I think Skalkos has hit on something important (in addition to just plain fun). Kudos!

You can visit her website here.

The August 2007 issue of Bead & Button has a great article on creating shaped-wire dancing figures that attach to focal beads to make pendants.

Designer Karen Rokoski explains how to bend 24-gauge wire into these little figures using round nose pliers for the round bends and chain nose pliers for the more angular ones.

I’ve seen a similar technique used before in elaborate wire artwork (which can be very cool). What’s neat about Rokoski’s method is how she attaches the figures to one another (like at the hands and feet for these dancers), and how she fastens the entire design to a focal bead using the drill-hole and a connection at the back.

The instructions in the tutorial are nicely done, with helpful close-up photos and an (essential) graphical chart.