July 2023 – ML Jewelry Designs

Other Pendants Added to Online Shop

I few pendants that managed to avoid being listed in the online shop are now online.

I don’t know how I missed them, but in reconciling my online shop inventory to what I actually have on hand, I found five pendants that had never been listed.

Two of them are my rotated square style pendants, which I make with round stones. I made a batch of 5 of these about a month ago and never added them to the shop. I sold three to a wholesale client last week. These two are left:

Bumble Bee Jasper Square Picture Jasper Square
Two of my rotated square style pendants: Bumble Bee Jasper (left) and Picture Jasper (right).

And then there were two wire framed pendants that actually made it into my inventory database but, for some reason, did not appear in the online shop. They’re there now:

Red Tiger Eye Wire Frame Rosetta Lace Agate Wire Frame
Here are two sterling silver wire-framed pendants: Red Tiger Eye (left) and Rosetta Lace Agate (right).

Dicrotic Glass Prong
Dicrotic glass cabochon prong set on hand-textured sterling silver.

And finally, there’s a rather large pendant I made a while back, before I was doing more bezel settings. It’s a gorgeous piece of hand-crafted dicrotic glass prong-set on a piece of textured sterling silver.

You can find all of these (until they are sold) in my online shop or at art shows I’ll be appearing at throughout the summer.

New Fold-Over Pendants in Stock

Five new pendants added to inventory.

After last week’s visit to the shops in Winthrop and Twisp that sell my jewelry, I had to hustle to start building up stock. So I started with some items I already had partially made: my “fold-over” bail pendants.

Foldover Kingman T Bronze
Kingman Turquoise with bronze on sterling silver.

Foldover Kingman Turquoise and Spiny Oyster Shell with Bronze
Kingman Turquoise and Orange Spiny Oyster Shell with bronze on sterling silver.

Foldover Labradorite
Labradorite on sterling silver.

Foldover Lapis Lazuli
Lapis Lazuli on sterling silver.

Foldover Rose Quartz
Rose Quartz on sterling silver.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I make these in batches, completing one step on all pieces before moving on to the next step. For those who are curious, the steps are as follows:

Cut sterling silver sheet in two different sizes of the same elongated teardrop shape. These are all hand cut. I’ll normally cut more than I need for the pendants I plan to make so I have some already done for next time I make them. That’s why the ones I made this weekend were already partially made.
Sand the edges of each cut piece to smooth them.
Choose the stones for each piece. I have a dwindling inventory of small gemstones that are perfectly sized for these. I try to pick a variety.
Make the bezels for each stone. None of these are “standard” sizes so I need to make a bezel from scratch for each one. I start with fine or sterling silver strip and then size, cut, solder, pickle, and shape it.
Solder the bezels onto the teardrop back plates for each pendant, then pickle, wash, and dry them.
Stamp the backplates with a variety of designs. I have no set design so these are all different every time I make them.
Apply a darkening agent to blacken the silver.
Use a variety of techniques to polish the pieces so the silver is bright while the cuts made by the stamps remain darker. This involves manually polishing and putting each piece through a series of tumbling processes that take four to six hours.
Wash and dry each piece.
Set the stones. I need to remember which stone goes into which piece since they’re not interchangeable!
Roll the bail around bail-making pliers to create the bail.

Because of the assembly line process I use to make these in batches, if I start early enough, I can usually make 4 to 8 of them in a day — that’s how I can keep them affordably priced. The trick is to get them into the tumblers at roughly the same time as early in the day as possible. While they’re tumbling, I can usually get started on a new piece that isn’t part of a batch.

All of my fold-over bail pendants are made of sterling silver (and stamped as such on back) or copper with good quality gemstone cabochons set in them. They come with an 18″ sterling silver chain. They retail for $69 and can be found in my online shop or at many of the shops and galleries where my work is sold.

Low Inventory on Pendants

A visit to a wholesale client and gallery leaves me low on pendant inventory.

Good and bad news….

I recently went up the Methow River to two of the shops that sell my jewelry. The first was The Iron Horse in Winthrop. I first started selling there back in summer 2022 and they made a very large first purchase of my work. So imagine my surprise when I discovered that they’d sold every pendant and most of the earrings and bracelets I’d left with them last year!

I finished making these two pendants on the same day I left them at The Iron Horse in Winthrop. The top pendant is Owyhee Jasper on sterling silver and copper; the bottom one is White Buffalo on sterling silver.

A fifteen minute session with their buyer pretty much wiped out my pendants and beaded necklaces inventory. Indeed, she purchased two pendants I had just finished that morning that were never even properly photographed! (I snapped photos for my records before I left them with her.) She also stocked up on my new tube and bali bead earrings and a few other earring styles she’d bought on my previous visit.

If you’re in Winthrop, I hope you check them out. You can find The Iron Horse at 229 Riverside Ave, Winthrop, WA 98862. Tell them Maria at ML Jewelry Designs sent you.

Afterwards, I went to The Confluence gallery in Twisp and left five pendants with them. They’ve been selling my jewelry for about four years now and had sold out on all of my pendants, too, although they still had enough earrings on hand. You can find The Confluence at 104 Glover Street South, Twisp Washington 98856.

That left me with an inventory of only six pendants for my online shop and upcoming art shows. Needless to say, I’ll be busy in my jewelry studio over the next few weeks. Keep checking in to see what’s new.

So the good news is that I sold a bunch of pendants to retail shops that sell my work, thus getting them out into the wilds of Washington State. The bad news is that my online shop is nearly empty and I’ve got a lot of work to do.