About Our Designers... Featuring Debi's Designs

Debi, my sister and one of ikandies designers, was the first to join me in using jewelry design to express our creativity.

Debi is shown here working on her acrylic  "Fall Garden" necklace.

She started creating her own necklaces as accessories for special occasions. Friends commented on her jewelry and so she began beading for others. Many of her necklaces feature gemstones combined with seed beeds or Swarovski crystals. She favors the "chunky" necklace look and says that she's more inspired if she's beading while at the beach, one of her favorite vacation spots!

Her husband created this wonderful tray that transforms her workshop into a portable one.

She has used her love of Swarovski crystals and Vintaj Brass to create several vintage styled necklaces.  Here's one of her favorites:





Debi has attended classes at the Bead and Button show in Milwaukee for the past several years to learn new skills in metal smithing, chain maille and lampworking.

About Our Designers... Jill's Designs

Crochet Hook + Seed Beads = Bead Crochet?


Watermelon Seed Necklace

Crochet with beads?   That's right!  And Jill, one of ikandies' designers and my sister-in-law, has become an expert at it.  She picked up the technique for her "Watermelon Seed Necklace" by watching Karla Shafer of Auntie's Beads demonstrate how to add beads to wire and crochet a simple necklace.  Jill strung Swarovski crystals in greens and pinks on green artistic wire and joined several crocheted stands together to create this piece.

She also learned how to crochet seed beads into a rope-like necklace that gently spirals the length of the rope. Jill used turquoise, black and cream colored seed beads to fashion her "Twisted Turquoise" necklace, shown below:

Twisted Turquoise



Green Wave Bracelet

Jill has found "Karla Cams" on the Auntie's Beads website very helpful in learning other techniques, such as the two-row flat spiral stitch.  She used that to creative this beautiful bracelet in seed beads and crystals:

Jill looks for beads at local stores and various Internet sites but prefers to purchase her beads from Auntie's Beads or Fusion Beads.

Jill has attended the Bead and Button Show in Milwaukee and taken classes in metal working and lampworking.  Here's Jill in her "workshop" dreaming of another project...

The Earring Project

"Whimsical", "fanciful", "fun".  These were all words I heard when I wore a pair of mesh drop earrings to the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show earlier this year.  Debi and I had fun with this recent project!



They are easy to assemble but we found only one vendor who carries the mesh ear drops, Shipwreck Beads.  We sent a picture of the earrings to a local woman's boutique, A Woman's Whimsy, and were asked to send several pairs to be included in the store's merchandise. 

So began "The Earring Project".  

We selected several mesh drop finishes, the Swarovski crystals and Czech glass that we would include in each pair and began assembling.  Ten pairs later, we headed out to the store and handed over our wares.

In addition to different finishes, we also came up with two techniques in which to feature our crystals.  In the next image you'll see design #2.  The crystals are threaded on Softflex wire and woven in and out of the mesh drop.  Approximately 50 beads were used for this pair.

To see more of our Mesh Drop earrings, please visit our Etsy site: ikandies Etsy site

Our First ArtFair!

I was just showing a friend some pictures from the University in the Park ArtFair we participated in this past August, and decided to blog about this experience since it was our first artfair.

First we had to decide what pieces of jewelry to display. Then we worked on displaying them, locating a place for piece in the display, designing a tagging system for each piece, setting a fair price.. well, you get the picture.  Debi purchased two louvered bi-fold doors at garage sales and repainted them.    Debi's husband made stands for the doors to keep them from falling over.  We planned to use branches from a cherry tree randomly inserted  between the louvers of the doors to display our necklaces.

We arrived at the artfair site at 6:30am to begin setup of our table and the bi-fold doors.We draped many of our chain necklaces from our Leaf and Flower collections over the branches.  We added a small bare tree on our display table and hung smaller items - bracelets and earrings - from that.  We also had several necklace displays setup to feature a few of our unique designs.

Although the day was hot, there was an occasional breeze that caused  the necklaces to sway as they hung suspended from their respective branches.  This caught the eye of many passersby.  We gave our shoppers the opportunity to try the jewelry on and when we finally made a sale, we were thrilled!



Lovered door displays



We also took the time to walk through the artfair and visit with other vendors.  This gave us a better idea of how to improve our displays and market our jewelry.  Ideas are already percolating for our next artfair.  And believe us, there will be more!!



 

Table top displays