Creating a pair of Birthday Earrings

Last week we received an email asking for a pair of earrings from our facebook page for a 40th birthday present…… The original pair were purchased as a birthday present by a customer here in our Korcula store, Seba DizajnWith pleasure we set to making a new pair, here are some of the photos we took to illustrate the making of the birthday earrings.

We started by creating six small flowers
Here you can see the stems being connected to the flowers
Working on the filigree detail for the leaves that will appear at the top of the earrings
Soldering the pieces together
Work on shaping the coral used as floral centrepiece
Flower detail on the finished earrings
The finished Earrings - Happy Birthday Amanda!

We are happy to offer a photographic journey of your jewellery being made when you place a bespoke order with us, please email us at sebacroatia@yahoo.com if you would like to enquire about a bespoke piece for yourself or as an extra special gift.

You can read one of our customer reviews about our bespoke service here.

We look forward to hearing from you, regards, Ruth & Doka.

My Favourite Piece of Jewellery – 2

Today I am really happy to introduce you to, Sharon Howard who has contributed a piece about her favourite piece of jewellery.  Sharon blogs too! You can find her own blog here, http://showard76.wordpress.com/

My favourite piece of Jewellery by Sharon Howard

To be honest I’ve never been the greatest jewellery fanatic. I know lots of women go crazy for jewellery and it’s usually a typical ‘good’ buy if you are trying to impress a girl, another way in which I’m just awkward I guess lol.  I don’t own much jewellery; I have a few rings and necklaces and a bracelet.

The one thing I get through lots of though is earrings; I have a nasty habit I finding a pair I love and wearing them to death or loss, loss being more common!  I also have a habit of buying a pair to suit a particular outfit and then not wearing them again.

But a favourite piece of jewellery is something I had never really thought about. I have several items that I wear for the majority of the time, but I think that’s more due to not being bothered to change for other items than them being favourites? I nearly always where my gold pentagram necklace, my gold ‘mum’ ring, my white gold Celtic style ring and of course my engagement ring. Of my earrings the pair my fiancée bought me last Christmas is the set I wear most of the time.

So, what is my favourite piece of jewellery and why?

Pentagram necklace - similar to mine

I guess really it must be the pentacle necklace. It is slightly unusual as most pentagrams are silver or ‘costume’ jewellery items; silver is most popular as it represents the moon in paganism. I found my gold one in a small independent jewellery store in the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham, about 4 years ago, and just had to have it. It represents my ‘erring towards paganism’ beliefs, although I am not actually a pagan. I suppose it also is quite a symbol of ‘me’ now as well, people identify me with it – unique, different.

It is also a good talking point, a conversation starter when I meet new people. For some, who recognise the symbol appropriately, it will trigger a conversation about paganism and views on the topic. For those who don’t recognise the symbol correctly it becomes a learning experience as I explain the difference between it and what they mistake it for; for example the most common mistake is for people to say “Oh, are you Jewish?” as they mistake it for a Star of David –

Star of David

which just shows how little they know as the five pointed pentagram is quite different from the six pointed Star of David the most shocking example of this is when I met Russell Tovey (who plays George in Being Human) his character wears a similar pendant in the show, but even he thought it was the Star of David! The other common mistake is to think I am a devil worshipper, as some people think it is a satanic pentagram, which always makes me laugh, fair enough it is the same symbol, but for so called devil worship it is placed upside down/inverted.

If you would like to share something about your favourite piece of jewellery we would love to hear from you, sebacroatia@yahoo.com

Balls with wings…

Opening a new store in Korcula has been a huge challenge, paperwork is endless, my language skills are inadequate and there is so much to learn.  We have now moved on from the issues of opening and need to fill our store. 

Adolf has been working long hours, creating beautiful filigree jewels.  Watching him work is endlessly fascinating for me, I still marvel at the skill & patience that is involved in creating such intricate pieces of jewellery.  Beautiful wearable art works are now emerging in our store and we are creating some fun displays.  Whilst it is great to have a fine display for us it is even better when we can sell his work (pay some bills!) and have happy customers leaving our store.

Last week the pieces above were sitting on the work table when we had a visitor from Quebec looking for some earrings, unfortunately this work was not finished; so I asked

‘How long are you here?’

‘For one more week’, was the reply

‘We can finish this pair for  you, it will be no problem, please come back on Thursday evening’

You can see the finished product below, the balls have wings – they are now in Quebec, Ms Quebec was delighted with her earrings, and for us it is a great feeling to know that we were able to bring her a small amount of joy that will last a lifetime. 

A Day in the Life

Today has been a great day to write about, and it ain’t over yet – having visitors from abroad is the perfect excuse to play and I’m loving it.

The day started with coffee and cakes from Marco Polo bakery and a big blether in the sun.   Bikini on, ready to swim, what a great way to start the day.  Hilary and I swam at the bottom of the ‘street’  that we work on.  After this we purchased a small coffee machine, then back to the shop (www.facebook.com/SebaDizajn) to try out the new machine – it’s great.  Coffee on site is a good thing and hopefully a way to save us some cash as both Adolf and I enjoy our coffee a lot and regular stops at our favourite coffee shop (Caffe Stari Grad) throughout the day were adding up… 

Next mission was ‘save a cat’, Hilary being a keen animal lover had earier spied a wee poorly cat that looked like it wold barely make it through the week and decided that she would like to take it to our local vet and save his wee furry life. We spoke to the vet and he was expecting us at 12 so we had to go capture the cat, esier said than done it turns out.  Despite the cats apparent ill health there was no way it wnated to be transported in a box by us to the vet.  Oh dear, we made several attempts before speaking to the vet, 

“Do you have  a cat box we can borrow?”

“NO, sorry the box is not available today, it will be here again on Monday”.

Decision made to leave the cat till Monday, bring him some food in the mean time and monitor his condition – will keep you posted on his progress and try and remember to add a photo.

“What now?”

The decsion was to eat, and we sat at U Maje i Tonke & sampled their chickpea salad, hummus & fresh bread (all very good).  It is so nice to have visitors to blether with, Hilary and I sat for about an hour and chatted before me feeling like I really ought to give Adolf a break from the shop.  So we walked over to Seba Dizajn and watched some jewellery being created for a while before taking another stroll.

I am now on the afternoon/late shift, and have just sold one of our beautiful silver filigree beads and a matching pair of earrings to a lady from Chicago, lovely to talk with her and share some of the filigree story with her. 

Now I have a second pot of coffee brewing and I am catchin up on my ‘homework’ – I am two days behind on both of Nikki Pilkington’s 30 Day Challenges that I am currently signed up for – the Facebook Business Page Challenge and the Blog Challenge… Challenge 7, ‘A Day in the Life’ now completed.  Wonder what’s next?

Cheers

Ruth