Featured Item. The dragonfly bracelet.

I've been doing a lot of promoting lately with this blog but it has been becoming more and more obvious to me that I am neglecting to show you Fashion Magpie Jewellery which this blog is named after, so to remedy this I have decided to start a weekly feature where I show you one item from my shop and tell you a little bit about the item.
For my first post I've chosen to go with my favourite piece in my shop at the moment, my dragonfly bracelet.

 

I made this bracelet at the beginning of October 2014 by trapping a 8mm dichroic glass cabochon under a Vintaj lily leaf donut, which I bent the lilies just slightly to better show the cabochon. I then wrapped a star shaped filigree around from the back to hold it in place.

 

 

Using a hole punch I made holes for the intricately designed Trinity brass dragonflies to hold onto with jump rings. Next I individually added the golden orangey coloured beads, then added some chain to the end and finished with hoop and T bar fastening.
At the request of the customer I can change the length of the chain to suit their wrist size. At the moment the bracelet measures 9 inches long.

All my items I have for sale I sell in an organza gift bag.

I have the dragonfly bracelet for sale at £10.00 with £1.95 postage and packaging to the UK (other countries can be posted to)

Another way to buy is to visit me this sat, 25th October 2014 at Bellingham town hall between 10-4
 

Folksy Friday. Happy Halloween

It's not long till the 31st October so I've searched Folksy for some suitably scary and frightful finds for Halloween!
Hope you enjoy my finds and don't forget to keep sharing through your favourite social media sites to help our fellow folksy friends out.

My first item is a tea light holder. The bats look great in the flicking light of the candle in this item named Bats for Halloween! Glass Tea Light Holder. I think this item would be great if you just wanted to cuddle up and read your favourite horror novel by candle light. If Bats aren't your thing Bex by Design have some other lovely designs you can chose from.

The second item tonight is perfect if your hosting a spooky party for Halloween. These Halloween Wine Glass Charms are sure to have your guests talking. Bojanglies have lots of other Halloween ghouls and ghost to chose from too.

 

Next up is something you'll need if your going out for Halloween, you need to keep that black lip stick somewhere. Why not keep it in a Halloween Fabric Cosmetic Bag by Cheeky Leopard? I love how fun this bag looks with its pumpkins, scaredy cats and ghosts with a poker dot lining.

Halloween originally started as a way to keep evil spirits who would rise on the 31st October from entering your home. With this wreath on your door I'm sure you'll keep though evil spirits from your door. The wreath is called Monster Halloween Wreath and is made of organza ribbon by Stitchables.

 

Have you ever wanted a wedding on Halloween? It would certainly be different! Maybe you could use this Halloween Inspired Bead Boquet for your bride by Button Bloomz

 

My last item from folksy on my Halloween inspired weird and spooky list is this adorable Pumpkins by Midnightjewels19. These Halloween glow in the dark earrings are brilliantly if your taking the kids out trick or treating. They look great, they glow in the dark and there fun.

 

 

Hope you have fun this 31st October and stay safe.

 

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Folksy Friday. The 5 best photography pictures on folksy.

As well as enjoying making jewellery I also have other passions I enjoy. I love landscape photography and living in the heart of Hadrian's wall country is perfect for this hobby. I have loved photography all my life and even at one point left my job to pursue a career and train up properly but it has never got past being a hobby for me.
I have a Lumix G2 I brought a few years ago, I love this camera and especially love the touch focus and the screen which you can pull out and spin round.

My favourite place to go take photos is Allen Banks just out side Barden Mill in Northumberland. It is a wood on the Ridley Hall estate which is particularly beautiful at this time of year when the leaves are changing as you can see from the picture above. Unfortunately the Victorian 'wobbly' bridge over the river was destroyed last winter and it's not due to open again for a while. To read more about the 150 year old wobbly bridge read here.

My Folksy Friday this week is the beautiful photography pictures I like on folksy that i've found and they've took my breath away or made me say wow!
My first picture I chose is Old Fruit Market, Glasgow. The photographer, Stuart Brown Photography, describes this picture as 'old world charm' something I think this picture has buckets of. I love the crisp colours and the old signs of the fruit market. This picture make me want to travel to Glasgow just to find this place which I think is the mark of a very good picture.

 

My second picture is of Ashness bridge in the Lake District. I love the contrast of the rocks in the stream with the oranges of the field and trees behind. It reminds me of a bridge as you're going out of Kielder Village north toward Scotland there is a moor with a little bridge simpler in style to this one. I like stone bridges, they have so much more character then there modern equivalents.

This photo is by OCONNART

 This is the type of picture I love to do myself. Getting right up close to something like in this picture, rain/dew drops. This photographer is one I've featured on folksy Friday before (read here)  there called FizzStudio. This picture is beautiful and so serene, it looks like the calm after a storm when it's rained hard then the moon peaks out from the clouds and catches on the drops, or it could just be my imagination but I still love this picture called Amber Moon. 

A flashback to my childhood now with this picture of a Chinese Lantern plant shell. I love these plants, they remind me of going to wait of my mam finishing work. She worked for a group called helping hands who looked after old people in their homes. At one of the houses, the house of an old man called Mr Goodfellow, he grew these plants in his front garden.
This picture captures beautifully how skeletal the orange goes on the lantern part of the plant. I chose this picture because of my memories and because I think my mam would like it. (xmas present idea?!) The work is by the brilliantly named Stories Under Stones Claire Simpson.

My last find is a picture of Sycamore Gap on Hadrians wall. When I saw this picture I immediately knew it had to be added to this list. My partner and I went walking up here last spring with our dog. To though who don't know, this is the tree from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves the 1991 film with Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman, read here to find out more about the trees involvement. 

When ever I went for a drive up here with my parents when I was little, my brother and I would look out for Robin Hoods tree.

This version of the picture is by Becky Whittaker Photography, she doesn't have many pictures on folksy but this one has been spotted by me and made the list of my beautiful photography pictures on Folksy Friday.

 

If you would like to buy any of these pictures just click on their coloured links and you will be taken over to there picture.

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Throwback Thursday. The Unknown Great That Was Archibald Knox

It was relatively recently that I came across this designer when I was researching for my post on Celtic design jewellery back in August 2014. read here

His name is Archibald Knox and although his designs were pretty well known in their time he has sadly started to fall into the background. This year is the 150th anniversary of his birth and effort has been made by various societies to do events to celebrate the man. I think that is wonderful because it is such a waste if we forget about such a talented individual. He is slowly starting to gain interest again and it is said even the actor, Brad Pitt has a collection of  his works.

He was raised on the Isle of Man by his Scottish father and Manx mother. They had a large family and where successful on the island, they where even the first family to introduce the motorcar to the island. The Isle of Man's Celtic roots fascinated Knox, such as the intertwined details of the Norse and Celtic Crosses, He was expected he would join his fathers business like his brothers before him but instead he moved away from the isle of Man to teach and joined Liberty and Co's Silver Studio where he made some of his best known pieces.
Unfortunately Liberty and Co did not say who made each piece instead keeping the designers names anonymous so they could build their own brand up. It's a shame they did this, it is probably the reason he's not as well known as he should be but as far as I can see Knox  liked it that way. He was shy and didn't like a fuss made so it suited him.

At age 18 he began teaching at his former school, Douglas grammar school, it was here he met his lifelong friend A J Collister. He moved on to be a pupil teacher with his friend at Douglas School of Art and after ten years he was awarded an art Masters Certificate. In 1897 he began teaching at Redhill School Of Art with his friend who was now principal of the school having himself been awarded a London Diploma. It was during this time that Knox had also started work at Liberty and Co and he befriended the director Harry Napper. By 1899 Archibald Knox was the main designer for Liberty and Co 'Cymric' and 'Tudric' Celtic range of metalwork's.  His designs where made in a Celtic revival style and used the whiplash design used in art nouveau designs. (read here for what is Art Nouveau?) He used a natural design and would use a leaf as a heart or geometric designs.

All the pieces where made from silver or sometimes gold and inlayed with enamel, turquoise matrix or one of my favourites, mother of pearl. Another piece he would use in designs was opal, another stone I love and wish I could use more of in my own designs.
From here he returned to the Isle of Man and lived in Sulby and kept working for Liberty and Co. This was his most prolific period of his life making more than 700 jewellery designs among his other work of water colours, terracotta garden ornaments, carpets, wallpaper, fabrics and other household items. For Example this box in the picture below, I love that box and if I had the money would buy it up in a heartbeat. It's beautiful!

In 1904 he returned to London working various teaching jobs in the surrey area. 1912 he resigned from one of these jobs at Kingston On Thames allegedly due to an adverse inspectors report and moved to America. His students at the school where horrified to find there beloved teacher had thrown his drawings in to a bin in a rage before leaving and they decided to rescue the pieces. The students resigned en masse and set up the 'Knox Guild of Design and Craft' which existed until 1937. They held demonstrations and exhibitions over the years to promote Knox's view of Art and Design.

Archibald Knox only stayed in America a year before returning in 1913 to the Isle of Man, it was here he spent the rest of his life teaching and painting watercolours. Only being interrupted from this during War time when he worked for the post office.
In 1933 he died aged 69 from a heart attack at his family home in the Isle of Man. He was buried at New Braddan Cemetery.
His gravestone reads:

'Archibald Knox

Artist

Humble servant of God in the ministry of the beautiful.'

 

On the 4th April 2014 as part of the 150th Anniversary of Knox's birth, the Isle of Man announced they would be issuing a special set of 10 stamps through the isle of Man post Office featuring some of his watercolour designs.

 

Throwback Thursday Elizabeth Taylor part 3 Taylor/ Burton Wedding rings

Dame Elizabeth Taylor is known around the world not only for her films, Cleopatra, Come Home Lassie and Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? To name a few, but also for many other things.
She was a great friend and confidant.
It was through one of these friendships she started her first charity. Her friend Rock Hudson, whom she had starred with in Giant, contracted AIDs and she was so outraged at the behaviour of people reactions to the disease that she vowed to help him and others like him to deal with it. She devoted a lot of her spare time to the charity she named the Elizabeth Taylor AID's Foundation. It was for her work with this charity that she was given the title Dame by the Queen.
It was to this charity that the all proceeds of the auction went to.
Of course another thing she was famous for was her eight marriages, two of which where to Richard Burton.
Their wedding rings where part of the auction and they where estimated to sell for $6-8000. Fifteen minutes of bidding later they fat exceeded there estimate with the rings selling for £1,022,500 and ending the jewellery section of the auction.
The rings were gold and diamond bands, used for both their marriages in 1964 and 1975.

The couple met on the set of Cleopatra in 1961. Both Taylor and Burton were married at the time and started an affair. Before this the film companies had largely hushed up any media speculation of affairs on set between actors but this one was different and caused a massive scandal in the day. The film finished in June 1962 and the pair where seen holidaying in Italy.

Richard Burton gave her a gift of an emerald and diamond necklace designed so it could be detached and worn as a brooch also.
When Elizabeth's divorce came through she married Richard.
The first time they married was 15th March 1964 in the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Montreal, Canada. Nine people attended, including Jim Benton as Burtons best man.
Elizabeth wore an empire style chiffon gown in daffodil yellow with the emerald and diamond brooch. In her hair she wore lily of the valley and hyacinth.

For 10 years the couple where the golden couple of Hollywood. It was during this time that Burton brought the Taylor- Burton Diamond which was originally a ring but reworked by Cartier into a necklace. He also brought her famous Krupp Diamond ring which we talked about last week (read here)

The first marriage eventually ended in Saarinen, Switzerland. They divorced 26th June 1974, but only 16 months later wedding bells where ringing again for the couple.
They re married  in Africa on the 10th October 1975, choosing to marry in secret at Chobe lodge Kasane, Botswana.
Unfortunately it didn't last and on the 29th July 1976 they divorced again.
Both Taylor and Burton married other people after their second divorce and never got back together, but their union remains one of the great couple of this legendary time in Hollywood.
Richard Burton died in August 1984 aged 58.
Elizabeth Taylor died in Los Angeles, 23 March 2011 aged 79 of congestive heart failure.

I wish I could have met this brilliant woman I think she seemed like a strong, loyal lady with a fabulous eye for jewellery, (even if most of her jewellery was gifts from admirers.)
I could have wrote far more then just 3 posts on the jewellery of Elizabeth Taylor but I limited myself to just three. If you would like to know more about her jewellery or indeed the woman herself she has a book she wrote about her passion for jewellery. Click here for more information.

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Folksy Friday. World Smile day

Happy world smile day!
The photo below is one I've come across a million times over on the internet but I love it and the message it sends is just perfect for this post today.

I thought today I'd celebrate all that makes me smile so I've complied a list of folksy favourites that either have a smile or make me smile. see what you think and don't forget to spread the happiness by sharing this post.
My first picture is the happiest little brooch I've ever seen. He's called Happy Tree Felt brooch and is by Kool Kooky Kreatures. Her shop is just filled with fun and you'll have to have a heart of stone not to adore this little guy!

 

Next up is the most beautiful diva cat. Reading the description of this piece I found out the cat is actually a photo print of her friend's cat enjoying basking in a bit of sun. The piece is called Purrfect Cat photo cushion "its summer time and I'm feeling good." The piece is by Debmadethat, click on either of the links to find out more about this happy kitty.

 

If you feel like spreading the joy why not do it with a print? This print is simply titled smile and it will fit happily into a standard size frame, so you can spread a little happiness every time you look at it. The piece is by Little Bird Creative.

This piece is by a lovely lady some readers might be familiar with as back in July I did a guest blog post for her. (You can read it here) This piece is by looking glass designs and is called Red Alien Camera Buddy. I could just imagine someone using this in a photography studio to make taking baby / children portraits more fun. I can hear the laughter now! If you are the budding photographer who could use a design like this it also comes in other designs.

 

Next is another designer regular readers will recognise. It's Bough to Beauty who I had as my own guest bloggers last week. (read here) This piece is one of their wooden camera earrings made from upcycled wood and laser cut, there called Red Snap Happy Wooden Camera Earrings. They also come in white, purple, blue and black.

 

Lastly a piece sure to make all you coffee lovers out there smile. It's called Personalised 'Wish This Was' Hot Chocolate Stencil and you use it to put a stencil of anything you like onto your hot chocolate or latte. Just let them know when you buy what you want your stencil to say and they'll make it for you. It's by a young designer called Sophia Victoria Joy and her shop is full of these personalised pieces from wedding cake stoppers to photo block holders she'll do it for you.

 

Hope this post has spread a little joy to you today on world smile day, don't forgot you can do the same by sharing this post. just click on the social media links below.



 

Throwback Thurday. Elizabeth Taylor Part 2 The Krupp Diamond.

In last weeks post I told you about the Peregrina pearl and the auction it sold in (read here) and in this weeks I will be telling you a little bit more about the landmark auction that sold them and also about the Krupp diamond, Elizabeth Taylors favourite piece of her massive jewellery collection.
The collections of Elizabeth Taylor went under the hammer in New York at Christie's Rockefeller saleroom from 3-17 December 2011.
The interest in the sale was world wide and people from 36 different countries were bidding for a piece of the Hollywood icon.
Christie's ran their first ever online auction at the same time as the live auctions and received over 57,000 bids during the sale which added up to a massive extra $9.5million sold. In total 26 of the lots for sale sold for over a million.
It wasn't just her jewellery either, her clothes went up for auction too and featured pieces she had worn on the red carpet, pieces from famous dinner dates and her yellow wedding dress from her marriage to Richard Burton.
Before the auction even started the collection had been apart of a exhibition which toured around the world and stopped at United Kingdom, Moscow, Paris, Los Angeles, Hong Kong Geneva and Dubai.

On the 16th December the Krupp Diamond went up for sale  and made a massive $8,818,500.
The diamond is 33.19 Carat and has a Asscher Cut which is when the diamond is cut in a square stepped cut. It also has a Culet Facet (flat bottom) which dates it to pre 1920's experts think as the Culet was phased out after then.
The Krupp Diamond is chemically pure and potentially flawless with exceptional transparency making it a very rare diamond.
It's name comes from it's previous owner, the actress Vera Krupp, the 2nd wife of the German steel magnate Alfred Krupp who supplied munitions for the second world war. It was sold as part of the Krupp Estate.

In 1959 the Krupp Diamond became part of a heist in Las Vegas, the FBI where called in to investigate. The thieves had seen Vera Krupp wore the diamond ring a lot and on the 10th of April 1959 broke into her ranch in Las Vegas by force and ripped the ring from her finger before tying her and the other people present, some foremen, up with the wire from a lamp. They also took $700,000, a camera and a revolver but where eventually found. The culprits put the diamond up for sale 6 weeks later in New Jersey which proved to be their downfall and the FBI found them and the diamond and it was returned to Vera Krupp. The culprits where prosecuted and imprisoned.
The diamond was the first piece of jewellery Richard Burton brought for Taylor when he brought it in 1968 for $305,000.

Taylor wrote in her book 'Elizabeth Taylor: My Love affair With Jewelry' “When it came up for auction in the late 1960s, I thought how perfect it would be if a nice Jewish girl like me were to own it.”

Elizabeth Taylor wore it as a ring and it often featured in films, and personal appearances she was in. It even made an appearance in the 1992 Simpsons episode when she is seen polishing her ring with a toothbrush and looks into the sparkle of the ring on her finger.

When Elizabeth Taylor died on 23 March 2011, the Diamond was renamed The Elizabeth Taylor Diamond.
The ring sold to the South Korean conglomerate E-Land.

Next week in the last part of the Elizabeth Taylor series of posts I'll tell you about the wedding rings of Taylor and Burton and explore more about the turbulent marriage of this original golden couple of Hollywood.

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