A fun and bright set for summer, made last summer (appropriately :) ). If not for bright colours would be very minimalistic and understated. Here it is:

 It's the end of November and I am working on Christmas presents already. As they are supposed to be surprises I am not going to show any just yet, but there are still some of the last year ones that have not seen the light of this blog.
One of them is my first try to follow a pattern and also make a symetrical soutache adornment.
There you go:

 This one was a super fast set if you consider that I made it practically overnight -- I received a request from a person I know for a birthday present, a birthday that is in two days... And all I had was one day to find all the materials that I would need and finish the set. It had to be elegant, understated but something that would not get lost when wearing a bussiness attire.
After carefully choosing the style and agreeing on colours I started my work and at 8 in the morning I was finaly done! Here it is.

 I made this brooch last year during the winter, loved the colours and warm feeling it gave me.
When I showed it to some friends the comments were unanimous -- it looks delicious :)
That's when the name came up -- it does look a bit like a sticky toffee pudding that I loved so much in UK.

I started doing this set for a competition but at the last moment forgot to send the photos in :) Happens, I'm such a scatterbrain sometimes.
Bought the hovlite hearts some time ago just because I liked the shape and thought it would look good with soutache. For some reason I could not find the right idea for them for a long time though. Then I bought this soutache ribbon that was black and white! Bought it just because it looked really fun and never thought what is it that I can use it for. So it also ended up lying in my crafts box for a while.

We got back from the show on Monday, and finally I found some time to write about it. This is an annual show, happening last weekend of October somewhere in the world. This time it was in Poznan and we (me and Kristina, the owner of  Karmino Cat cattery) decided that it is close enough to go and see what it is for ourselves.
We took two cats with us -- Exlibris Karmino cat (better known as Bučkis) and Excalibur Karmino Cat or Ex, as I call him at home. They are brothers of the same litter and look very much alike, except for a small detail -- Bučkis is a KBS (Kurilean Bobtail shorthair) and Ex -- KBL (Kurilean Bobtail Longhair). Thought truth to be told, kurilean bobtails (or if you google mostly called kurillian bobtails) are not truly longhair -- they are semi-long-hair, the only true longhairs being Persians and Exots.

As I mentioned in my description -- I do love animals and own a horse and some cats (at the moment 6 grown up cats and 4 babies) so the news about them are bound to jump into my blog from time time.

Last night one of my queens -- Serafima Karmino Cat gave birth to 5 little kitties -- 4 boys and a girl -- a pretty tortie, just like mamma. The boys -- two ginger and white little monsters and two elegant black and white numers are feeling jsut great and already voicing their protests loudly to the world. The little girl unfortunately did not survive -- something wrong with her lungs I suspect... A pity.
I will have a rowdy few months it seems :) Though in general Kurillian Bobtails (that is the breed of the cats that I own) are very easilly trained and by the time the kitties are a month old they will have learned all the essential rules of living in a respectable home :)

 It started getting cold here. Cold and drab... The pretty colours of autumn are almost gone, but my mind is still stuck in summer. Here's what it thought of most recently:

I am going to a steampunk/cyberpunk party tomorrow and have nothing to wear in the category of jewellery. Ok, I'm lying -- I do have a very nice pendant my mother gave me -- two brass jigsaw pieces connected with leather, really suitable, but appart from that -- nada, zilch.
So, I started browsing around and realised, that I could make some myself. I recently got some copper wire just to see how I will manage to work with it and after making a few clasps and other tidbits put it aside for the time being.

This set is a last year Christmas present for my mother -- she likes peals and I like bright colours, so this is what came out of the two:

So the event is over! Everyone (I hope) had great fun and I am really looking forward to the next one. I loved the fact that people took time to make or adapt their costumes to the requirements of their respective houses -- so the event looked beautiful as well as was interesting. For the latter we have to thank the game masters!
The premise of the game was that there is to be a wedding between two houses that have been at war with each other for a while already -- House Blackwood (the only followers of the old faith so far south) and House Bracken. The House which is the rulling house of all these parts is House Tully and the Lord of the house deemd this wedding to be the only way to finally end the enmities. Unfortunatelly Lord Tully dies several months before this takes places and Lady Ayleen Tully takes the matters into her hands to finish what her husband started.

 I have finally finished a choker for this set. It had to be a bracellet, but the motive I started sewing ended up being somewhat too long for a bracelet and now I have this:

 I have been making jewelry from soutache for a while when I realised that I still have nothing that I can wear -- everything was given as gifts or sold. So I decided taht this was it and the next item or a few will be mine, just mine, nobody can have them :) And so this at first small and now growing set started.
First I made a necklace:

Next month we will have a LARP in a R.R.Martin A Song of Ice and Fire setting. If you like knights, politics and such and still haven't read this R.R.Martin's series I really recommend it. I am going to play as the lady of the Tully family and in this case the liege lady of all involved. So I am making myself some clothes in Tully colours and of course -- jewelry to go with them. I have already finished a brooch and earrings. Here they are:

A few weeks ago I attended a friends' wedding. This story started a month or so before the wedding when one of my friends phoned me and asked whether I still make soutache jewellery and when I answered positivelly I found out that she needed white earrings. Ha! I though - this got to be for a wedding. After some adjustments the earrings became earrings and a necklace. And finally got the photos to prove it.

Behold -- Giedrė on her wedding day!



All the pictures are taken by me unless mentioned otherwise. If you fancy a piece of soutache jewellery with any of the stones on my website -- send me a message or convo me on etsy.

This is a piece of jewellery that I created for an auction to help Horse Protection Society in Lithuania. The theme of the works for the auction was horses and everything related to them. I thought of various different things that I could incorporate into a piece of jewellery but the most attractive one as far as the form goes was a horseshoe. The idea was born now I needed to find the materials and design the rest of the necklace -- anything else I thought would be too massive if done in the way that I imagined my horseshoe.

This piece of soutache was lying around unfinished for a long time -- thought to make it into a bookmark but then thought it is going to be too heavy.

Finally inspiration rescued me and I made it into a necklace.

Central stone is agate, the big beads are agate beads too. Smaller and small ones are pirite -- I love to work with it, makes the jewellery feel real for some reason. I used golden and blue soutache braid. Back -- soft leather.






All the pictures are taken by me unless mentioned otherwise. If you fancy a piece of soutache jewellery with any of the stones on my website -- send me a message or convo me on etsy.

Today I finally finished a hair clip -- decided to call it Japanese red, because my boyfriend said upon seeing it that for some reason it looks Japanese.
And so it became Japanese Red. Middle stones are fire agate, small round stones -- Carneol, black and grey soutache braid and Gutterman silver beads.




This hair clip is made to order, but so far the fate is unclear -- quite likely, that it will end up on my Etsy list.


All the pictures are taken by me unless mentioned otherwise. If you fancy a piece of soutache jewellery with any of the stones on my website -- send me a message or convo me on etsy.

Amethyst  is a violet variety of quartz. The name comes from the Ancient Greek ἀ a- ("not") and μέθυστος methustos ("intoxicated"), a reference to the belief that the stone protected its owner from drunkenness; the ancient Greeks and Romans wore amethyst and made drinking vessels of it in the belief that it would prevent intoxication.

Red jasper

Jasper -- it is so varied and different that at times it is even difficult to recognise it.
So many beautiful varieties of this particular mineral have caught my eye. I will show you some of what I have and tell you more about the mineral itself.

Next -- pyritised ammonites. The one I have is cut in an unexpected way -- not a horizontal cross-section, but vertical.

Second part of my stone collection.


It will feature Seraphinite (also known by the chlorite mica varietal name: clinochlore). The stones that I have are from Russia.

I have dabbled in felting very very little -- tried a wet felted flower and now am going to dive deep -- my own felted bag. Already have the wool and all the needed equipment, even have made the design and cut it out.

I am going to post photos of the more interesting stones that I have and information about them for those who would like to order a custom made piece of jewellery.


This is first part in which I will show you photos of beautiful Simbircite cabochons that I acquired recently.






This particular kind of stone has been discovered only recently and only in Russia. This is what you can find on the internet about it (the emphasis is mine):