On a whim, I spent some of my graduation money on a product called PMC3, or silver clay. This is silver particulate (mostly recycled from the electronics industry!) suspended in polymers, and it truly acts like clay! It's fast drying, but you can reconstitute it with water, and you can create a slip paste using leftover clay and essential oils.

Enchanting Moonstone Elven Leaf Necklace

These are the first three necklaces I've made (well, successful ones that didn't burn up in the kiln-- my dad found an old one on ebay and fixed it up for me, but we're having difficulties holding an accurate temperature for more than an hour).

Blue Moonstone Vine Teardrop Necklace

The gemstones in these necklaces are all true moonstone-- it's a beautiful quartz-like white, but when the light hits it, it shimmers with flashes of blue, purple, and sometimes even green and gold.

Elven Moonstone Necklace

I recently purchased some silver clay to combine three things I love: sculpting, jewelry, and tiny miniature things. It hasn’t been a disappointment! I spent every hour of my spare time fiddling with bits of clay under a magnifying glass, making flower garden rings, Elven pendants, and silver leaves. The clay gets fired for two hours at 1650 degrees and turns out solid fine silver. ❤️ I just used up the last of the clay today and really want to buy more to keep playing—but it’s really expensive and I don’t know how well these pieces will do yet. Self control… self control… 😩 (I’ve been sharing my progress with with this technique on my Instagram stories, so give those a follow if you want to see more! Especially if you like to see things on FIRE 🙃) #silverclay #pmc3 #behindthescenes #wip #ontheworkbench

A post shared by Shaylynn Ann (@shealynnsfaerie) on Mar 29, 2018 at 9:19pm PDT

This video is from my Instagram stories; give me a follow @shealynnsfaerie because I post this sort of thing a lot!

All that remains is polishing with my dremel tool, files, and micro-sandpapers. I also gave all three of these pendants a rich patina, darkening the crevices to make the designs stand out.


As I was adding the final polish to these necklaces, I couldn't help thinking of the old rhyme "Lavender's Blue." The shimmer of the moonstone is so serene and calm-- like the rhyme, which is my special lullaby to my littlest sister.

Lavender's blue, dilly dilly, lavender's green,
When I am king, dilly dilly, you shall be queen:
Who told you so, dilly dilly, who told you so?
'Twas mine own heart, dilly dilly, that told me so.

(The new Cinderella movie has a lovely version of this in the credits-- here's a link to the song!).

Additional moonstone beads and pearlescent Swavroski beads on a slender, delicate, and STURDY fine silver chain

The backs of all these pendants have holes to allow more light to scatter throughout the gemstone

During the last two years of college, I would occasionally pull out my jewelry-making supplies and just tinker for a while-- a habit resulting in a bunch of lovely jewelry that never really saw the light of day. Making jewelry, you see, is calming and stress-relieving, but styling and photographing and uploading to my shop is this thing called work. Sixteen hour days full of classes and homework and freelancing and all the rest really just doesn't endear one to taking on extra work.

"All that is gold does not glitter"

"Not all those who wander are lost"

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Here you can see the bracelet I'm giving away, next to my handpainted LOTR silk scarf and Sting, the Hobbit sword-- and if you like LOTR prop replicas check out this old post!

I'm excited to see this bracelet off to a new home! :) But I'm also excited to see some of your stories about Lord of the Rings below.

I'm finally re-reading the books myself (I'm on the Two Towers now) and the story has changed so much for me since freshman year of high school when I last read through all of them. I think I first read LotR when I was ten, because if I wanted to watch a PG-13 movie before turning 13, my parents had a rule that I had to read the books first. Back then, I only followed the basic plotline but fell head-over-heels in love with the movies. I wanted to be Arwen for Halloween when I was 13, and my mom taught me to sew so that I could have a dress. I didn't have any money to spend on Elvish headpieces and jewelry, though, but my parents bought me pliers, floral wire, and plastic pearls at Walmart. And that is the story of how I started making jewelry-- a journey which eventually turned into my little shop which helped me pay for school! I then poured over the books (and the Silmarillion, Lost Tales, etc) again and again.

Now that I'm reading the books as an adult (ohmygosh I'm a grownup now) I'm taking away something completely different. I'm becoming especially appreciative of the poetry (even if it's not all that greatly acclaimed as poetry on its own-- I love the un-self-conscious joy of simple poetry) and savoring the loving descriptions of nature and mythology.

Since returning from travel in mid-January, I've been putting aside a bit of time every day to rejuvenate my Etsy shop-- during school, I worked mostly on commissions and did not have the time to put in to my regular inventory. I set up a photo studio in the garage and have re-photographed a dozen pieces and finally photographed and uploaded another dozen more pieces that I had only shown at craft fairs.

And I've finally unpacked my jewelry supplies and made some new pieces!

My most recent experiment is this hair piece, featuring real garnet and a mixture of freshwater and top-quality glass pearls:

Garnet and Pearl Hair Fork, on Etsy

I recorded some of the process in the video below:



It's one of the more expensive hair forks I've made, considering that it is decorated with semiprecious gemstones and involved some of the most intensive wirewrapping work I've tackled in a while!

Moonstones and opals and silver oh my. ✨✨✨ #workinprogress #jewelersbench

A photo posted by Shaylynn Ann (@shealynnsfaerie) on Jul 5, 2016 at 8:27pm PDT

When worn, the ring turns a little pink as the light reflects off the skin. When held up to the light, it flashes with some brilliant hints of blues, purples, and whites. The opals, of course, sparkle with a full rainbow of colors.