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

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!

Of course, we started with an adventure.

"It's a dangerous thing, going out your door--" especially when fences are involved.

Thankfully, no one was hurt, and the fact that these photos of the fall exist make us very happy.

All a summer dress needs is a cloak and some jewelry and it's fit for a princess!

C. is wearing my Aurora Rhinestone Circlet made with champagne colored silk-- inspired by Princess Aurora in the show Once Upon a Time.

The circlet is made out of braided wire, and the Enchanted Evenstar necklace was originally designed for a custom bridesmaid set.

I was glad to get a close-up shot of this necklace. It's another Enchanted Evenstar design, and still carries a summery beach feel, even when we are in the middle of the woods. (Then again, another friend described it as a necklace for an Ice Queen, so to each his own).

This rhinestone and white satin headband was on my workbench as an unfinished Aurora Circlet, but the three of us decided that it works very well as a simpler headband.

"This picture is basically a movie poster." "YES I've always wanted to be in a movie!"

Portrait of a Queen. (I think that some of these pictures need short stories to go along with them!).

Once upon a time...

"She's like Little Red Riding Hood, without the Red."

"Now, an Elf."

I told them to act like a dragon was flying towards them. Their response was not quite what I expected.

The woods here are, to quote Frost, lovely, dark, and deep. But they are so dark and so deep that we were happy enough to stay on the paths at the skirts of the little forest.

One of my favorites-- L. makes a wonderful princess. The circlet is braided gold wire, the necklace has several flowers and bright green leaves, and you can even see the clasp I forged myself for the cloak. (Haha, you can also see how off the seams on the cloak are, but let's not talk about that, eh?)

A beaded bracelet, and one of the silver rhinestone rings.

This is an armcuff in forest greens!

No play-acting involved: this one IS a spritely fairy, with or without her costume.

Braided cuff and Star Flower ring. :)

This ring is one of the most difficult pieces I've made. It began as nothing but strands of sterling silver and a stone. Several hours of soldering and polishing later, and it's almost exactly what I wanted! The stone has a tiny bit of wiggle, so it's definitely a technique I need practice on. But this is a piece of actual fine jewelry. ^_^

The park has these fabulous giant stone frogs. We had a Thumbelina moment.