Leather has really come into it's own as a jewellery style in recent times. I just love the way that it works equally as well for the country girl as it does for the city girl. Today I'm dressing up a simple strip of metallic leather with acrylic pearls and rhinestones to give it  an urban chic look. Don't you love how well pearls and crystals go with leather? Finished length: 9” (23cm) Here's what you'll need: Materials: Sizzix 9”x3” Metallic Leather TrimPiece – Bronze Assortment of clear acrylic rhinestones 2 x 14mm white round pearl  flat backs 4 x 10mm white round pearl  flat backs Assortment of white teardrop pearl flat backs Silver snap setter kit  (includes setting tool) Beacon 527 Adhesive Tools: Hammer Rotating hole punch Ruler and pencil S cissors toothpick Decide on the layout of the rhinestones and pearls for the cuff according to your assortment. Download this placement guide to help you. The guide will help you work out how wide your leather strip ne......

It's still showery here in South East Queensland and the rain is set to continue all week. Not good news for working with polyurethane resin so casting will have to wait for a while longer yet. But the good news is that epoxy is not quite as moisture sensitive as polyurethane. So I've turned my attention back to the Friendly Plastic cuff I made on the weekend. Here's the before shot of the bangle, ready for a coat of EnviroTex Lite resin to make it more durable and to protect the lovely metallic colours. Wow! What a difference the resin makes! The Friendly Plastic has now taken on a life of its own: the oranges glow, the reds are brighter and the whole bangle is an explosion of colour. And the high gloss, wet look? Well, I think the plastic is now more reminiscent of glass - dichroic glass even! I'll be back later in the week with a little peek at something I've been working on for a while. Don't want to give too much away just yet because it's still a way......

I can't work out whether I'm working or playing today. You see, I'm doing something that I love to do - playing with Friendly Plastic! And even though I'm working on a commission for a customer, it's hard to call it work when you love working with a medium so much..... it's much more like play! So, let's take a look at the project...... ....... a Fracture and Fusion cuff bracelet à la Jana Ewy. Jana is truly the queen of this technique! Check out her Just Bananas gallery for lots of fantastic and inspiring eye candy featuring this technique. I started by pre-scoring my strips of Friendly Plastic using a Stanley Knife and a metal edged ruler with a grid on it. The grid makes it easy to cut the strips accurately. It also has a guard so that your fingers won't get cut if the knife slips - a very important point when you're cutting something as slick and slippery as Friendly Plastic. Once the pieces are scored, if you haven't cut all the way through......

It seems I am in a very blue / black / brown mood at the moment..... these are the bangles I cast in the bangle and ring workshops over the weekend. Today I want to spotlight the two cuffs in that pile. I was disappointed with both of them when I pulled them from the mould; the tortoiseshell one was dull and lifeless and the marbling in the blue one was very mottled and not really marbled at all. I hadn't achieved the look I was after in either of them. But I could see a way to improve them both and it just involved a little bit of elbow grease. These two cuffs are going to get two very different looks.... high gloss for the tortoiseshell cuff and frosted for the icy blue one. Let's look at the tortoiseshell one first. This was cast with amber resin and marbled with brown and black pigments. It was rather dull and lifeless when it came out of the mould but it had some great black veins of pigment swirling through it. There's definite potential here so I gave it the " ......

One of my best finds at CHA this year was a wonderful company just entering the jewellery making market: Silver Creek Leather . Up until now, Silver Creek Leather has manufactured traditional leather craft products and tools but they have just introduced a truly unique range of silver plated jewellery components to compliment their leather craft range and I wanted to share with you one of their newest innovations: interchangeable focal centrepieces and leather bracelets.  The bracelets are made of quality cowhide leather and are pre-punched with holes spaced perfectly apart to accommodate the screw in focal centrepieces in the range. They come in black, brown and saddle tan. I've put together a tutorial below so you can understand how the components work. You can download a printable pdf from Mill Lane Studio . Begin by collecting all the materials you’ll need: Silver Creek Leather Bracelet J7033-02 Brown; or a plain leather bracelet and leather punch Deco Focal Piece J7023-00 Ste......