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Precious metal jewelry by Bent, Warped & Twisted
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This is my work - love it or hate it, this is my life story, interpreted through gemstones and lampwork beads and silver and gold... when I was 15 I knew jewelry would be my love, but that art was my life. At 39 I finally figured out how to put the two together in a way that helped me to express my life through my work. People have always told me I should write my life story, but my life is far from over, so I'm telling my tales through my memories of the wonderful times I've had so far!
I share my love of bead jewelry with my kids, my teenager makes gorgeous jewelry by crocheting 30 gauge sterling silver wire and younger two are lampwork lovers. It's truly a family activity!
Some of my pieces are available in the marketplace here, most are in my eCrater store and a locally owned boutique. Thank you for looking, comments are welcome, and to all the glass artists whose beads have made my work possible - I couldn't have done it without you!
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All the items I make with Ellyloo's Handful of Happiness beads are collaborative efforts, since they're designed around her beads and are made especially FOR her beads.
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This page is entirely devoted to the jewelry made by my 16 year old daughter Caitlin. These pieces have been crafted of 30 gauge sterling silver wire which has been crocheted (yes, you read that right - CROCHETED!) around the beads. She uses big beads, small beads, organics (check out the piece with the Indian corn and appleseeds!), shells, whatever strikes her mood at that particular moment.
She has made some stunning pieces with focal beads (please note MY gorgeous Mother's Day present - the pearl, peach moonstone and gold bead necklace with the cherry blossom focal bead!) and is being actively pursued for a wholesale agreement by a dealer in New Jersey. (I can't BEGIN to imagine what my other two kids will be doing when THEY'RE 16!)
The only things I can claim in all this is that I taught her how to crochet the wire and that I made the clasps for her jewelry pieces. Everything else is all Caitlin :)
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Someone suggested that I should add cellphone charms to my jewelry line (which seems to be taking on a life of its own lately!) so I went through my bead boxes and picked out some bead combinations and made a few up. I made them with large enough bails that they can be worn as pendants by taking them off the split ring (which can be left on the cellphone/MP3 player/portable gaming device/whatever). I also made up some heavier duty S-style hooks so that they can be used as zipper pulls :)
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These pendants are made with beads that, for whatever reason, make me think about dragons and dragon eggs and all the fanciful, fantastical, whimsical tales and stories and myths that I've loved all my life. A dragon egg can't just be your everyday garden variety egg egg, can it? It should have a really nifty sheen to it, or emanate some kind of inner glow or be shimmery and ethereal.
My dragon-love started out with "Puff, The Magic Dragon" by Peter, Paul and Mary and has only escalated throughout my life and I take it very seriously. When I put a bead in one of my Dragon Eggs pieces it's because it has touched that place in my heart and mind that loves dragons, treasures them and cries at the end of "Dragonheart" every time even though I KNOW the ending.
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My jewelry suites are ever-evolving. The only thing that doesn't change is the fact that they include a necklace, bracelet and earrings. Some include a pendant as well, for an alternate look, there's always a theme behind them, even if it's only in my own mind!
As always, props to H. Schmidt & Son for the precious metal wire - love y'all a Schwegman's bag full! Props also to all the incredibly talented glass artists whose beads are in my designs - I could NOT have done it without you! You ARE properly credited on each individual page :D
I just turn the beads into what they tell me they want to be, as someone once said, it's 99% inspiration, 1% perspiration. (Clearly this was before the invention of BAND-AIDS, however!)
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These are some of the pendants I've put together using focal beads from orphan bead lots and some of the marvelous lampwork spacer beads I got from Bits O' Glass (really hoping for MORE soon, too!) - I just kind of let the character of the focal bead guide me and tell me what it wants to be, these are the ones that told me they wanted to be pendants ;)
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Once again Lydia Muell of Ashton Jewels has inspired me to make hot air balloons. Except this time, she actually made the beads with my balloons in mind! A couple of the beads actually ARE balloons (the goldstone and white beads), the others have just been combined to create those wonderful, whimsical airships with their beautiful buoyancy! I hope you like them, I'll be listing them for sale if I don't sell out at our town's centennial fair!
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These are the things that you can't wear but are fun to look at. This is also where I put pictures of my incomplete pieces, half-realized brainstorms and the dreaded Things That Just Did Not Work.
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Diamonds may be forever, but they're just not all that unique. One more or less looks like another. I decided to put a new spin on "Past, Present, Future" pendants by using three complementary colored and patterned lampwork beads that, in combination, form truly one of a kind pendants that can never be duplicated - even by the artists who made the beads - since lampwork glass has a mind of its own and is born of fire and the talent and inspiration of the artists who create it.
I hope you enjoy my new series, these pendants are available in my Etsy store and others will be made available in my BeadArtists.org marketplace store!
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Since October is only two months away and October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month I was inspired to create a series of pink pieces in honor of the Pink Ribbon campaign. I never met my maternal grandmother because of breast cancer, I lost the only Grandma I ever knew in 1990 to metastatic cancer after two radical mastectomies and right now my cousin's metastatic cancer after a double radical mastectomy and five remissions has returned and has reached her bones. She'll be 41 this month.
In what may be the ultimate irony I don't have the genetic predisposition for breast cancer from both sides of the family because I'm adopted, but I also don't know my medical history, so I know the importance of self-checks and mammograms.
These jewelry pieces are my tribute to the Pink Ribbon campaign, to breast cancer awareness and to cancer awareness in general. I plan to do other colors of jewelry for awareness for other causes that are important to me.
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I think this may be my favorite of all the pieces I've created so far, mostly because it took compiling two groups of orphan beads by Alexandra Spinglaschell (www.alexandra95026.com) to do it in order to get the color combination just right. I had the two raku and copper green swirlies from the first lot I purchased from Alex, received the third raku and copper green swirly in the second lot I purchased from her and received the three snakeskin-ish raku beads in a third lot. All I can say is that good things DO come to those who wait!
I am madly passionate about fancy jasper right now because it comes in every color and it goes with everything and in this case it just staged these beads perfectly - as did the wax resin core 20K waffle-texture Afghani beads and the solid 18K stardust beads with diamond-cut eternal ring pattern. All the colors just reflect what I see when I look out my window every day at at this time of year, out here in the country around sunset, when the sky get
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These are some of my 14K, 18K, sterling and fine silver bangle bracelets made with lampwork glass, sterling and .999 fine Thai Karen Hill Tribe free trade silver and gold, natural gemstone, occasionally, Swarkies or Miracle beads and hopefully a little whimsy - hope you like them!
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I got this bead today from GlassValley and it totally sums up everything I'm feeling right now. I got word Monday night that my cousin, who is 14 months older than me, who has been battling metastatic breast cancer for the last five years, has had a recurrence and the cancer has spread to her bones and it is now just a matter of time.
I found this bead so ironic, the heart is solid, but it's broken at the same time. Just like mine.
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Hate to use this page as a forum, but since SOMEONE took advantage of the fact that I removed ALL the jewelry I made with her DEFECTIVE beads to post beads she made called "Dragon Eggs" - which just happens to be the name of my jewelry series, which just happens to focus around the baby dragons my 16 year old daughter makes out of PMC/art clay silver, I guess I have to say something.
I don't like unoriginal people. I like antagonistic people even less. The necklace used as the snappie for this gallery no longer exists - I had to dismantle it because the SILVER was popping out of the BEADS. Like it did out of every other silvered bead I GOT from said seller. Caveat Emptor.
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This piece is composed of sterling silver wire, sterling silver beads, colored cultured freshwater pearls, red agate, green and green speckled glass beads, green foil-lined Delica beads, clear quartz crystal beads, Aventurine beads, Rhodonite beads, Garnet beads, and floral Bali spacer beads. All the links were handcrafted, as was the clasp and the 16 gauge jump rings. It does have matching earrings but I seem to have forgotten to take a picture of them, I'll add it when I take pics of my next batch of items!
I used these colors to evoke thoughts of citrus fruits and other tropical fruits including oranges, kumquats, pineapple, kiwi, persimmons, pomegranate (hey, the trees grow EVERYWHERE in Florida!), mangoes, papayas, Key limes, lemons, grapefruit, passion fruit and all the other wonderful fresh fruits we had when we visited our friends' grove when I was a child. Wonderful memories!
This piece measures 17" in length and is available in my Ruby Lane shop.
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My jewelry is Bent, Warped & Twisted - just like me ;) My website and forum and online gallery are still sort of under construction but the chat room's open for business, feel free to drop by!
Many of the pieces you see here are available in my Etsy store, if there's a piece you're interested in that isn't in my Etsy store drop me a line and ask about it, I may just not have gotten around to listing it yet! I do try to put "sold" signs on the pieces that are no longer available :)
I LOVE WORKING WITH LAMPWORK. It's not just a love, it's therapy. Marrying my love of jewelry with the art of lampwork glass and wire work is cathartic, relaxing and compared to a shrink, it's CHEAP! It's also something I can do with ALL of my kids that really makes our family time especially fun, and it fosters the importance of crafting and artistic expression in them in a time when an appreciation for true quality work and attention to details seems to be falling by the wayside. When they see the work that goes into it they have a much deeper appreciation for it!
I wish I could take up the torch myself but thanks to RA and the meds I take for it playing with fire would be not only dangerous but kind of stupidly irresponsible. Besides, someone has to BUY the pretty beads that all those wonderfully talented torchers make!
I try REALLY hard to give props to the glass artists who make the beads that I use in the pieces I make and put in my gallery but if you recognize your beads in my work and for some reason I had oatmeal for brains when I did the writeup and didn't acknowledge you PLEASE LET ME KNOW. I believe in giving credit where it's due and I couldn't make a bead out of Play-Doh and I'm not going to let anyone think I made these beautiful glass jewels that permit ME to put them in pieces of jewelry. I'm very fortunate to have had just the right beads tell me to come and get them, it's a moral imperative that I give their creators the proper respect!
Amy Bozarth
2605 Union Point RD
Union Point GA 30669 US
Phone: 800-759-6869
http://www.bentwarpedandtwisted.com
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Comments on This Gallery Page
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Amazing work!!! Very inspirational.
» Posted by
GearhartGlassArt
on 1/20/2008 9:15:49 PM.
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