YazBerry Jewelry Collection: Leather Lace

The Leather Lace Collection features hand cut leather lace necklace, bracelets and earrings. I might even try a new ring concept soon! My leather lace collection is one of my most detailed and highest skilled techniques. I have written some background on my technique and inspiration before, and recently produced a short "making of" film which is available on youtube.

Bold and eye catching. Delicate like lace but with the strength of leather. Sometimes imitating metal, sometimes paper. Always distinct and free hand cut by me. Some producers use lasers to mass produce leather filigree jewelry. I do not. I pride myself in a steady hand and the ability to visually transfer a drawn design to leather by simply using small knives and piercing tools. I am good, really good. My free hand cut leather jewelry rivals and surpasses designs cut by lasers time and time again!

Most of these designs I can make in any color of leather or reproduce in similar look to what is featured. Many are currently available on my Etsy shop and on my facebook page. Inspired? Have a design you'd like to see in leather? Contact me to discuss custom jewelry options.

Ocean Artifacts

This pendant is available here.Let me start by saying that my mother would have kicked me out of the house as a child if I had grown up near the ocean artifact laden beaches of Salem. It's bad enough I had a rock problem (it got so bad they would periodically end up back in the yard...and I'd repick them ;) ). Salem has a rich history; of using it's beaches as the city dump. I hope and assume this is no longer the case, however am grateful that at one point, it was.

It started with beach stones this summer on Marblehead beach. Their ocean polished roundness, speckled patterns, solid black matte stones and quartz drew me in. Steve and I couldn't go to the beach without me taking home at least a couple fistfuls of rocks. I have a rock problem. I admit it. And since this summer was ghastly hot and we have no air conditioning...you can imagine how many times we went to the beach.

Then, in the middle of the summer one day on Artists' Row in Salem, I met Nancy, a beach comber extraordinaire. She brought in a tote filled with glass shards, pottery bits, corroded metal doohickeys and more one afternoon. We dumped it out on the sidewalk and I was hooked. I real live archeological dig (don't remind my mother of my digs in the ravines in our neighborhood growing up. Used as dumps at some point, I unearthed all sorts of curiosities).

Nancy laughed at me because I moved so slow assessing each item trying to determine what it was, how old it might be, how it got to be in the state it was currently found and washed up on the shores of Salem. She kindly let me take a small bag of treasures...which I promptly sorted by color/material and started making into jewelry. This Y necklace is available here.

Then I showed Steve...and we were both hooked. Here are some pictures of one of our beach combing excursions. On this one we unearthed all sorts of oddities. MANY whole bottles, bits of leather (towns surrounding Salem once were home to tanneries), chemistry remnants, melted glass and more. In the early 1900's Salem suffered a large scale fire and dumped the remains of it in the area we were combing.




AND The weirdest find of the day:

Classes & Workshops on Sewing, Jewelry Making, Fashion & More!

I've just added my calendar to the right here on my blog. To view the full size version, visit my Google Calendar link.



I will be updating it weekly with my schedule of free classes and demonstrations. Free classes will cover topics such as basic sewing skills, fashion design drawing, jewelry making with beads and wire and more! Classes will be offered at YazBerry Handmade Fashion store, Artists' Row, 24 New Derby St. #5, Salem, MA 01970

Private lessons available too, with Salem Artist & Designer, Virginia E. Berry (moi). Are you interested in learning how to make jewelry with beads, wire and chain? Do you have a sewing machine you've been meaning to learn how to use? Do you wish you knew how to hem your own pants? Did you take one of my free classes and wish you could learn more?

*Private lessons available to meet your schedule.
*$25 per 1 hour session.
*E-mail berry@yazberry.com for more information and to schedule your lessons.
*Location flexible, I have studio space, can meet you in my store or can travel to you.