How to Choose Chainmaille Jewelry

I buy handmade items to get better quality than the mass produced stuff you can find in any old store. I also love to be surprised by all the unique and wonderful items I find.
When I want to buy something I want to get the most bang for my buck. I'm not prone to impulse shopping. I want to get the most for my money and will research the heck out of anything I'm going to buy. So I got to thinking that I should let all my readers out there know how to choose good quality chainmaille jewelry.



Now most of the time when you think of chainmaille you think of knights in armor and swords or Renaissance Faires and people in costumes, but Chainmaille can make very beautiful and unique jewelry.

Before you buy chainmaille jewelry you need to know a little about how it's made to know how to choose your jewelry.

Chainmaille is composed of interlocking metal rings. There are two basic steps in making chainmaille: 1. Make rings, 2. Weave rings. Sounds simple right? That's what I thought too, but chainmaille can get pretty complicated. There are many weaves and variations on chainmaille. Some can be very simple and some can be very difficult.

The bracelet at the top of the page is a weave called jens pind linkage, a beautiful spiraling weave that took me three days, lots of cursing and tossing of rings before I mastered this weave.

I don't make my own rings, although I wold love to, I just don't have the space. So instead I purchase my rings already made. Choosing my supplier (that sounds so shady), was a time consuming process as I quickly learned all rings are not made equal.

As I go through this series of articles I will cover the many aspects involved in making chainmaille jewelry. I will cover the materials used, the quality of those materials. The time involved, and basic construction. Stay tuned, there's more good info to come.

Give it Away, Give it Away Now

Did just date myself with that title? Well you guessed it I'm doing a giveaway and a raffle, of sorts.

I'll start with the raffle. I learned how to make these nifty little scratch off cards, so I decided it would be neat to make some for my one year business anniversary. At first I was going to give out tickets to each customer and one lucky winner would get some big prize, but I would have felt bad for everyone who didn't win, so instead everybody wins! Well every one of my next 30 customers.

I made 30 of these nifty scratch off cards with varying discounts. Some are for 5% off, 10% off, or 15% off. There is also one each of 25% off, free shipping, and $25 off purchase of equal or greater value. But wait, there's more.

If any of my previous customers would like a ticket,just email me with your info, user name, email address and what you ordered and I'll send you a ticket.

Now for the giveaway. I will be giving away this lovely Tao 3 Pendant and Earring set:

Or this set of Mobius Stitch Markers:

To enter for a chance to win one of these lovely prizes, all you need to do is leave a comment saying which prize you would like to win. Make sure you leave a away for me to contact you so I can let you know if you've won. I'll be accepting entries for this contest from now until April 2nd, 2010.

Was that to easy for you? Want more chances to win? You got it. Please leave a comment with links or other pertinent info for your extra entries

1 Extra entry if you grab my button and add it to your blog or website.
1 Extra entry if you follow my blog.
1 Extra entry if you follow me on twitter.
1 Extra entry if you tweet about this giveaway.

I entered Tora Jewelry's Giveaway! #giveaway @torajewelry blog here –> http://tinyurl.com/y8n5t7s

1 Extra entry if you fan my facebook page http://www.facebook.com/torajewelry?ref=sgm
1 Extra entry if you Stumble my giveaway.

2 Extra entries if you go to my etsy shop and comment what your favorite item is.
3 Extra entries if you blog about the giveaway and post a link to your blog post in the comments below.
5 Extra entries if you purchase an item from any of my shops, either on etsy, artfire or my website

I will notify the winner the following day! You will have 48 hours to claim your prize or I will have to pick another winner. Winner will be chosen through random.org, so the more entries you have, the more chances of winning! You must leave a way for me to contact you, or your entry won't be eligible. You cannot leave several comments for extra entries, you must earn your extra entries by following the different things you can do under my Extra Entries section. You are responsible for knowing what is allowed to be shipped to your country. If you enter a giveaway and win something that can't be shipped to your country, your entry will be disqualified and a new winner will be chosen.

Thanks for participating in this giveaway!

New Earrings, Bad Pictures

I made these beautiful argentium silver and rainbow niobium byzantine earrings. They came out great and I'm excited to list them in my shop but I can't get a good picture of them. Or at least not one I'm happy with. Here's a pic that came out ok.
Also, keep an eye out, I'm going to do a giveaway soon.

Finding Neat Stuff

Ever since I started selling on etsy, I have spent a large amount of time just looking through the items and finding some amazing things. So I thought I'd share some of the neat things I've found with you people.

A few weeks ago I found this awesome seller and these super cool journals. Some glow in the dark, how cool is that?! Check them out, buy their stuff, and here's a link to their blog http://spiderbiteboutique.blogspot.com/.

Etsy Buy Handmade ToraJewelry

Going Mobile

My hubby bought me a new phone and I'm testing out a mobile blogging app.

Here's a pic of what I'm working on, two wallet chains to make. Hope this works.

New Jewelry

Yay, I finally listed some new jewelry in my shop. Just one necklace for now, but I'm going to be taking pics and trying to get up the rest soon. Here's my Spiral Crystal Drop Chainmaille Necklace.

Long name right? But I'm trying to get all the relevant search words in the title since most search engines use the first 60 characters for relevant searches.
I found this pretty focal piece in a little bead store in Riverside. I have one more, but I think I'm going to do something different with the other, so this will be the only necklace like this.
The chain is made up of the Japanese 2-2 weave. There are three spiral chains dangling from the main chain and the center spiral has a mobius flower in the center.A pretty necklace and I'm very pleased with how it turned out, I've had this idea in my head for months now and it's awesome to see how it turned out.

Happy New Year!

I know I'm a little late but I've been taking an unofficial vacation, trying to get done all those projects I've been meaning to get to, and enjoying some time with hubby and the kids. I've got a ton of pics of some new pieces but i can't get them off my camera yet. I bought a new external hard drive and am in the process of moving the almost 500GB of stuff on my old hard drive to the nifty new 1.5TB. I found a program to do it for me and my computer isn't happy, it's slowed down to an insane crawl and wont recognize my camera.

I've made a new years resolution to lose weight. I've been pretty unhappy with my weight since the birth of my second child, but I've been procrastinating doing anything about it. Well that's going to stop, I've started jogging every day, and while today was only my second day I'm going to keep it up. I'm to young to have a sore back and knees all the time. I hope to buy the wii fit soon to help increase my daily exercise, or to use on days i might not be able to run. Wish me luck!