Handmade Jewelry

Handmade Jewelry

One-of-a-Kind, Wearable Art

Looking for something different? Something natural? Jewelry doesn’t have to be made from hard, cold metal and stone cut from the earth in destructive mines. It doesn’t have to be mass produced to all look the same.

It can be made from warm, organic, renewable sources. It can be lovingly crafted by hand, each piece unique, each piece a small work of art.

I make two types of jewelry using natural materials raised here on the farm. The first type is made from needle felted wool. The other, from hand-carved sheep’s bone.

The photos on this page show just a few examples of my work. To see what is currently available, visit my Etsy shop.

I also do custom orders. Please inquire!

Text Box: Needle Felted Wool Jewelry Wool jewelry is warm, light, and eye-catching, with a firm, slightly fuzzy texture. To make these unique pieces, I shear five different colors of sheep, then wash and card the wool by hand. Once the wool is prepared, I create the shapes by needle felting: a time-consuming technique that involves poking a small bundle of wool thousands of times with a barbed needle until the fibers interlock. Wool is such a malleable and forgiving medium, you can do almost anything with it. With the felted jewelry I don’t have to be formal and structured. I can be whimsical and try whatever idea strikes my fancy. I like to make designs inspired by nature: animals, flowers, fruit, acorns, leaves. But sometimes I just like to play with the colors and textures of the wool in abstract ways, making decorated or unusually shaped wool beads. I never use dyed wool. All my colors are the natural colors of sheep in my flock. I'm constantly amazed at how colorful the results can look, just using the natural palette of white, black, gray, brown, and tan.

Carved Sheep Bone Jewelry

Bone jewelry is light and luxurious, with a smooth, organic feel that is more comfortable against the skin than either metal or stone.

Each piece of bone jewelry I make is individually hand-carved and polished from natural Icelandic sheep bone, so no two are ever exactly alike.

It is a challenging material to work with, rigid and unforgiving of mistakes. So my designs are very much dictated by the shape and structure of the material. But I love the challenge—and the results!

I like to use simple, flowing patterns to show off the innate beauty of the material. Shapes from nature, as well as Celtic, Pictish, Viking, and other ancient cultures, inspire many of the motifs in my work.

My materials come from my own lovingly raised flock of sheep, and each bone is cleaned naturally by exposure to wind and weather, then briefly sanitized with hydrogen peroxide. No harsh chemicals are used!

PLEASE NOTE:

All the bone jewelry is

cruelty-free, respectfully harvested from sheep that

died of natural causes,

NOT sheep that were

sent to slaughter.

Ear Tag Earrings

I also make these fun earrings from genuine livestock ear tags, the very same ones we use to identify the lambs on our farm.

We buy the tags in packages of 20, but the number of lambs born each spring doesn't usually match up. So we always have a few tags left over. I thought it would be fun to turn the extras into earrings.

They are bright and cheerful, made of lightweight, slightly flexible plastic. The imprinted numbers are different on each pair. Great conversation pieces! Available in my Etsy shop.

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