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If you own a shop, gallery, or online boutique and would like to bring my jewelry to your area, please email me to discuss how we can work together.  I offer keystone pricing for retailers who meet a minimum.  I truly appreciate your interest in integrating my jewelry into the design of your store.

About the Materials Anne Uses
Sea Glass  
Bali Silver  
Hill Tribe Silver  
AnneMade Fine Silver (PMC)  
Lampwork

Sea Glass
My husband Steve and I like to walk on the beach.  When we lived near the Delaware River I noticed colorful, frosted gems lying in the sand, catching the sunlight and realized it was sea glass.  Some of the more rare pieces I keep, but I also enjoy incorporating sea glass into my jewelry designs. I adhere to the North American Sea Glass Association's Code of Ethics, which basically means that I never tumble, add artificial colorants, treat sea glass chemically with etching compounds, or use artificially created sea glass. 

Common Colors (mostly from beer bottles)
white/clear
bright green
brown

Semi-Rare Colors
cobalt & cornflower blue
seafoam green (from Coca-Cola & white wine bottles)
aqua (from Mason jars)
dark green & olive green (from red wine bottles)
amber
lime green
teal (from a bottling company in Bermuda)
gray
lavender (from World War era glass; the glass component manganese was unavailable from Germany during the wars and the substitute turned lavender with prolonged UV exposure)

Rare Colors
orange
pink
red (from tail lights of old boats and cars).

You can find out more about sea glass from the following books:
Pure Sea Glass, by Richard LaMotte, photography by Celia Pearson
Sea Glass Chronicles: Whispers from the Past, by C. S. Lambert, photography by Pat Hanbery.

Bali Silver
The sterling silver Bali beads that I use are handcrafted in Bali, Indonesia by exceptional artisans.  Each bead is cast into two parts that are hand decorated with ball granulations and wires which are first glued into place and then soldered to the bead.  Sounds like a lot of work to me, but the results are so beautiful. 

Karen Hill Tribe Silver
Created by family-artisans of the Karen (kuh-REHN) tribes in northern Thailand, these beads contain "high content" silver (above sterling's 92.5%).  Hill Tribe families use traditional methods passed down from generation to generation.  Each design is made by only one family, and the artisans are paid a fair wage for their products. Too often entire villages in this region are seduced into growing illicit drugs in order to survive. There are also cases of individual families allowing their children to be sent away to large cities for factory work. Many times they are deceived by the employer, and girls are sent to work for the prostitution industry. Working silver has become a valuable alternative to these practices, while sustaining a traditional craft and providing the Hill Tribe people with a reliable source of income.

AnneMade Fine Silver
I use PMC (Precious Metal Clay) brand of silver clay.  It is made by Mitsubishi Materials of Japan and consists of tiny particles of pure silver recycled from the film industry that are held together by an organic clay binder. Silver clay can be worked like modeling clay: rolled, stretched, imprinted, and squirted through a syringe.  It takes on texture from any object it touches, which yields some very interesting results. 

After the silver clay is dry it gets fired in a digitally-controlled kiln to burn off the binder and sinter (fuse) the metal particles. The result is a solid, 99.9% pure silver object referred to as fine silver.  (Sterling is 92.5% silver.)  The finishing process includes using a wire brush to remove loose particles of silver and give the piece a satin finish, then burnishing in a rotary tumbler with stainless steel shot to polish the surface.  I use liver of sulfur to oxidize most silver pieces, which brings out the surface texture and gives a rich patina to the piece.

Stones that are fired in place must be able to withstand the extreme heat of firing, so I use cubic zirconia stones in my fine silver pieces. They are created at a high temperature and are free from inclusions that can lead to breakage during firing. 

Lampwork: Handmade Glass Beads
Flameworked beads are one of my favorite things.  The tip of a glass rod is heated in a torch flame (the "lamp"), then the molten glass is wound around a metal rod (mandrel) and the surface of the resulting bead is shaped and decorated before being popped in a hot kiln.  Beads are kiln-annealed (cooled very slowly) to remove internal stress and give strength to the glass, then removed from the mandrel and cleaned. 

The glass that lampworkers typically use is "soft" soda-lime glass made by Effetre, Lauscha, and Bullseye. Borosilicate glass (Pyrex) requires an even hotter flame, but these beads have a beautiful range of soft ethereal colors that cannot be duplicated in soft glass.  Some of the lampwork beads I use are my own creation, but I'm still learning so most of the lampwork is from other artists. In general, lampwork beads are quite expensive compared to many of my other components, but these little pieces of art worth every penny!