Neon Rainbow Warrior: UV stars and ladybird necklace + gift bag

I’ve got something vibrant for you today, courtesy of Jess! A UV reactive necklace that looks great under UV or in regular daylight.

I’ll let Jess describe this one:

“This cyber necklace is made with glow in the dark and UV reactive beads.

A large yellow star is framed with a string of rainbow pony beads and a beautiful ladybird (ladybug for all our american friends….!)

Looking cute and colourful in normal daylight it transforms into an amazing piece under UV light- perfect for all you ravers out there!

Comes packaged in a red gift bag, perfect as a present.”See this item instore for more details

The Duchess’s Chronometer (Necklace)

I’ve decided to deviate from the regular antique brass colour theme on this, quite a feminine piece for an esteemed lady.

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/167266067/the-duchesss-chronometer-steampunk?

Jess has also been busy with her “fly me to the stars” necklace and earring set

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/167260724/fly-me-to-the-stars-rocket-necklace-and?

Just wanted to point out too almost all of our items come in lovely little gift bags 🙂

The chronofly has landed

Straight out of the piratelab, comes our latest invention THE CHRONOFLY, featuring an antique gold dragonfly adorned with recycled watch parts and forged on clockwork dreams:

This one of a kind necklace comes complete with dragonfly earrings to match. Check out our wire wrapped, glass dragonfly project too for more dragonfly goodness:

wire wrapped glass dragonfly

Also don’t forget to visit the item instore for more details and photos

(Dragon) fly by wire

I’ve been determined to get into wire wrapping after seeing a couple of really impressive items across etsy so the other day we picked some up, however it was more akin to fishing line: really springy and took some SERIOUS convincing to stay in place. To put it in perspective it took me well over an hour to wrap an inch and a half of it around itself before I begrudgingly called it quits!

Since then I picked up some more appropriate wire that goes where you bend it and the whole process was sped up exponentially! It’s fun to improvise, but in some cases you just need the right tool for the job. So anyway armed with the right equipment I had the 40 minute walk home from work to decide what I was going to do with it first. Figuring out and keeping track of exactly how you’re going to construct a shape and follow up wrapping it in your head is a tricky business indeed and as the complexity increases, the mental confusion escalates 10 fold! I’ve yet to devise a practical way of drawing a 3d wire pattern to any accuracy.

In the end I settled on a reasonably straightforward design of a dragonfly with glass beads making up the tail (the beads were upcycled from the beaded curtain spares we found at the car boot at the weekend). In total construction ran around 2 hours (I don’t know if this is an acceptable timeframe or not!) and here it is, my very first attempt, which I’m rather proud of 🙂

See it in the shop for more details and photos

Fingers are definitely a little sore this morning. If you’ve ever taken up playing guitar after 6 months of inactivity and gone at it a bit long you’ll know what I mean!

As a final though, although the springier line-style wire was unmanageable by itself, Jess had success in wrapping it around the more malleable wire I used for the dragonfly. Using softer wire for the outer of the jewellery is a good idea as it provides a more skin friendly surface if it is going to make contact.

Car boots, Shrewsbury & the bank holiday weekend

This bank holiday weekend saw us down in Shrewsbury investigating the Tuffin’s Sunday car boot sale. They have quite an extensive outdoor (and indoor) setup with a plethora of stands, people and items on show. We predominantly set about looking for jewellery to upcycle (believe me there was LOADS OF IT!!), however there were a few other things that ultimately caught our eye.

The first was a gorgeous framed, antique (I use this word loosely!) map of Hampshire in excellent condition. We’ve been looking for something like this for some time to use as a more interesting backdrop for photographing items (in the past I purchased an absolutely stunning digital file of a map of Iceland from the 1600’s that I’ve still not got around to getting printed…(‘-.-) ). Unfortunately this didn’t end well, we’re now back in Manchester and the map is currently on the side in Jess’s parent’s kitchen back in Shrewsbury…maps just really don’t seem to like me!

Another interesting find was a collection of old cigarette tins that will be going up in the store as soon as I photograph them (hopefully tonight)! I’m no antique’s dealer, however my best estimation after soom googling places these from around the 1960’s, if anyone has a more accurate estimation I would be very interested to hear it.

Here’s a photo of the same tin I found online until I get some of my own up:

Among the other things we stumbled across were strings of glass beads several feet long (intended to be replacement strands for glass bead curtains), some of which have already been upcycled into a necklace here:

Click here to see the item instore!To top it all off the weather was perfect all weekend, and left me well on my way to lobster pink in the forehead area!

Item Showcase: Spring Leaves Necklace

This time I’ve chosen to showcase something a little less steampunk (we do do other things!). Just in time for summer (if you’re in England it seems we’ve a little way to go til the sun commits!) our spring leaves necklace featuring ladybird and leaf motifs.

For more info on this item please feel free to visit it in the store 🙂

Item Showcase: Peace Slave Bracelet (CND)

Here is the second in a series showcasing some of our more interesting pieces to give you a taste of what we produce. This antique gold piece features a filigree bracelet emblazoned with the CND symbol chained to a ring.

For more information on this item please visit our online store 🙂

Item Showcase: Clockwork Necklace

To properly introduce the kind of jewellery we produce I’ve decided to showcase a couple of items of interest, first up we have an antique gold necklace featuring genuine recycled watch parts.

For more information on this item please visit it in our store

Hand crafted steampunk jewellery from under the pirate skies.

Hand crafted steampunk jewellery from under the pirate skies.

So this is the official blog for our Etsy store Pirate Skies, We focus predominantly on steam punk style jewellery although you will see some vibrant and alternative designs as well.  Please feel welcome to take a look around, also we would be more than happy to answer any queries you may have!
If you share similar interests or just want a chat don’t hesitate to add us 🙂

So enjoy!

-Pirate Skies team