Culture of Living Publicly

We are living in an age where people announce everything online, from pregnancy to breakups to what they ate for breakfast. Social media is allowing us to share even the smallest details of our lives with everyone we know (and even many people we don’t).

In 2012, Facebook reached 1 billion active users. And that’s not the only platform for social media. Through blogging, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, we are able to share photos of everything and even our most menial spur-of-the-moment thoughts. It is clear that people are not only willing, but are also very eager to share these details of their lives with the world. This trend shows how important it is for people to express themselves and tell their personal stories.

And that’s exactly what we do-we create jewellery tells a story. Whether that story is your caffeine addiction, the fact that you injured yourself while doing something you are passionate about or that you successfully completed a full season of tree planting-you can find it at Slashpile Designs. And if you can’t find the piece you are looking for to express your specific story, we’ll make it for you!

Tags | blogging, facebook, jewellery to tell a story, jewelry, public, self expression, sharing, social media, status update, twitter

Mother’s Day Giveaway 2013!

Now launching the Slashpile Designs Mother’s Day Giveaway 2013! We are giving away a Tulip Pendant in 10k Gold and Sterling Silver. Here’s how you can win this piece: Like our Facebook page and share this photo on Facebook for one chance to win, Tweet or Instagram this photo with the hashtag #SlashpileGiveaway for a second and third chance to win. We will randomly draw a winner on May 1, 2013, just in time to get it to the lucky winner in time for Mother’s Day.

How to Clean Tarnished Brass

We’ve been doing some spring cleaning. As we were going through our old stock, we found these lovely hand-pierced tree necklaces. And let me tell you-they weren’t this shiny after they had been sitting in the closet for 2 years or so, exposed to the open air. In some cases, an oxidized, antique look is really nice on a brass piece. But in this case, I really wanted these necklaces to look new and shiny.

This inspired me to find out-how do you clean brass? Lucky for me, I live in a jewellery studio (literally), so I just threw the pieces in the pickle (a funny name for the acid that cleans off oxidation) and re-polished them. Most people I know, however, don’t have access to these tools and chemicals, so I decided to look into easy ways to clean brass at home.

• KETCHUP
  Sounds strange, but ketchup is great for cleaning brass. Just put a little on a cloth or paper towel or cloth, rub the surface of the brass, rinse with water and dry with a soft cloth. (This method is my favourite.)
• VINEGAR, SALT & FLOUR
  Dissolve 1 teaspoon of salt into one-half cup of vinegar, and add flour until the mixture becomes a paste. Rub onto the surface of the brass, leave for about 10 minutes, then rinse with warm water and dry with a soft cloth.

• WATER, SALT & VINEGAR
  Heat 2 cups of water, and add 2 tablespoons each of salt and white vinegar to create another natural recipe for polishing tarnished brass. Use a cloth to apply the mixture to the surface of the piece you wish to clean, rinse and then dry with a soft cloth.
• LEMON JUICE
  It’s as easy as it sounds-use straight lemon juice on the surface of the brass to clean it. You can rinse it with water and dry with a soft cloth.

If you try any of these out, I would love to see a before and after picture to see how well these methods work! And next time I need to clean a tarnished brass piece of jewellery, I will be sure to try one of these out and let you know how it goes!

If you are looking to clean silver jewellery using household items, check out this post.

Slashpile Designs supports the Bay $treet Bruisers!

Introducing our new tie necklace, made in support of Toronto Roller Derby’s B travel team, The Bay $treet Bruisers! When you purchase this item, 10% of proceeds will be donated to the team. You can purchase this necklace for $60 in our Etsy shop by clicking here!

Tara (aka Taranosaurous Rex) plays for thBay $treet Bruisers. Their next games will be on March 22 and 23rd in Toronto, when they compete in Quad City Chaos, a tournament featuring teams from Toronto, Ottawa, Buffalo and Columbus, Ohio!

Tie pendant is approximately 1″ tall and hangs on an 18″ sterling silver faceted ball chain.

Alcohol molecule necklace appears in Canadian Business Magazine

Master cicerone, Mirella of Beerology is featured on p. 57 of the current issue of Canadian Business Magazine, wearing her custom pink alcohol molecule necklace from Slashpile Designs!

If you get a chance to pick up the magazine, you should read the article! Her job does sound really cool!

Snowglobe-inspired centrepieces for a sparkly winter themed wedding in Niagara Falls

Hi there! Remember that post where I showed some of our non-jewellery projects? Well here’s my follow-up detail post about the centrepieces we made for our friends’ wedding. Congratulations Kat & Kirill-We can’t say enough how beautiful and wonderful your special day was, and we were so glad we could be a part of it!!

After getting engaged in the summer, the couple decided to have a winter wonderland themed wedding (on 12/12/12) and Tara and I excitedly offered our crafty services to help them make everything for their wedding. We quickly realized that this would be way too big a task for us, so we settled on making their centrepieces.

We wanted to make centrepieces with real ‘wow factor’ and we wanted them to fit perfectly with their theme and other decorations. After a lot of e-mails back-and-forth (did I mention that Kat and Kirill live in Dubai?), Tara and I came up with the idea to have snowglobe centrepieces. Kat was set on the idea of sparkly sticks, so we decided to combine the two. We were very careful to keep with the winter theme without having the centrepieces look Christmas-y. And we were pretty happy with the result!!

We found some vases with tealight holders at Kitchen Stuff Plus. We created the snowglobe scene with tree and animal figurines from Michael’s, and white gravel and acrylic crystals from Dollarama. We wanted each one to be different, so we carefully chose a variety of animals in different sizes, with a special Doe and Buck scene for the head table. We stuck the sparkly, ‘snowy’ sticks in styrofoam in the tealight holder and strung clear beads on fishing line, which we hung from the branches as ‘icicles’. We integrated the table numbers into the design of the centrepieces by using lasercut wood numbers (spray painted white and then with sparkles). These numbers were included in the bouquet of sticks. We surrounded the base of the bouquet with a piece of white feather boa to make an extra wintery pouf detail. Glue guns were a major tool in making these centrepieces.

Here are some photos of our process:

Tags | animals, centerpieces, centrepieces, figurines, icicle, snow, snowglobe, sparkly sticks, table setting, winter wedding, woodland

Valentine’s Day Gift Guide

Hello!

We’ve put together a selection of Valentine’s Day products from the Slashpile Designs Etsy shop. We’ve got more traditional heart pieces and some more funky/geeky pieces that are rather appropriate for this time of year. Wishing everyone love, happiness and chocolate!

Enjoy!

This is just a screenshot, so to purchase any of these items, check out our Etsy shop, in the Valentine’s Day section or click this link:

https://www.etsy.com/shop/SlashpileDesigns?section_id=13008017

Winter non-jewellery projects!

Well hello there! It’s been quite a while since our last post!

December was such a busy month, not only with jewellery orders (thanks everyone!) but also with some other projects we have been working on. Those of you who know us well know that we love to make EVERYTHING and ANYTHING! (not just jewellery!)

In our next few posts, we will share some of the other projects we have been working on this winter…these include the centrepieces for our friend’s wedding, homemade lollipops, candies and soaps, knitting on our new knitting machine, and multiple sewing projects!

Here are a few photos:

We were on TV this morning!

In case you didn’t already hear about it-

We were on Rogers Daytime Toronto this morning! And we had a blast!

We got to talk for 8 minutes or so with host Val Cole about our collections and we did a couple of demos of our process in making our jewellery. Everyone at the studio was so nice and Val asked easy to answer questions that allowed us to talk about our work. Here are some photos from our morning in the studio:

And we’ll post the video when we receive our digital copy! Thanks for tuning in