What is steampunk?

When I recently started selling my jewellery, I got a lot of people asking me 'what does steampunk mean?'

Well, to put it simply, steampunk is a genre of sci-fi. One of the main features, as the name suggests, is the use of steam power, but any Victorian cultural aspects can also be a part. What I really love about steampunk is its subtle blend of past, present and future.

Some excellent steampunk novels out there (which I really recommend) are the Mortal Engines series by Philip Reeve, and Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld:

As a style of jewellery, steampunk is easily recognisable by the use of cogs, gears and other watch parts. However, I've heard some well known jewellery artists on deviantart say, (and I agree), that adding a couple of watch gears to a pendant doesnt make it steampunk! The whole pendant must involve elements of the steampunk style, from the focal stone itself to the wire and beads added for decoration!
This could include, for example, brass or copper wire, and dark metal beads. I try to incorporate all of these things in my steampunk jewellery.

I hope that explains it a little! =)

My most popular pendant to date

Without a doubt, this is my favourite pendant:

The stone is a beautiful piece of blue crackle quartz, which when held up to the light is almost transparent except for hundreds of tiny blue inclusions.
The wrapping is more simple this time, and I added four tiny aqua blue rocaille beads for some sparkle. I photographed it against a white sheet of paper to try to capture the beauty of the stone.

This is definitely the most popular pendant I have made. It is my most favourited deviation on my deviantart account (http://mystacinidae.deviantart.com/), and I get lots of compliments while wearing it at work, college and around town!
It's so popular, I'm trying to track down similar stones to make some more, at the request of people who would like to buy it. (Because they can't have this one - it's mine! =D )

Developing my style...

As I got more practice I began to develop my own individual technique of wire wrapping, and began to add embellishments such as beads.

The light green cubic pattern of this stone is very unusual, and made me think of algae. This was one of the first pendants I added beads to.

I also began to experiment with fossils:





This is an orthoceras, a primitive type of ammonite with a straight as opposed to curled shell. I wrapped it with several sodalite chip beads, which look rather nice against the black and white of the fossil.

How I got started!

Ever since I was little I've loved to make things, and I got into beadcraft several years ago. My favourite things to make back then were animals such as butterflies out of wire and rocaille beads. As time went on I moved away from beadcraft, and earlier this year I was inspired to try wire wrapping by this artist's jewellery: http://nambroth.deviantart.com/.
I bought all the equipment and stuff and once my GCSE exams were over I made my first few pendants.

I was very proud of the first one I made. I used a piece of tumbled moonstone which was almost perfectly rectangular in shape, which made it easy to wrap for a beginner:

Looking back now it seems very messy and disorganised, but I was extremely pleased with it at the time.

This is the second pendant I made, this time with sodalite:

I was less pleased with this one, but it definitely helped me to improve my technique for some of my later creations, which I shall be posting in due course.