Hand-Stamped Jewelry

As a regular lurker on Etsy, I see my fair share of hand-stamped jewelry. I love the look, but $20+ for a piece of jewelry is darn expensive on my shoestring grad student budget. The solution? A cheapie stamping kit and steel block, a Sharpie, a nail file, some stamping blanks and other jewelry-making supplies, and a good tutorial, and off I go:

This was a wedding gift for my dear friend Kate. The briolettes are in her wedding colors,
teal and burgundy (well, the closest I could find to burgundy), and the bottom line is of course
the wedding date. The glass pearl is vintage, and is not that ugly color in real life, I promise. It's more like
 the photo below. Anyhoo. Adjusting to the relative hard- or softness of different types of metals was
tricky; even though I'd done a practice blank before this, the sterling silver was a LOT softer.
Lesson learned! I'm still very pleased with how this turned out for an early attempt.

Apparently copper likes me a lot better than silver. This was my first-ever attempt, for
practice before making Kate's gift. I'm very pleased with how it turned out. :o)

For my next project, I'm thinking I'd like to try making some plant labels from old thrifted spoons. I've seen them on a few blogs and thought they were really cute, plus they'd make great affordable gifts. No blank expanse of metal in this household is safe...