Hello, and good day to you, lovely people out there in the ether. It's nice to see you here, in a world far removed from Covid, disease and death, where only pretty things and fun jewellery exist in a surreal, parallel universe. Now that lockdown is opening up in the UK, cautiously but with a ponderous certainty, we are all praying that the public health bods have got it right, and that the government has finally paid attention to the science. I have no wish to flirt with death, or carry it home to watch as loved ones suffer. It has taken me three weeks to cover this tapestry of a bracelet with beads and I now declare that not another bead will fit onto it. I showed you some pictures in the last couple of weeks and here are some of the most recent. The last picture shows the piece of velvet that was encrusted with beads, carefully following the paisley lines of the design. It will probably take all of next week to convert the strip of fabric into a bracelet. AzureThis necklace was created from the memory of past holidays - remember them? We went away in silver tin cans to warm blue seas and people-watched on beaches. The blue agate and electroplated quartz in this necklace would be perfect on holiday. Here are some pictures from one such holiday - I invite you to people-watch with me in the warmth of the Cinque Terre, not far from Florence. The Cinque Terre, five towns, is a string of five fishing villages perched high on the Italian Riviera in the region Liguria, which until recently were linked only by mule tracks and accessible only by rail or water as cars can only reach them with great difficulty from the outside via narrow and precarious mountain roads. It comprises five villages: Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore. The coastline, the five villages, and the surrounding hillsides are all part of the Cinque Terre National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Over the centuries, people have built terraces on the rugged, steep landscape right up to the cliffs that overlook the Ligurian Sea. Our trip took us on a train from one village to the next, watching the beautiful (and not so beautiful) people sunning themselves on the rocks and diving into the azure sea to cool off. One would have to be closely related to a mountain goat to live there - climbing those steep stairs and paths would kill me off, although it was fabulous to visit for a day or two. Blue and silver are almost made for each other, don't you think?
Anyway, that's all I have time for, folks. Have a wonderful week, and I'll catch you next Friday, same time, same place. Until then xx
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Hello people, how's life treating you? 7 days left to the big day which this year is going to pass us all by with a little sniffle. There's not much point in getting excited about Christmas - although people are still furiously sending out cards and gifts almost as if they are determined to pretend that 2020 isn't the year that God forgot. I'm glad to say that I am working all through the Christmas weekend - misery loves company and I shall have plenty on the day - company, I mean. The hospital looks bare and forlorn as we are not allowed to put up any decorations - no trees, no tinsel, absolutely nothing that isn't wipe-downable. I'm not sure of the rationale behind this as the corona virus is not likely to lurk in Christmas trees and passing strands of tinsel, but I don't run the place. No doubt SAGE have issued an edict on Christmas trees. We have 3 tree frames picked out in lights on the flat roof, but little else to mark the season. This week, I was idly flicking through a magazine and chanced upon pictures of large, vintage Chanel Gripoix crosses studded with gemstones - and my next piece was conceived right there. Loads of crystals, Czech and Japanese seed beads, semi precious beads and seed pearls went into the making of this pendant. I decided to go for broke, and embroidered little dangles for each arm of the cross as well as the lower end. Finally, there was space for not another bead. I've come to realise that the planning of such a piece takes longer than the execution - and once the design has been embroidered, the tedious bit is finishing it by backing with Ultrasuede and edging it with little beads. Not being religious in the least, I was surprised to find myself making a cross at Christmas time - but hey! I go where the muse leads me, who am I to protest? LuciaI've read tales of treasure being found in the deserts of California and Arizona - it is said that for years after the Colorado River flooded in the 1700s, the remains of ships were found in the desert, half buried in salt flats and marshes. These ships were full of Spanish gold - doubloons, jewellery, platters and dishes. The excited travelers who found the treasure would collect as much as they could carry and get on their mules and rush off to tell their friends of the treasure. However, when they got back, the ship had disappeared, buried under the ever moving sand dunes. In my imagination, this cross comes from just such a treasure and my ship is called Santa Lucia. I can see in my minds eye the wonderful treasure and if pushed can probably even produce a map of where it can be found. I think this pendant is very pretty - I know that many people do not like to wear anything so denominational, but if they could just get over these qualms, they would find themselves wearing a beautiful choker of midnight blue quartz, electroplated to shine brilliantly with titanium vapour and a cross shaped pendant that has been embellished to within an inch of its life. I have yet to get my Christmas gifts wrapped and labelled - that's a task reserved for this weekend. I shall end here this week, readers. Have a fabulous week, and I'll catch you next Friday, same time, same place - oh! next Friday is Christmas day, so if I don't catch you, have a lovely day - or at least make the best of it. Happy Christmas to one and all, xx Hello folks, how are you doing today. This week in the UK the weather God has smiled on us - I only hope he keeps on smiling for another couple of days - I'm about to host 25 people for my annual barbecue. If you didn't know already, junior doctors up and down the UK all move to their new posts on a rotation of at least seven hospitals in their trainee career, and there is now a fixed day for all this mayhem to occur - the first Wednesday in August! I urge you all to take care of your health and not go near a hospital in the first two weeks in August as it is pretty chaotic, with only the consultants manning the fort. Anyway, our juniors leave us as well, and I've been hosting their leaving do for over 15 years now, so much so that everyone knows in the West Midlands that the barbecue in held in my little garden on the last Saturday of July. This is a video making the rounds in some of the jewellery groups I'm a member of and I thought it was sufficiently interesting enough to post in my blog for you to take a look at - all this sounds like hard, not to mention dusty work! Oh Dear! Supernova Somewhere in the cosmos, a star is reaching the end of its life. Maybe it’s a massive star, collapsing under its own gravity. Or maybe it’s a dense cinder of a star, greedily stealing matter from a companion star until it can’t handle its own mass. Whatever the reason, this star doesn’t fade quietly into the dark fabric of space and time. It goes kicking and screaming, exploding its stellar guts across the universe, leaving us with unparalleled brightness and a tsunami of particles and elements. It becomes a supernova. In 185 AD, Chinese astronomers noticed a bright light in the sky. Documenting their observations in the Book of Later Han, these ancient astronomers noted that it sparkled like a star, appeared to be half the size of a bamboo mat and did not travel through the sky like a comet. Over the next eight months this celestial visitor slowly faded from sight. They called it a “guest star.” Two millennia later, in the 1960's, scientists found hints of this mysterious visitor in the remnants of a supernova approximately 8000 light-years away. The supernova, SN 185, is the oldest known supernova recorded by humankind. Death by supernova probably isn’t something we have to worry about in our lifetime, or our children’s or grandchildren’s or great-great-great-grandchildren’s lifetime. IK Pegasi, the closest candidate we have for a supernova, is 150 light-years away — too far to do any real damage to Earth (this is the point at which we must all cross your fingers, and squint for good measure, hoping that the scientists are right!). Here's the Caprilicious version of a Supernova! Tiny golden seed beads have been embroidered around an agate slab nugget, along with black and clear AB coated crystal beads. As you can imagine, it took ages to bead, and was all I could complete this week. I had my favourite Caprilicious woman and model come to stay over the weekend and we spent a couple of hours picking out jewellery for her to try on while I clicked away happily in the background. This time, I thought I'd get her to show off some of my silver neck pieces. They are very different from the usual silver necklaces seen on other websites, and because of the silver, they have an intrinsic, investment value and are heirloom pieces that will hold their value in years to come. Both of us enjoyed ourselves thoroughly - she changed outfits and make-up, sunglasses and hats went on and off, hair went up and down. She climbed nimbly onto chairs and stools so I could click pictures from different angles, and the photos turned out beautifully. Here are some of the best pictures from the one hundred photographs I snapped. That's me for this week folks, have a fabulous week, and I'll catch you next weekend, same time, same place.
Until then xx Hello folks, and how are you today? I've been ever so busy at the day job and the last few weeks have been ... well, challenging. Lots of drama - health issues, injuries, yadda-yadda-yadda, etc., etc. Mostly not me directly, but close enough to demand my concentration and attention. Still does, to a large extent, though I'm trying to hone my multitasking skills. I'm not going to bore you with the details because, heck, who wants to relive the sh!t? Not me! Caprilicious has been the one constant whose presence has maintained my sanity. I decided to pick a project for the week that wouldn't be too challenging, yet occupy my time and hands each evening, soothing and undemanding. The Daughter of Arctic Spring or Arctic Spring 2 Last week I made what I consider to be one of the most beautiful necklaces I have ever created, and it sold even before I had a chance to post it on the website. However, it was so complicated that even though I wanted to make another one, I couldn't bring myself to go through the pains of birthing a similar piece. Soothing and undemanding it certainly was not. So I made a smaller version of Arctic Spring - in the same colours, with similar beads, but omitting the lengthy central pendant. In my mind I called it The Daughter of Arctic Spring! Czech glass dagger beads, in a moonstone AB finish were used instead of crystal teardrops and by the time I finished, I liked it very much. It is a smaller statement piece for someone who doesn't really want to wear a huge gong around their neck. I am really looking for a calm and relaxing weekend - my first totally free one after having worked for three consecutive weekends. I have a friend coming to stay and we will relax together, lazing a couple of days away while I heal my battered psyche. Excitingly, I've been contacted on Instagram by a fashion designer in India who is keen on a collaboration - I will be back there in February 2020 and we plan a little show at a couple of his boutiques and he's even planning another in London. I'll tell you more about it as the story unfolds, no more to say about it for now. Just to say that the earrings on Caprilicious are still on sale till the 1st of August. Quite a few of them have been picked up, so it's now skates on time, if you want the pick of the bunch. That's me for this week, folks. Have a fabulous week, and I'll catch you next Friday, same time, same place. Until then xx Hello, good people, it's lovely to talk to you again, and thank you so much for joining me. I've been working hard at the day job and was consequently looking forward to a weekend off, but alas, am having to work again due to sickness in the ranks. However, the weather report is good, so all is not doom and gloom. I don't generally do sales, but I've found that I have too many earrings in my stash - quite a few were sold at the show at Leamington Spa, but I didn't have the room to display them all, and loads of them came back home with me, and they were most grumpy at being back in the large shoebox they currently live in. So just to give them a chance to be fostered to a good home, I've got them on sale till the 1st of August. Arctic Spring Idly flicking through channels on the TV, as you do when there's nothing interesting on, I saw a program about the Arctic Tundra. The Arctic is almost entirely covered by water, much of it frozen into glaciers and icebergs, and these are solidified freshwater. In fact, the glaciers and icebergs in the Arctic make up about 20% of Earth’s supply of freshwater. Most of the Arctic, however, is the liquid salt water of the Arctic ocean basin. Some parts of the ocean’s surface remain frozen all or most of the year. This frozen seawater is called sea ice which is often covered with a thick blanket of snow. The Arctic has the largest concentrations of mineral deposits – copper-nickel ore, platinum and rare earth metals, phosphorus, chromium, diamonds, silver, gold among others. In the spring, after the long, dark nights of winter, icicles melt and as the sun gets higher in the sky, the flowers of the Tundra begin to bloom, the majority of them are mosses, grasses, shrubs, and lichen, which grow close to the ground and can withstand the inhospitable climate. While I was researching this theme, I found a painting called Arctic Spring by a Swedish painter, Joacim Broström. His abstract of an Arctic Spring is beautiful, but made all the more interesting because he rarely uses paintbrushes, preferring instead to use household objects - pipette bottles, straws, toothpicks, plastic bags, and cardboard, among others. So, this is my interpretation of an Arctic Spring The pendant is a slice of agate, surrounded by a bezel of silvery seed beads and AB coated crystals, tipped with tiny seed beads in pink and green. The bail is a long strip of woven silver beads, dripping with silvery 'icicles', their tips melting into crystal teardrops. There are a few Czech marguerite flowers in pink and pale green, to signify the pink saxifrage which is the very first flower that comes up in the spring. The necklace is made of quartz shards, delicately colour enhanced in a pale pink and green. It is meant to be worn close to the neck so that the pendant gets maximum visibility. I was so pleased that it was picked up a couple of hours after I posted it on instagram by one of my regular customers. The lady in question will wear it beautifully I'm sure, and get a great deal of pleasure from it. By the time I'd finished Arctic Spring, my fingertips were sore and I had no mojo left, so that's me for this week. Have a lovely week, and I'll catch you next Friday, same time, same place.
Until then xx Hello folks, how's tricks? I've been a lady of leisure this week, nursing my poorly knee at home, and it seems to be responding to all the TLC I've been bestowing upon it. My husband has been waiting on me hand and foot, and I could get used to this way of life, except that I would turn into a big fat hippopotamus if I sat on my bottom any more. While I've been at home, I've made quite a few pieces of jewellery - better this, than the devil making work for idle hands! AuraThese beads were in my mail when I got home from Madrid - they are frosted opalite glass, and have an aurora borealis coating on one side. When they rotate on the beading wire and the light catches them they shine with an unearthly glow - I just love them. I made simple necklaces with beautiful clasps, using little seed beads as spacers. There are two necklaces - one of them is a pale white, and the other is grey. The paler one is already spoken for, but I actually prefer the darker one. What do you think?? KalachakraKalachakra literally means The Wheel of Time - the tradition revolves around the concept of time (kāla) and cycles (chakra): from the cycles of the planets to the cycles of human breathing, and it teaches the practice of working with the most subtle energies within one's body on the path to nirvana. I'm afraid I'm too much of a simpleton to understand the depths of these spiritual arguments, all I know is that these ghau boxes are particularly beautiful (and expensive). I've been looking out for one of them in my price range for ages and ages, and when this one came up, I snapped it up. This was the vendors last one unfortunately, and he didn't think he'd have any more anytime soon. I wanted the pendant to be the focal point, so I made a very simple necklace to carry it. 'I haven't made anything with wire in ages,' I thought, so I picked up a frosted grey crackled agate and set it in a wire surround - I had a tiny cloisonne dragonfly from China, and I wired it onto the pendant. Here's one of my favourites, Laura Fygi singing Fly Me to the Moon, in French - it was of course one of Frank SInatra's numbers and is very much a classic. The pendant is based on a Nicole Hanna design - I cut too much wire and ended up making more swirls and layers than the original design, but I wasn't going to waste the wire I'd cut, no siree! Brown SugarRaw citrine nuggets resemble brown cane sugar - the closer the festival season gets in India, the more this form of sugar is available in large blocks so that housewives can make sweets for the household, and for distribution to friends - at least that's the way it was in my childhood. Today, it is much easier to go to a sweet shop and order ready packaged sweets to send out to friends. In a moment of pure nostalgia, I picked up the citrine that had been sitting around for ages. I put them with quartz needles and moldavite and crystal spacers. A little peridot box clasp was a beautiful finishing touch. And finally ..... Another Ghau Box .....MandalaI love ghau boxes - I think you might have noticed that by now. I think it's the child in me that delights in the thought of an invisible compartment with my little secrets hidden away, while everyone thinks it is just another pendant. Here's another one - it's the last one in my stash, I promise. I made the Buddha mala beads earlier - they are decorated with gold foil and antiqued to give a faux raku look. That's me for this week, folks. I'm happy to report that my knee is much better. I'm going to work this weekend, and if they stand up to it, I will go back to work full time, next week.
Have a lovely week and I'll catch you next week, same time, same place. Until then xx Hiya good people on the internet, nice to catch you again today. As you read this, I am girding my loins (what an old fashioned expression; to gird one's loins!! Not sure I even know what it means) to start packing my bags to fly to India tomorrow. I would have normally been flying out today, but it is Friday the 13th and I didn't want to travel - stupid, I know, but there it is! Paraskevidekatriaphobia, or a phobia of Friday the 13th comes from the Greek words Paraskeví, meaning Friday, and dekatreís meaning thirteen. It probably originates from the story of Jesus' last supper and crucifixion, in which there were 13 individuals present in the Room on Maundy Thursday, the night before his death on Good Friday. A study in the British Medical Journal, in 1993 concluded that there "is a significant level of traffic-related incidents on Friday the 13th as opposed to a random day, in the UK." However, the Dutch Centre for Insurance Statistics (2008) stated that "fewer accidents and reports of fire and theft occur on a Friday the 13th because people are preventatively more careful or just stay home". So the day is almost upon us, when my mother turns 90, fortunately able in body and entirely compos mentis. My sister in law and I have been working to set up a credible party and give her a good day, and the WhatsApp lines have been smoking hot with phone calls, invitations and messages! We will have a weekend of celebration, and horror of horrors, I am to make a speech - not sure how that happened, but it seemed like a good idea at the time when I first agreed to do it. We have a week to fine tune the party plan, and then it all happens. Oil SlickI made this necklace with three strings of titanium coated druzy agate beads. I bought them for a completely different project and then changed my mind and left them lying in the drawer until inspiration struck this week. Tibetan brass beads inlaid with coral and turquoise chips and a golden sunstone clasp complement the beads in this very pretty necklace and it has already been snapped up. The palette of indigo, purple, emerald and magenta gives the impression of an oil slick, indeed this is well known in hairdressing terms where people colour their hair in blended streaks of these colours to produce this very effect. The Silver SufiLast week I mentioned a Sufi necklace I made to order with lapis nuggets and coral. I had to send away to Istanbul for the pendant and while I was doing this, I noticed another fretwork Sufi on their website, and I simply had to have him. Whirling is a form of Sama or meditation involving physical activity, which originated among Sufis and is still practiced by Dervishes or Semazen. It is a customary meditation practice performed within the Sema, or worship ceremony, through which Semazen aim to reach the source of all perfection through abandoning one's egos and personal desires, by listening to the music, focusing on God, and spinning one's body in repetitive circles, which has been seen as a symbolic imitation of planets in the Solar System orbiting the sun. The billowing skirts of my Sufi are beautiful in fretwork, and I teamed him with titanium coated black quartz nuggets and coral as an accent and added a brass Turkomen bead as an extra point of interest. A lovely vintage Kuchi coin dangles from the back of the clasp. Plenty to look at, then! I haven't the time to organise a show in Bangalore this year, but if any of you reading this are interested, I will be carrying some of my jewellery and you are welcome to message me via the Caprilicious Facebook page and arrange to come and look at it, I'll be only too happy to see you.
That's me for this week folks, I'll catch you next Friday, same time, same place. Until then xx Hello good people, how are you today. It has been a cold week in the UK with snow flurries and freezing temperatures. However, I've had a couple of days off and have spent them at home, keeping warm and staying out of mischief. The last couple of weeks have been exhausting, traipsing up and down to Manchester, and then being on call at the weekend, so this was a welcome respite. Li ChiI got the story of Li Chi, The Serpent Slayer from a website called Rejected Princesses, about "women too awesome, awful, or offbeat for kids' movies". It celebrates women who are unbiddable. "Part art project, part standup routine, part book report, this site imagines what if we made animated musicals about the women of history and myth who refused to behave." Li Chi was a teenager who, at the age of thirteen, volunteered to become a human sacrifice to a serpent who lived in the hills above her village. The serpent demanded a young girl to eat every year as a price for leaving the village alone for the rest of the year. She proceeded to slay the serpent and release the villagers from slavery with a little sword. Do read the story on the website. Jason Porath writes well, with a lot of humour. I've only given you the bald outline of the story as I cannot improve on Jason's telling of it. The cinnabar pendant came from China and has a serpent/dragon on it appearing to reach in to sniff the fragrance of a peony. The intricacy of the carving is beautiful and I added bone beads, hand carved into chrysanthemums, and bone discs dyed black, with characters etched into them. A few turquoise beads provide a pleasing contrast, as do the bronze lost wax cast brass beads from Kenya. Citrine and smoky quartz necklaceThis necklace was commissioned by a lady who saw another one worn by customer. Unfortunately I had too few of the beads from the original strand left and sent off for others. As the first strand had come back with me in my suitcase from Jaipur, I couldn't find the same ones, but the ones I did find are pretty too. The lady requested smoky quartz spacers instead of the iolite I used in the original necklace. I sent a parcel to Australia last week with a courier and spent hours tracking the package all the way from Nuneaton to Victoria. The parcel was given a bar code which I had to print off and stick on the front - so why oh why can't the couriers scan the damn thing at every stage as it moves from place to place? Surely that's not too much to ask! I spent hours staring at my phone, waiting for the parcel to move - sometimes it didn't move at all for two days, and then whoosh, it had moved miles and miles. I feel like someone who has spent a day watching a spin dryer, my brains are completely scrambled. Add to that mix an anxious customer and the levels of craziness rose exponentially until the parcel reached its destination safe and sound, it was opened, and the jewellery admired and worn. I wonder what would happen if I had a number of international parcels all going out at the same time - I'd probably have to be sectioned! That's me for this week folks. We have tickets to the ballet - Sleeping Beauty, at the Hippodrome in Birmingham and were going up on the train to make a day of it. Have a wonderful week and I'll catch you next Friday, same time, same place.
Until then xx Hello folks, how are you faring now that the craziness of Christmas and New Year's Eve is over? Clear heads all around, I hope! Our celebrations tend to go on for a little while longer than the 1st of January as hubby has a birthday in the second week and I am only just getting over the feeling of being constantly exhausted from organising food and drinks, and tickets, and events. Phew!!! This birthday I treated Mike to a London theatre break - we went to see An American in Paris which suited both of us - we love jazz and Gershwin and I love the ballet - this show had both of these combined in a stupendous extravaganza. He was also treated to an evening at Ronnie Scott's in Soho where we had another fix of jazz. Shopping at Selfridges followed, where I found two pairs of boots in the sales the next day after a full English breakfast, and we were finally ready to get the train back to Warwickshire. We stayed at the Grosvenor House Hotel and I can't say much more than it was fantastic - we felt totally pampered. We took some time out to visit Grenfell tower and the little shrine in front of the church. Three sad little fir trees stood outside the church, decorated with a wooden heart for each child that died in the fire. We met the vicar and put some money into the collection. We'd seen Grenfell on the TV a number of times, but nothing prepared us for the eerie silence in the streets around it, as if it was a ghost town. A number of windows carried 'Justice for Grenfell' banners and our hearts went out to the people who died or were bereaved there. RaindropsI bought a couple of strings of quartz teardrops from a vendor in Germany - one string is clear and the other a pale blue. The beads are gently faceted and shine in reflected light. They remind me of fat little raindrops on a wire or dripping from a blade of grass. I've had them a while and hadn't come up with any ideas, until it all seemed to fall into place this week. I used tiny 2mm seed pearls to separate the quartz droplets - it amazes me how expensive these tiny pearls are relative to their size, but then, if you think about how difficult it must be to handle them and drill them, it seems understandable. Stringing them is difficult enough, it makes me shudder to think how hard it must be to make the central hole without crushing them. It is indeed a very pretty necklace - and is winging its way to its forever home, as I type. Giveaway ResultsThank you to all those who participated in the various promotions I set up for Caprilicious' birthday week. The earrings in the giveaway were won by Robyn Gilchrist from Shreveport, USA - can you contact me please with your full address so that I can mail them out. There is a second pair of similar earrings left on the website on the Mixed Metals page, and the 10% discount promotion runs till the 15th of January. Do visit the shop to use the code if you fancy them or anything else. That's all I have time for folks - have a fabulous week and I'll catch you next week, same time, same place.
Until then xx Good day readers, and thanks for joining me once again. This has been a crazy, busy week. It started with being on call at the day job all weekend, and it didn't stop all week. Consequently I wasn't able to play with clay or make anything that would take time and effort, I just managed little short bursts of jewellery making activity. This is a video currently making the rounds on Facebook. Given my love of peacocks, I thought I'd share it with you here. KalikaI've written about Kali or Kalika before but here is yet another version. Kalika, the dark skinned goddess with her tongue hanging out dripping blood, and skulls hanging around her neck (she was the original head hunter) was an incarnation of Parvati or Mrs Shiva. There once was a demon who was making a real nuisance of himself, and he had the power to clone himself a thousand times stronger with each drop of blood that touched the ground (no one ever let him loose in the kitchen with a paring knife)! The gods knocked on Shiva's door to sort the demon out, but he was busy meditating and tended to get very irritable when he was disturbed. So, Mrs Shiva, who was in the middle of her ironing and a bit annoyed with hubby herself, took the form of Kalika, strode out, beat up and decapitated the demon, and stuck her tongue out and hoovered up every drop of blood before it touched the ground - Bish Bash Bosh - no more Mr Demon! Unfortunately, the demon ran on 100 proof alcohol, and Kalika got so drunk she ran amok, like people spilling out of a nightclub in Sunderland on a Saturday night at 2am. She ran around shrieking and screeching, knocking people down, and draping their heads and limbs around her neck. Shiva had to be roused from his meditation to control the missus and when he tried, she trampled on him too - well, serves him right, he ought to have taken the call instead of sending his wife out to do his dirty work, I say! The blue-black titanium coated quartz nuggets reminded me of the Dark Goddess, and she is also associated with the peacock feather. The sheen from the titanium coating is fabulous, and shimmers in the light, my photography may not do them justice. Énergie Solaire (3&4)Two beautiful slices of stalactite, or solar quartz arrived in the post and they joined the first two pendants I created a couple of weeks ago. The Hmong PrincessThe Hmong (pronounced her-mong) people were immigrants from Tibet, Siberia and Mongolia, before migrating to China where they settled down in areas around the Yellow River. They are now found in Myanmar, Laos and Thailand as well as China. To make a necklace, workers have to solder over a hundred small threads together, some as small as a pin hole. These craftsmen work long hours and are skilled in molding, weaving, twisting, and soldering. Both men and women wear the most beautiful jewellery and I first saw this when I went to a pageant in Xian - the jewellery was so excessive and fit for a princess with elaborate head dresses and waist belts. At this juncture, I would like to introduce you to the legend of Nia Ngao Zhua Pa, 'a Paragon of Hmong Femininity'. This entertaining blog is written by an ex effects animator, and deals with "Rejected Princesses - Women too Awesome, Awful, or Offbeat for Kids' Movies" and is a very interesting and humorous read. I took one look at the picture of the Hmong princess above, and thought the pendant needed something more intricate than black agate beads to set it off - after all it is used to embellishment on a grand scale! The crystalline beaded wire beads add a bit of interest and sparkle to the necklace.
That's it for this week, folks - have a lovely weekend, and I'll catch you next week, same time, same place xx |
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