No, I don't mean blood from a stone, you read it right first time - Light from a Stone - this epitomises Labradorite. This greyish brown stone is, at first sight boring - in fact it resembles something you might find lurking at the bottom of a cat litter tray - but, wait .... move the stone till it catches the light - and you get that fabulous flash of light from within it's depths - a flash of yellow, blue and green - and you are hooked! Labradorite is a feldspar, first found in Canada, formed by the slow cooling of magma, giving the crystals time to arrange themselves in large clusters before being locked into place in layers - these layers reflect light at different angles, giving that characteristic flash - the Schiller effect. The Inuit thought the Northern Lights had been captured by the stone, it is that beautiful. I once bought a bracelet with a large slab nugget - and was immediately hooked - grey brown is difficult to design with, and of course, the stone needs to move to catch the light, so still photographs do not do it justice - Oh well, I can but try - I am not sure if any one will be discerning enough to actually want the necklace, but I love it, and will happily wear it myself. Aurora
The Harnessed PeacockThis is my nod to Mary Wesley, whose books I read and enjoyed a long time ago - she published her first book at the age of seventy, and wrote a number of best sellers after that - the women in her books are all extremely unconventional, and she has a sharp and dry wit. Harnessing Peacocks is one of her books, and it was also made into a motion picture. Mary had a red lacquered coffin made for herself by a local artisan, and kept it in her living room - she offered to be photographed in it for an interview by a magazine - politely declined, of course! I love that story, she must have been such fun - even her biography is called Wild Mary. The copper non tarnish wire bird has a crystal tear drop dangling from its beak, and brilliant green and blue crystal and glass 'tail feathers'. I kept the chain simple, but not so simple that I didn't embellish it with a few crystal dangles. CandyThis one was made to complement a turquoise clasp - I used zebra howlite, square onyx beads, shiny crystals, blue glass beads, dichroic glass rectangles and pressed glass beads in the shape of pansies all the way from Czechoslovakia. I love Czech glass - they have some beautiful beads, and I buy them whenever I can find them. They looked like sweeties from my childhood when I finished the necklace, hence the name.
I made these pendants for Scherezade - to wear when she told her prince stories, night after night, holding his interest by withholding the ending - just to live another day, and tell yet another story - a cruel tale, but, we got all these stories from her plight, and she got a stay of execution - and he got the girl - a win win (win) situation, by all accounts! The druzy cabochons came all the way from Jakarta, I love the crystalline centres that sparkle in the light - once again difficult to photograph. I have been taking online photography lessons and tips, but might make my way to some real ones at the local college come January, I so hate not being able to share my enthusiasm with you. Lashings of wire, and tiny gemstone beads embellish the druzy, but I have kept the whole thing simple, on a ribbon instead of making a whole necklace around it to keep the focus on the pendant itself - this will turn heads anyway, so a whole 'statement necklace' will probably be a bit of overkill. I have a few more cabochons, and have been trying to set one into a pendant in the shape of a lotus - and struggling, I don't mind admitting. There's something missing, and I just can't put my finger on it - don't you just hate that feeling - but I have put it away for the time being and hope that when I look at it again, inspiration will strike me like a bolt of lightning and I can show it to you next week. Till then, have a lovely weekend, and a fabulous week. See you same time, same place,
xx
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I saw a peacock with a fiery tail. I saw a blazing comet drop down hail. I saw a cloud with ivy circles round. I saw a sturdy oak creep on the ground. I saw a pismire swallow up a whale. I saw a raging sea brim full of ale. I saw a Venice glass sixteen foot deep. I saw a well full of men’s tears that weep. I saw their eyes all in a flame of fire. I saw a house as big as the moon and higher. I saw the sun even in the midst of night.I saw the man that saw this wondrous sight. If anyone is interested - a pismire is an ant!! Have any of you read this nonsensical nursery rhyme - it is a piece of nonsense until you add punctuation marks - specifically commas in the middle of each line - and then hey presto, it all reads absolutely right. Of course, you also have to delete all the full stops - go on, try it - It would then read like this - and make more sense - but who looks for sense as a child?? I saw a Peacock, with a fiery tail I saw a Blazing Comet, drop down hail I saw a Cloud, wrapped with ivy round I saw an Oak, ...... etc. etc. I was playing with the silver ginkgo leaf I posted on last weeks blog - having attended an on - line class by Patrik Kusek I decided it was an ideal piece to combine with polymer clay. And then it struck me in a light bulb moment - even though it was a leaf, it doesn't have to spend the rest of its 'life' as one - so I decided to give it a new Avatar - as a peacock. Very ambitiously, I decided to go the whole hog and make a necklace and add the pendant to it and turn it into one large statement piece. Much kneading and slicing, swearing (at the pasta machine) curing and varnishing later, I had the bare bones of the piece - it would have to wait another day to be made up - exhaustion had set in and put its foot down with a firm hand! The Fiery Peacock NecklaceThis necklace turned out to be hell on legs to photograph - the elements are so busy visually, I could almost hear my camera's brain whirring as it decided where to focus on - added to that the high gloss varnish reflected the light off the pendant and the silver element at different wavelengths - I apologise to the poor little thing, it was quite worn out after one session with this necklace - I had to recharge its batteries straight away, before it expired through exhaustion. Got news that my Sea Urchin necklace has been featured on Cuteable.com - this is a daily blog to which you submit your offerings and they pick a few to go on - I am thrilled to bits - really fantastic to have ones work validated. Now I can put a 'cuteable' badge on my blog! The Kumihimo disc and bobbins I ordered arrived today - Kumihimo is the ancient Japanese art where with a complex set of almost mathematical repetitive moves, upto 16 threads can be braided. Each set of moves creates a variation of the braid, and changing the materials / textures and colours produces an infinite variety of results. I had originally bought silk knotting thread to tie Chinese knots, which are so beautiful, but hell to reproduce from a book - they are probably better taught in a class, but I simply haven't the time or the patience - so jumped at the chance of using the thread in Kumihimo. Apparently, there are specific cords for this braiding - called rattail, and a thinner one called bugtail! and wire can be used too. So I bought me a book and braided away happily all morning, producing a very pretty black and silver round braid with 8 strands - well done me! The Madame Butterfly necklaceI had a beautiful labradorite cabochon in my stash for a while, and I was getting wire withdrawal, having made the peacock earlier on in the week without a whiff of wire in it. So I decided to make another (yes, yet another) necklace. I learned how to wire wrap a cabochon over two years ago in my first wire work class at In The Studio, Kegworth. But now that I have moved on from that point, just making a pendant out of the little cabochon - it is just about three and a half cms long - didn't appeal to me much. My design ethic has always skewed me towards the asymmetrical, so this time I decided to go almost Baroque - this is a style from the 1700's which is dramatic, opulent, exuberant and grand - completely unrestrained and over the top - less if definitely not more with this lot! The word Baroque is derived from the French or Spanish, meaning a rough or imperfect pearl, and Baroque jewellery is usually crawling with pearls. It is a linear style with curved exuberant forms which are symmetrical - Labradorite lends itself well to this - it looks gray /brown to a casual glance, but when in the light it is greenish/blue, and has yellow sheen - it has to be seen to be believed. The play of colour is called labradorescence. The stone comes from an island in Labrador, Canada, and you also get Indian Labradorite as well as some from Madagascar.My husband is an opera buff and we watched Madame Butterfly the night before last - and I thought, what could be more symmetrical than that? - so this is my take on a butterfly. I wire wrapped the cabochon and used it as the centrepiece - the body of the insect - and put as many curlicues as I could get away with, a bit of weaving and every other thing I could think of - after a while, even I had to say enough is enough - there has to be an end to embellishment - I then realised to my horror that I hadn't included any pearls - there is no such thing as 'Baroque Jewellery' without pearls - so I managed to find 2 empty spaces where it seemed that a pearl would fit, and they were duly added in - hopefully they look as if they belong there and not an afterthought - Rachel Murgatroyd, of Wire Wrap Jewellery, who taught me wire work has a favourite saying ' There's no such thing as a mistake - just a design feature'! Malcolm McLaren and Robby Kilgore adapted Puccini's opera and added these lyrics to the music. 'Calling Butterfly, Madam Butterfly Butterfly, Butterfly have no fear I'll be back to wipe your tears Oh sweet Butterfly, so sweet Butterfly' I think this is a rather sweet butterfly - don't you? Have a nice week, catch you later. I have some time off from the day job next week, so will be setting out an Etsy outlet, to go live on my brother's birthday, on the 2nd of March, dedicated to him.
See you next week folks. |
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