The Woman in Red in the clip is Kelly Le Brock, who out-Marilyned Marilyn Monroe! Poor Gene Wilder didn't stand a chance, his little bulgy eyes were out on stalks so far they were in danger of popping right out of his head! Hello readers, thanks for joining me this evening. I am looking forward to the Bank Holiday weekend, although unless the weather plays nice there may not be much to look forward to. This week was all about the colour red. I was inspired by pictures of Hungarian dancers in national costume to make a piece using my latest love for soutache. CsardasA Csárdás is a traditional Hungarian folk dance. It was popularized by Romany bands in Hungary and the neighboring lands of Serbia, Croatia, Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Transylvania and Bulgaria. The music starts out slow and then the tempo picks up with the female dancers in costumes of red and black whirling their skirts as they leap and move to the music. Inspired by the colours in these costumes, I swirled soutache braids around a poppy jasper cabochon, anchored by beadwork. Poppy jasper is a beautiful stone, which gives the appearance of poppies painted onto a dark background. Apart from being pretty, it is meant to have properties such as enhancing communication and organizational abilities, relaxation, and a sense of wholeness, acting primarily on the root chakra. Of course, being pretty is more than enough for my purposes. And, I learned how to make a beaded fringe - the colour and movement in the fringe are irresistible, I love it! I'm definitely going to be making more fringes in the future - colour and movement - who could ask for anything more? A lady from India who is due to visit Britain shortly asked me to make her a necklace in red - she had a price point in mind, and I suspect, a Caprilicious design that she has seen on a mutual friend. It took me a while to understand the unvoiced delicate issue that she wanted a necklace like the one her friends bought at my last exhibition, but my brain finally clicked into gear. Without remaking the necklace in question, I tried to make a similar piece for her. After all they both live in the same town and may end up at the same party. I wouldn't want them to wear the same piece of jewellery like a pair of twins. My upbringing has given me a horror of this. My sister and I used to be dressed in identical clothes - my mother was obsessed with a need to dispense 'fairness' and bought us both the exact same items when we went shopping. It probably seemed like too much trouble to let us wear the outfits on separate occasions, (she was a working mum and therefore any aspersions I cast about laziness need to be taken with a pinch of salt) so we ended up looking like a pair of twins, one of whom (me) was eating all the food. I made a couple of necklaces for the lady from Bangalore to choose from. That is all I had time to make this week. I've started on another soutache piece, but the weather has been good over the last few days and the garden beckons.
Have a lovely weekend and I'll catch you next Friday, same time, same place xx
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Hello readers, tantarrararraaaa! I can finally unveil the silver earrings I made in my kiln - it took me ages to psych myself up into making them, and then I had to steel myself into soldering on jump rings so that I could hang them - but in the end, they are pretty, and I am pleased with them. Lili MarleneThis was a song made popular at the time of the Second World War by Vera Lynn and Marlene Dietrich, although it was written well before this. It is a beautiful love poem set to music, sung here by June Tabor. I have always loved the song and as it will soon be Rememberance day, I decided to name the earrings after this haunting song. The earrings are asymmetrical, held together by the floral motif and the orange Cubic Zirconia. Asymmetrical earrings, I am assured by the pundits from fashion glossies such as Vogue magazine are extremely 'in' now! - and anyway it is always nice to be a bit different, wouldn't you agree? Anyone and her grandma can wear ordinary, boring stuff. Al - Kahina, or DahliaAl Kahina was a Berber warrior princess - she lived in the 600's AD and was a Byzantine Christian. She was tall and beautiful and charismatic, with long black hair, and huge dark eyes. She was wise beyond her years, and was probably the world's first feminist. To her disgust, her given name was Dahlia - she didn't think that was a fitting name for a warrior princess at all. She hated her name so much that if there had been deed polls in those days, she'd have used one to change it. As it stood, she had to be more fierce than any man in her father's army and wore a permanent scowl, just to live down the dreadful shame of being named after a flower. Legend would have it that when she was a young woman, a chieftain who wanted to marry her terrorized her tribe. He thought this was the way to woo this woman who had a reputation for being fierce. They clearly hadn't heard of candlelight and flowers in 600AD or maybe he thought they were inappropriate for her, who knows? Dahlia went into hiding for some time but eventually agreed to the marriage. On the wedding night, she slew her new husband by smashing his skull in with a club - she obviously didn't believe in amicable divorces. That act set her on a path to ruling her clan and she consolidated all the major Berber tribes under a common purpose - driving out the invaders. She had of course learned her strategy from the success she achieved in dissolving her marriage - beat all invaders about the head with a club and they will disappear instantly! I've recently been fascinated by arrowheads and I bought the pewter ones in this necklace around the same time. The Moroccan bead is from my little stash - I love the simple beauty of these beads. I thought Dahlia might have worn it as a novel way to store her arrowheads while she strode about the place, barking out orders to her men. ShubhaShubha is a Sanskrit word that means auspicious. The tiny little talisman hollow box pendant from Afghanistan in this necklace combined with the turquoise nuggets and little Afghani coins is meant to confer luck on the wearer. ArgosArgos was a hundred eyed giant from Greek mythology, who was set by the goddess Hera to guard what he thought was a sacred cow. The cow was actually Io, a nymph who had caught the roving eye of Hera's hubby Zeus. Hera, in a rage of jealousy had turned Io into a cud chewing bovine creature so that she could corralled in a field and her every movement watched by Argos' hundred eyes. Zeus however, was determined to have his way and wasn't about to be thwarted by the fact that he was going to have to make love to a cow! He sent his son Hermes to sort Argos out so that he could get to her. Hermes, who was probably the world's first anaesthetist, bored poor old Argos into falling asleep with the telling of stories - one by one his hundred eyes shut, and he began to snore. He was then easily beheaded and Zeus and the cow got it together. Hera was most upset by the loss of her favourite giant, and set his eyes in the tail feathers of a peacock, so immortalising Argos and creating the beauty of this bird's tail. She also thought she'd teach Io a lesson and created a pesky gadfly to hang around the poor cow to bite her, irritating her for as long as she should live. The polymer clay leaves in this necklace are in peacock colours - I've used them before in a bracelet, but this time, I anchored them down with slivers of golden coral and added gemstones and shiny fire polished beads to make a facsimile of a peacock's tail. The 'tail' sits close to the chest and will fill the neckline of a LBD, adding colour and cachet. Icicles at SunsetI fell in love with a string of delicately pale pink quartz beads at the bead show in Newbury a couple of years ago, but had no idea how I was going to use them until I happened upon this photograph of icicles at sunset recently. I have a set of texture hammers, and when I'm feeling particularly tetchy, I hammer the hell out of some thick pieces of wire. When I'm finished, I feel so much better, and I have components that I can hold onto for when inspiration strikes, a win win situation. That moment arrived somewhere in the middle of the week readers, and I now present the result - Icicles at Sunset. I've decided that I shall have a little sale to try and create some space for new stock, and to give people a chance to get their gifts for Christmas in early. It will soon be Caprilicious' fourth birthday and I shall have to think of a way to celebrate that - any ideas??
That's it for this week folks, thanks for joining me. Have yourselves a fabulous weekend and I shall catch you next Friday, same time, same place xx Hello readers and lovers of statement jewellery, thanks for joining me again today. I had a couple of 'catch up' days off from the day job this week,doing nothing but lounging around the house, catching up on the energy that needs replenishing from time to time. We had news that the show in Worcester that was cancelled a few weeks ago has been replaced by a smaller one-day affair, this time in the Guildhall in Worcester city centre. The event is on the 25th of July and if you are in the area, do come up and say hello, I'd love to see you. The Pink PlanetThe pink planet was discovered by NASA in 2013 - they haven't as yet given the poor little orphan a name - it is called GJ 504b and is dark cherry blossom/magenta in colour. The quest to find out more about it began in 2009, and the astronomers say GJ 504b is about four times the mass of Jupiter and has a temperature of around 237 Celsius. It's star is slightly hotter than the sun, and the pink planet orbits its star at nearly nine times the distance Jupiter orbits the sun. Don't my polymer clay beads look exactly like the pink planet?? I was really struck with the resemblance, which is entirely coincidental. The beads for this necklace come from all around the world. The brass lost wax cast beads come from Kenya, the luminous ceramic beads, from my visit to the USA, the crystals are Chinese and I picked up the flat blue ceramic bead in India, and of course, the polymer clay pink planet beads were made by me here in the UK from a tutorial by a Frenchwoman on her blog Parole de Pâté - a truly international effort! MarocA Moroccan enamelled pendant teamed with dyed branch coral in black and gold form the basis of this necklace. The coral beads are light and because they are separated by tiny seed beads, they sit comfortably around the neck. The vendor of the pendant sent me the little Sufi dervish as a gift and I hung it on a chain on the back of this necklace to add a pretty touch to the back. CasablancaA beautiful silver tone bead came from Morocco, in the same parcel that delivered the pendant for 'Maroc'. I had a strand of amazonite slab nuggets and I decided to remake a necklace I had made previously, albeit slightly different from the first one. When first put on, the necklace beads have to be settled around your neck by gently arranging them so that the ends of each consecutive bead faces in the opposite direction and gives the appearance of two rows of beads. Once that is done, it stays put for the entire time the necklace is around your neck. I love the seafoam green of the amazonite - very cool and refreshing on a summers day. PoppyI love the teardrop shaped coral beads that go into this necklace - I've used these beads in various necklaces in all sorts of colours, but red is the one that attracts my eye the most. As I strung the necklace it struck me that the scarlet of the coral looked so much like poppies. Cats eye beads give the necklace pops of contrasting colour at irregular intervals, and a large Moroccan bead in contrasting navy blue provides focal interest. Copper SulphateThe origin of the name of this necklace is instantly obvious, given the colour of the beads. Turquoise blue is one of my favourite colours and teamed with copper coiled wire beads and a handmade clasp, this necklace is made so that it can be worn in two ways and still have the copper beads to one side in an asymmetrical presentation - with the clasp at the back, or to one side. The copper wire was coiled on a mandrel, and the resulting coil was coiled again on a thicker piece of wire. The wire is coated invisibly with a coat of polymer so that it does not tarnish or react with the skin. Although I had loads of time on my hands, I didn't spend any of it cooped up in the house playing with wire or polymer clay. It was sunny and warm, and a lot of my days off were spent playing the hedonist, lying in the garden under an umbrella, drinking pink lemonade, eating al fresco, reading and playing with Charlie and Wilfred. I know a lot of my regular readers were surprised that I wrote a mid week post - didn't you see it?? Well, it was called Alchemy and you will find it here. It was entirely unrelated to jewellery and you will have to take a look to see what it was all about.
That's me for this week folks. I'll catch you next Friday, same time, same place - have a lovely week in the meantime xx It's Friday, and we meet again. Hello, readers, I am so glad to see you. This has been a busy week at the day job and consequently I am tired and exhausted at the end of it. The weather is slowly warming up and I spent a bit of time in the garden, weeding and clearing out the detritus from the winter and feeding my plants. People who aren't used to seasonal changes in the garden cannot understand how miraculous the regeneration of the garden feels like in the spring and how much it uplifts you. I thank goodness for my garden and Caprilicious this week - they are a balm for my soul. As it gets dark later and later on in the day, it is wonderful to be able to sit out in the garden with a cup of tea and watch the cats (yes, they are now just over one year old now and not kittens anymore) play in the greenery that is only just breaking free of the ground. Once it gets too cool for that, we go indoors and then I get to play with my beads and wire while Mike idly flicks through the channels looking for something on the TV to round off the day. I am completely addicted to these two entities that keep me sane and punctuate my day with pleasurable moments that make it all worthwhile. MarrakeshI fell in love with all things Moroccan a long time ago and even made an effort to import one of these tiled Moroccan Zellige fountains for my garden. Unfortunately, the deal fell through. Oh well, it was simply not to be - but isn't it ever so pretty?? It has a tap in the mosaic wall from which water pours into the trough below and is recycled by a pump - not good if you have bladder problems, which, fortunately, isn't a worry, for the moment anyway! The beauty of the distinctive pink walls of Marrakesh which are made of a red clay and chalk is the inspiration for this necklace. The slab nuggets of quartz have been electroplated with titanium and a couple of gaily enamelled Berber beads are accents that are reminiscent of a Bedouin tent. SophiaA tassel from Istanbul with an opulent bead cap, decorated with Hamsa hands and cubic zirconia arrived last week and went straight into a necklace of amethyst beads. The pendant calls forth memories of beautiful Byzantine architecture conjuring up the Aya Sophia on the banks of the Bosphorus. I attempted to get the necklace to match the opulence of the pendant, using pyrite, shiny crystals and a couple of bronze clay beads I made in my kiln, as well as a baroque crystal dangling from a chain at the back. Tassel necklaces are extremely fashionable at the moment and never let it be said that Caprilicious hasn't got its finger on the pulse. The gemstone beads in the necklace are pretty too and are in the colour I call 'Iced amethyst crush' rather than the usual deep purple that is the norm. Steel and RustI bought the stripy lucite focal bead in India a couple of years ago and had it stashed away. I brought it out and fondled it regularly like a worry bead, without any idea what to do with it - just knowing that it was pretty was enough for the time being. And then, I set eyes on this picture - a picture of rust growing on a steel door and that was it, like a thunderclap, I suddenly knew what to do with it. The fabulousness of the mouldable colour of polymer clay swung into action and I made the beads in order to create this necklace in the colours of Steel and Rust. Birds Do It, Bees Do It.......This lampwork glass bead is almost translucent. Heart-shaped, with a sprig of blue flowers on it, and wrapped in about twenty-five feet of wire it makes a very pretty addition to the series. That's me for this week, folks. I did start a wire dragonfly, but I soon realised that it was going badly when it began to resemble a cow, with wonky wings at that. Note to self: Don't try to make anything when mentally exhausted. It only turns into a mangled lump of rubbish. I have had to cut it up and rescue the bead, which was rather pretty. The wire went into the bin.
Thanks for dropping by, it means a lot. Have a lovely week and I'll catch you next Friday, same time, same place xx Hello again, readers, and thanks for joining me this weekend. I have a few fun pieces of jewellery for you this week - that's what I want my jewellery to be all about - to bring a smile to your lips and a song to your heart as you walk tall and feel great in your Caprilicious. Lily The Pink
I used beads made from shells and dyed in a shocking pink - just looking at the beads brought a smile to my face and this song popped into my head and just wouldn't go away. With one of my vintage 'mini' pendants from Afghanistan and a few Czech glass and polymer clay beads, a very quirky and sweet piece of jewellery emerged. This week, Ms Muse seems to have gone all African on me - perhaps she spotted my stash of Moroccan beads, and the beautiful orange beads I have been hoarding for over a year. Heat and DustThis necklace was made using polymer clay beads I made myself, using inspiration from a German polymerista who calls herself Margit B - I just love her colourful work and she is a pioneer in the usage of chalks on polymer clay. I mixed in some bright orange lucite beads and added a Berber bead and voila - Heat and Dust! The 'dust' part of the necklace comes from the colours of chalk on the beads which have smudged delightfully into each other. While watching a movie late that night I played with a design for handmade wire bead caps by Iza Malczyk, and a couple of orange - yellow dyed jade teardrop beads that seemed to match Heat and Dust perfectly. Mombasa Sunrise'Twas time to use some of the faux turquoise beads I made using Lynda Moseley's tutorial - Ms Muse had spotted the orange lucite chunks I was hiding from her - I'm not sure why I was hoarding them, it's just a magpie instinct to hoard bright and pretty beads. Anyway, out they came, and I think they are rather effective with the 'turquoise' and a couple of African lost wax beads. Wasabi and WatercressI love the acid green of Wasabi, the Japanese Horseradish. Apparently Wasabi is now being grown in Dorset, by the Watercress company - I think that's what being an entrepreneur is all about - no one who has ever eaten a watercress sandwich would ever imagine that the two of these plants could come from the same soil! Premo makes a Wasabi coloured clay and I teamed it with a blend I made up myself to match the colours in a focal bead I made a couple of years ago. This colour looks so much like watercress, that I decided to name my necklace after the entrepreneurs whose story I found so inspirational. Berber SunriseThis one is a remake of a necklace I made earlier with almost similar beads. For the longest time, no one paid Berber Sunrise the First any attention apart from a desultory 'like' when I posted it on Facebook. I took it to my exhibition at Raintree - still no luck. People picked it up and then put it back down again and moved on to pastures new. I was beginning to think I had lost the battle design-wise, with this necklace and then..... the very last two ladies at the exhibition almost had a pistols-at-dawn situation over it. It reminded me of my two kittens prowling around a mouse one of them had brought in, making growling, warning noises at each other - I thought fur was going to fly (or beads), when after a major standoff situation, one of them suddenly gave in and handed it to her opponent. I loved the piece and had worn it to work a couple of times, and all I got were compliments, so I decided to make another. If lady No 2 is reading this and wants it, I'll be happy to put it by for you - thank you for being so gracious. These sweet coiled wire earrings came from a couple of copper coils I happened to spot lying around in the middle of all my beads. A lot of wire coiling is involved in the making of these earrings and it takes many feet of wire wound around even more wire! I used non-tarnish wire for the first two coils and bare copper for the third, which I then dipped in a chemical bath to darken it and rubbed it with steel wool to get this pretty contrasting effect. A friend from work gave me a broken rainbow fluorite wand - 'do something with it', she said - I held on to it for a while and then made a pendant for her with one of the pieces - I've yet to decide what to do with the other piece. She said she loves her little pendant. Fluorite is a very soft stone and prone to cracking and breaking, so I made sure it was caged in a wire surround so it wouldn't get knocked about again. That's it for this week folks. I have some fabulous goodies just arrived from Turkey today and will probably have them out on the website next week, when I've made them up into pieces of jewellery. Have a fabulous week and I'll catch you next Friday, same time, same place xx Hello, readers, nice to see you here again. I've had a few days off from work, using up the annual leave owed me for 2014 - we didn't really have a lot planned apart from a bit of gardening, so I fell into a nice, easy routine, playing with clay after a lie-in each morning, finishing the pieces off in my own time and playing with wire and beads at night - a crafter's dream break. Last week I made colourful beads with a petal cane on a fuchsia pink background and some Tibetan Mala beads. This week, I unearthed a tutorial by Lynda Moseley and made faux lapis and faux turquoise beads. I have had this tutorial for ages, but had to collect all the ingredients, of which there are many - by the time I collected all the paint,inks and chalk required, I lost the impetus to try it out until now, and I'm so glad I did - it is a fabulous tutorial and I got some pretty credible results. The solar eclipse, which occurred on Sunday was a major planetary and astrological event. A solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the earth and the sun, totally or partly obscuring the image of the sun for a viewer on earth. Everyone was in a tizz - should we watch it, can we look at it, what's the best way to prevent UV burns to the retina, pinhole cameras, glasses - it turned into a frenzy - all for something that lasted a couple of minutes - and we don't even live in the Faroe islands or Svalbard. Philistine, you say?? - too right - I slept through it and watched it on the telly like any self-respecting person on holiday should. And, I'm not afraid to admit it, so there! I did spend some time researching it though - and read about the Penumbra, which is the region in which only a portion of the light source is obscured by the occluding body. An observer in the penumbra (where we are in the UK) experiences a partial eclipse. The 2642 people who live in Svalbard and the eclipse tourists who flocked there would have witnessed the Umbra - the innermost and darkest part of the shadow, where the sun is completely blocked by the moon. The Antumbra is the region from which the occluding body appears entirely contained within the disc of the light source. An observer in this region experiences an annular eclipse, in which a bright ring is visible around the eclipsing body - this is due to happen in September 2016 and will mainly be visible in Africa. PenumbraMade to commemorate the event which looked spiffing on the TV and is meant to have all sorts of astrological significance, I used a handmade lampworked bead and set it in a wire weave, hung on a leather thong - very Penumbra-ish. TaraTara, in Hindu mythology, is a Tantric Goddess. As the story goes, the Gods and Demons decided to have a little game and churned the oceans of the earth, which produced a poison so strong, it would have killed off all mankind. In a blind panic, trying to save the world, Shiva drank the poison before they could dispense it to the people and fell unconscious. The Heavenly Hospital probably didn't possess a stomach pump in those days and everyone was running around like headless chickens. Tara came along - the saviour Goddess - and squeezed his throat, preventing the poison from going any further, giving him a permanent bruise on his neck. She then suckled him and her breast milk counteracted the poison. I think the CQC (Care Quality Commission) might have something to say if we adopted these methods today. Tara is meant to be 'blue' in colour - which is the post-colonial Indian way of saying that she was dark skinned and not worth much on the arranged marriage market - but that was the least of her problems, the most important being that she enjoyed the occasional drink of human blood - she would make do with animal blood at a pinch, but human blood was what she loved best for a light snack! This necklace is made with a pendant from Afghanistan and faux lapis and other polymer clay beads. EssaouiraEssaouira is a charming harbour town in Morocco - unspoilt, with a definite French look about it. When we last visited, very few people had discovered it and it seemed quaint and exotic. I've heard that hordes of tourists descend on it each year now and it is no longer unspoilt. Such is life! These capsule shaped beads from Morocco, with a low silver content were teamed with lapis lazuli and onyx. That's me done for this week folks. A few more days off and I will go back to my day job, refreshed and rejuvenated. In the meanwhile, I have all my new beads to use and ideas bouncing around in my head. Perhaps I should carry a little noteook around with me to write down my ideas- I forget so many well before they are executed.
Have a fabulous week, and I'll catch you next Friday, same time, same place xx Hello readers, and lovers of unusual handmade statement jewellery, it is nice to see you again here at the Caprilicious blog this week. The week at the day job has been a bit quieter than the last and I had some spare time to play with beads and wire. Success at Last - CoralieA couple of weeks ago I cut up two wirework surrounds to a fossil coral cabochon - I decided a long time ago that if I wasn't happy with a design, into the dustbin it would go. I was so fed up with the whole thing after two evenings of failure, I put it away for a while - this week I tried a third design and Eureka! success at last. A coral fossil is formed when the organic matter in a coral dissolves, gets washed away and is slowly replaced by calcium carbonate. Some of the patterns formed when the fossil is sliced open and polished are extremely beautiful. This cabochon is a pale salmon pink, and I visualised it with grey spectrolite - a form of labradorite which has the same glints of labradorescence deep within - pink and grey are a very sophisticated colour combination and go well together. I added a couple of quirky lampwork glass beads and Shiva eye shell beads to add more colour and interest, and was eventually satisfied with the necklace. Coralie(a French name meaning coral), took a lot of energy and angst out of me and I thought I'd make some simpler necklaces, just to ease the pain! Alicorn - from the horn of a unicorn - was named thus because the beads are made of horn - as I didn't know what creature sacrificed it's horns to this necklace, I picked the unicorn - and why not?? AlicornThe twisted blue beads are lucite, and turquoise and coral beads add to the asymmetrical beauty of this interesting mixed media piece. Columbine Here's another simple yet sweet necklace called Columbine - I didn't think anyone would mind if I reused the name - I made a similar necklace with purple agate beads exactly two years ago - and I had these waiting in my stash for just such a moment. EnchantedThe colours in this necklace come from a painting by David Miller, a well known marine artist. I love the blues and greens in this painting, and when I looked deep into the solar quartz cabochon, I could see the enchanted pool . The green fire agate beads are vibrant and set off beautifully by the twisted rectangular lapis lazuli beads. Rummaging in my stash idly one evening, I found some prehnite beads - prehnite is a waxy, almost translucent vaseline green stone, with black smudges on it as if touched by an untidy child - I am so reminded of my very first pen which regurgitated ink all over my pristine pages and school uniform, earning me a good telling off - it wasn't my fault, obviously that I came home covered in ink blots, but my mom didn't wait to find out. A Moroccan bead from my stash went into 'Tangier'. TangierPiscesJust as I began to feel ready for a challenge, a piece of carved black jade appeared in the morning's post - I have so many cabochons and beads in my stash that haven't seen the light of day, but yet, I have this urge to acquire more - an affliction I call magpieism. I spent two evenings making the frame and embellishing it with a fish to go with the carving - a simple leather thong seemed to be just the thing to add that extra bit of je ne sais quoi - I didn't want to over-egg the pudding. Inch by tiny inch, I have very slowly taken over the conservatory - I now have a kiln, enamelling paraphernalia, a light box and tripod, as well as other photography props stashed in it. Mike's electric pianola, which used to take pride of place is now squeezed into a corner and looks extremely uneasy, completely sidelined by all my stuff. My most recent acquisition is a photography background and collapsible rail to give my photographs a more professional look. I had an afternoon to play with polymer clay and I had a bit of fun constructing a flower cane. I cut the end bits off to take a look at it, and it was quite pretty - I will definitely find a use for it one of these days. My friend BN gave me some clasps - they originally had some extremely ugly blister pearls set into them - I dug these out and refilled the clasps with polymer clay - most certainly an improvement, don't you think?? And somewhere, in between all these other pieces, I found a spare evening to make a copper bracelet out of a design from Lisa Barth's book. That's me for this week - you can see that I've had plenty of fun! Well a girl has to enjoy herself whenever she can - who knows, if next week is busy, I might not have time to make anything at all. Have a great week, and I'll catch you next Friday, same time, same place
xx Hello readers, and lovers of unusual handmade statement jewellery, it is nice of you to drop by the Caprilicious blog this week. All of last week I was blinging up my shelves in preparation for the party season and this week I decided to make the last one for a while - overdosing on bling isn't good for the eyes! TyrianTyrian was a purple dye used to colour the robes of kings in Phoenician times - it was extremely expensive as rather than fading with time and weathering, it got brighter and deeper. The dye came from the secretions of a sea snail and was extracted by milking the snail (how does one milk a snail?? - the mind boggles!) only tiny amounts were collected by this method, which was probably another reason why Tyrian was so expensive. By the time I put this necklace together, I began to feel as if my eyes were dropping out of my head - I had overdosed on bling. My reels of wire were getting really annoyed at the inattention they were subjected to - and I was getting withdrawal symptoms due to the prolonged break from wire. Mellow YellowI was looking through the website, and I saw a picture of a blood stone cabochon I had photographed for the magical components page about three years ago. When I bought it, I thought it had a masculine vibe and wrote that I planned to put it together with copper and possibly coral. I forgot all about it until I found it by accident the other day when looking for something else on the website and had an 'Aha!' moment. Mellow Yellow is a colour very close to the colour of the citrine beads I used in this necklace (there is also an 'unmellow yellow - don't believe me?? - then go on and google it ) and the title of a song by Donovan in the 60's. According to legend, Mellow Yellow was about the feeling one gets when one smokes dried banana skins - I am not sure whether that is the case or not - and am not about to test that theory. BeijingColourful oriental components went into this necklace - porcelain beads , cinnabar, coral and black agate - I just love the vibrancy of it. Old cinnabar beads had hundreds of layers of lacquer which contained a sulfate of mercury applied to them, which were then carved into beautiful shapes. Today, the toxic mercury/cinnabar is replaced by combining layers and layers of colored polymer lacquer, which are then hand-carved (or in some cases, machine carved) into intricate patterns. Casbah Caprilicious is doing a globe trotting act this week - we haven't been on a holiday for a while and I am doing it through my jewellery - a bit like leafing through travel brochures or Trip Advisor! I've been saving these beads (Ok, hoarding, really - I just love shiny, pretty things) and I thought this was as good a time as any to use them. Faceted smoky quartz - faceted beads are my favourite, the extra shine appeals to the magpie in me - and a beautiful Moroccan bead went into this simple and sophisticated necklace. I bought three of these beads a while ago - the first couple were made up into a bright and exciting necklace called Berber Sunrise, and this one is smoky and sophisticated in a completely different style - which one do you like? Or will you be a Caprilicious Woman and match each of them to a different mood? Jazz in The ParkThese buttons were made a while ago and I sanded and buffed them as and when I had the time. Buttons are the simplest and least expensive way to embellish a garment, and these are vibrant enough to brighten up a dull outfit. They were cut from a polymer clay cane I made using a technique pioneered by Alice Stroppel. I used my fabulous cane slicer to cut even slices of the cane, and was well pleased with the result. The Boho Babe - back to MoroccoAnother Moroccan bead - this time a large one, teamed with green and black agate nuggets. I wanted the piece to be long and the bauble sized bead to sit low on the chest to avoid looking like a cow bell. I strung the beads on cream coloured genuine leather, with knots between each bead and macrame knots all the way to the clasp. I am not a fan of large nuggets and beads sitting high in the neckline - perhaps you feel differently - do tell... Stygian BeautyThe beads in this necklace came to me in the post only the other day and I had to find some way of using them immediately, they were too beautiful to put away in a drawer. Golden Obsidian is formed from cooled lava - the silica inclusions deep within the rock and patterns formed by gas bubbles lined up within the molten lava give it a golden sheen. The same post brought me a book by Lisa Barth, and in it I found a design, which when modified to suit the shape of a black and white agate pendant stone, would make a perfect focal point. I hung it on the obsidian necklace with Chinese black quartz embossed with dragons in gold, as accents - a beauty straight from the Stygian depths of the earth. The Ancient and the ModernA prayer box, Gau (also spelled Ghau or Gao), is a Tibetan Buddhist amulet container made of metal and worn as jewellery. They incorporate a small container used to hold and carry powerful amuletic objects such as chunks of coral, turquoise and a written prayer, or sacred mantras such as the Kalachakra. I love the secret compartment and have made a few necklaces using Ghau boxes over the years. I have made them with simple necklaces, and sometimes with outrageous wirework that none but the boldest woman would wear. The two that I have here are both inlaid with turquoise and coral - the one has been put into a simple necklace with turquoise and the second, into a necklace made of multi coloured shell beads. HoliMandalaYou can see I have been busy all this week - but now, I have to call it a day - that's as much as I had time for - catch you next week, same time, same place
xx The oldest child always has it bad - conformity, and the setting of a good example are phrases one hears ad nauseum. So I conformed, people, I did as I was bade, until I was sick to the back teeth - but yet, somehow, I didn't fit in - wherever I went and no matter what I did, I couldn't put my finger on it, but I just didn't fit the mold. Of course, I soon tired of the quest to conform - I do what I do, in my own way - take it or leave it - I guess that's what's called growing into your own skin - or even growing up! The magic of making my own jewellery has allowed me to be non conformist in glorious technicolour - now, my quest is to find other people, who like me have gone with the flow in their murky past, but are ready to shake their bootees and sing! C'mon out people, wherever you are................. let's have some fun! One of my role models is a woman called Kat O'Sullivan - she makes and markets upcycled sweaters - they are snapped up within minutes of being posted on ETSY, and I am the lucky owner of a couple of them. She owns a house called Calico, otherwise known as 'The House That Sweaters Built'. She is most definitely a non-conformist par excellence. She is only a young thing, and I admire her self assurance and insouciance. The Grow Your Blog Party Giveaway
Jennifer LaVite wins Jungle Drums - a bangle, earrings and pendant set. I hope she reads this and contacts me with her address so I can send it on to her. I bought these beautiful hollow beads from a shop that sells Moroccan artefacts. The first piece I made was with rough cut black tourmaline nuggets fuchsia pearls and agate beads, and I called it Some Like It Hot. My friend Sheela picked it up while helping to arrange the display for my exhibition. 'Just to save you from finding somewhere to display it' is how she put it - not that space was at a premium, but we didn't argue the point too strenuously. She wore it to the exhibition, 'as a walking advertisement' she said - and then halfway through the day, she found other things she liked, and changed into them instead. Now that the first bead had found a home, I decided to use a second one from my stash - but this time make it as different as possible from the first. It is always a temptation to make the same thing over and over again - but, that is laziness, and no longer a 'one-of-a-kind' endeavour. I have two more beads, and will endeavour to make each necklace as different from the last one as possible - a challenge! - I love challenges!! Here's Sheela looking very pleased with herself for snafu-ing Some Like it Hot, and beside it is Mountain Mist, the second necklace I made using the Moroccan bead. Mountain MistI made this necklace using some of my collection of 'vaseline glass' beads. The colours are very soothing - the pale blues and greens in the original African vaseline trade beads came from uranium mixed in with the glass - these beads of course are contemporary, and thankfully they have no uranium content - you will not glow in the dark! The Kiss of the DragonAn ox - bone carved Chinese dragon was the focal point for this piece. Embellished with antiqued copper wire and red howlite beads, it was ready to be hung on a necklace, which I made using fire agate - it seemed appropriate to have a dragon on a fire agate necklace. I spent a pleasurable weekend, wallowing in clay making scarf jewellery for my friends at Look in the Bag. It has been fun translating my friends ideas into my work - a learning experience for me as I usually make my jewellery to my own specifications. It is nice to have a focus, while I am having fun creating something pretty. Before I go, let me share this with you - a friend of mine who couldn't come to the show sent a couple of her friends instead - this is what her friend had to say about Caprilicious - I was deeply touched. That's all I have had time for folks, have a great week, and I will catch you next week, same time, same place
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