Hello folks, how are you today? I'm up early writing this blog because hubby forgot to shut the bedroom door when he woke up at 4 am to get a drink of water. I'm working later on today, so by the time I'd tossed and turned in bed for an hour, I thought it was a waste of time trying hard to fall asleep as it would soon be time to wake up all over again. Black IceBlack ice, sometimes called clear ice, is a thin coating of glazed ice on a surface, especially on streets. The ice itself is not black, but visually transparent, allowing the often black road below to be seen through it. It looks really pretty when the street lights shine on it because it's crystalline structure appears to glitter, but, be afraid, be very afraid! The low levels of noticeable ice pellets, snow, or sleet surrounding black ice means that areas of the ice are often nigh on invisible to drivers or people walking on it. You might not even recognise it's presence until Wham! you are lifted off your feet and find yourself sitting on your bottom on a cold and slushy surface. It is most prevalent during the early morning hours, especially after snow that melts on the roadways has a chance to refreeze overnight when the temperature drops below freezing. Black ice can also form when roadways are slick from rain and temperatures drop below freezing overnight. Black ice tends to form on paved surfaces rather than on grass or dirt. Bridges and overpasses are also more likely to develop black ice than regular roadways since the cold air flowing beneath the bridge chills the pavement even faster. Another common location is beneath trees or other shade-producing objects like buildings. The black agate druzy teardrop I worked on all of last week has a central window with a glittery surface that reminded me of Black Ice. However, sadly, I cannot demonstrate it to you in still photographs and believe me, I've tried my damndest. The geological process that forms druzy, a layer of crystals on the rock, occurs when water brings minerals onto a rock's surface. When the water evaporates, cooling occurs and the minerals are left behind to form crystals on top of the rock. Depending on the minerals, druzy gemstones can be almost any color of the rainbow, including white, pink, blue, purple, green or black. Most druse forms as cavity lining in geodes. A border of plain agate around the druzy covered area of the stone produces the most beautiful gemstones. In most druzy, the crystals appear random and stones glitter like a fistful of tiny diamonds as the viewing angle changes with movement - like Black Ice! I sent photographs of Black Ice and The Flight of the Bumblebee to one of my clients - I knew she'd love them and that they would suit her perfectly. She had a big birthday coming up and reserved both of them as a gift to herself. DM sent me a photograph wearing earrings she picked from the Caprilicious collection; her daughter seems to love them too! She once picked up a well-appreciated necklace for her mother as a birthday gift, and I thought how gratifying it was that three generation of women loved Caprilicious. DM then requested a similar pair in blue. I dug out the findings and some blue patina, and this is what I came up with - she loved them too! That's me for today, folks. Have a wonderful weekend and I'll catch you soon.
Until then, xx
0 Comments
Hello folks, it's lovely to be here with you again after a short break. Quite a few people took advantage of the little mini-sale I put on in January and I was kept busy, what with working at the day job, and coming home to pack orders ready for posting out the next morning. There really wasn't time to make any more jewellery and besides, I was leaving it be till I got the perfect idea. Lo and Behold! It came to me in a flash as I looked through a glossy magazine while sitting in the dentist's waiting room. I picked up a few pieces of bumblebee jasper when I was in Jaipur in 2016 - yes, I've still got some of the stones I picked up there, as I'm a bit of a hoarder. Bumblebee jasper is made up of a combination of sulfur, calcium, aragonite, pyrite, orpinite, and realgar, set into bands or stripes. It is mined in Indonesia and Australia - one of the sites for these stones is in Bali along the base of Mount Papandayan, an active volcano. Mount Papandayan is a stratovolcano, which is a group of typically steady exploders - they don’t usually blow their top in one massive eruption. One of the main reasons bumblebee jasper is so rare is that it’s difficult to collect. Since Mount Papandayan is an active volcano, miners need to journey into a dangerous environment to gather these stones, running the risk of falling inside the volcano or burning themselves on the hot vents.This risky environment makes collecting difficult and dangerous, which adds to its scarcity. The Flight of the BumblebeeI followed the banding on the stone with the colours of my beads, but when I decided it was done and ready to attach to the necklace it still looked unfinished - a chunky amorphous and luminous baroque pearl dangling from the tip of the teardrop finished it off beautifully, in my opinion. The choker is made of five strands of rope, all held together with a magnetic clasp. If you wish to find out about the spiritual properties of bumblebee jasper, a click onto this link will tell you more. I hope you enjoy the music, too - I listened to it one morning as hubby drove me somewhere and I thought how much like a bumblebee it sounded. I was amazed when hubby told me the piece of music was called 'The Flight of the Bumblebee' by Rimsky-Korsakov. So here's my little homage to the great composer and his music. That's me for this edition of the Caprilicious Blog, folks. Have a lovely weekend and I'll catch up with you shortly.
Until then xx Hello everyone, how is 2024 treating you? As far as I am concerned, every day so far has been like a Monday - thank goodness I have something to look forward to later on in the year. The UK is soon to be hit by the second named storm of the year and Brrr! it is really cold out there. We are due to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary shortly and all I want to do is sit at home and stay warm. I didn't pick up a bead for ages and ages after I got back from India in late December - I decided to go with the flow and let the need to create be the driving force. It wasn't until I was clearing out my drawer that I found these and put them together. I hope you like the first necklace of 2024. Seafoam Sonata 2Making this piece was a good antidote to the dreariness that is outside our windows - thoughts of floaty white dresses, strolling along a beachfront, cocktails on a balmy evening, cruise liners - my imagination was taking off on a daydream, which in my opinion is the best way to spend the rest of the winter. I have one more piece that has been created in my mind's eye and I've been collecting the 'ingredients' together. As we are back out in India shortly, it will be a simple but effective piece that I hope to finish before we leave. Have a wonderful week folks, and be sure to wrap up warm. Hospitals are busting at the seams and this is not a good time to fall ill. Enjoy yourselves, and I'll catch you soon.
Until then xx Hello everyone, Caprilicious Jewellery wishes you all a very Happy New Year. May the coming year be full of grand adventures and opportunities and the world be a better place to live in. 2023 has been dire for some countries around the world and for the economies of many. Covid was bad enough, but no one could have imagined that there were lower depths to which humanity could sink. However, here we are at the end of 2023, and many people are worse off than they were after the pandemic. As a glass half full person myself, I'm hoping for peace around the world this year - it's time we cast aside hatred for people who do not think or pray in the same way that we do and embrace humanity as a whole. Spare a thought for those who are suffering at this time in lands far away from the greed of their leaders, hungry for power, money and land, who are using their people as pawns in their shameless manipulations. Leaders the world over appear to be moving politically to the right, which is a scary prospect for the rest of us. I've been back from India for just about a week and have suffered terribly with jet lag - I have a couple of days off in the first week of January and then my nose goes back to the grindstone with a vengeance. I have a couple of months of hard work, and then go back to India again for my nephews wedding, this time with hubby in tow. I thought I'd show you some of my pieces from 2023, a lot of which are sold out - I met a few of my supporters in India and they got snapped up so quickly that I was surprised at how soon they flew off my shelves. This is a medley of those that are still on the shelves and some that were sold on earlier in the year. Clicking on the pictures will take you to the item, if still in the shop, and the use of the code HAPPY2024 at checkout will get you a 20% discount on everything on my pages till the end of January '24 - a HAPPY NEW YEAR, indeed!! Wishing you and your family a Happy New Year filled with hope, health, and happiness - with a generous sprinkle of fun, jewellery, and all the little things that make life worthwhile. Have a wonderful celebration and I'll catch up with you in 2024.
Until then, xx Hello folks, how are you? Caprilicious wishes you a very Merry Christmas and I hope you are all having a fun time, eating and drinking and enjoying yourselves. As you know, I've been in India for the last three weeks celebrating a wedding and an engagement with my family. Once I get back I have precisely eight weeks to pack up and go back for the second family wedding, this time hopefully with hubby in tow. Poor Michael had to be left behind on this trip, and unfortunately it was my fault. In the scrum to get all my work done before I left, I didn't check his e-visa as scrupulously as I should have - how was I to know that the idiots would use his surname twice on the visa, rather than his first/last names. We got to the airport and tried to check in only to be turned away - many £'s and much agonising later, I rebooked his ticket for the second wedding in March and carried on on my own to this one. It was really sad, but there was nothing else I could do - the small print says it is our look out to check all the details are correct and I didn't - one of the priciest mistakes I have made in my life, and not one that will be repeated in a hurry. My sister, whose daughter was getting wed, is married to a retired Brigadier in the Indian Army and the events were held over four days at venues in the army cantonement in Pune. His entire unit were there for a four day celebration and those guys could sure party. They carried on drinking and dancing into the wee hours every night even after the hosts went home pleading exhaustion and the necessity to catch a few Z's so that they were ready for the next mornings events. All my cousins (and there are a lot of them) flew up from Bangalore and we had a fun time. Here are some pictures for you. The next day there was a ceremony where the bride was anointed with turmeric and sandalwood paste - a throwback to the days when tropical infections were rife and they tried to keep the happy couple safe by applying antiseptic solutions onto the body to keep them well. The bride was a good sport and allowed us all to go one by one and paint her with this thick yellow paste - and then her friends came along and covered her with marigold petals. Poor girl, she smiled bravely through it all and remained good humoured. That evening we were invited to the function where the bride and guests are painted with henna designs, or mehndi - there were two artists who sat over our hands and feet for hours, meticulously drawing away with a fine nibbed bag of henna paste- almost like icing a cake.
And then, the wedding! We insisted that my sister have her make up applied professionally and I think she looked great. Everyone said they could see the resemblance between us, although it used to be much more pronounced when we were younger and I thought we had grown out of it. The groom arrived too, and the ceremony took a couple of hours - but when they eventually walked around the ceremonial fire seven times, it was done and dusted! They were now Mr and Mrs. All the men had turbans tied by a professional - the guys from Bangalore really enjoyed that as we do not have that custom down in the South of India. There was a party that night, held on the shores of a lake in the College of Military Engineering - it was so cold, my teeth were chattering. I didn't expect that sort of weather and consequently we left early - by early, I mean around 2 am - the army folk were still dancing the night away. However, we went to our hotel and continued the party in my cousins room, till all of a sudden we realised it was 5am and we scrambled to bed so we could be ready for whatever the next day threw at us. And then it was time to pack up and go back to Bangalore. My nephew had just got engaged, and that was celebrated with yet another party. These two will be getting married in March and I plan to go back - I need an eight week break as we will have the same celebration, in a South Indian style. I will be going through Mike's Visa with a fine tooth comb and hopefully we will make it there without any problems. Have a Merry Chirstmas and a fabulous Holiday Season!
That's me for this week, folks. I'll be back home tomorrow and will catch up with you shortly. Until then xx Hello, lovely people, how are you today? It's freezing out doors and I am tucked up under a warm fleece, watching TV and playing with wire and beads. Mike and I are off to India soon, to my neices wedding, and I'm really looking forward to the warmth of the sunshine and the fabulous colours and food back home. I'm sure I'll have many photographs to show you when I get back. In the meantime, I had a few pieces I decided to make to take back with me, so that is what I've done all week. I have some people in mind for each piece, so I haven't put them on the website yet. However, if they do not get picked up in India for one reason or another, I will put them on when I get back. I bought some mother of pearl leaves a few months ago - I've been meaning to make them up, but something else always got in the way. They are weightless and shine with an ethereal inner light. Cutting through the shells is a laborious process and the dust is toxic, which makes them relatively expensive, but still, oh so beautiful. Have a look and see what you think. These are the larger pair of the two, and are approximately 3" long and 2" wide - the pearls are a bit heavy on the ear, so I put them on stud findings so that they don't tear the earlobe. These are 2" long with tiny garnet teardrop beads, all in silver, with silver ear-wires. I also had a pair of dried red rose buds, dipped in resin - I put them on long kidney wires made of hypoallergenic stainless steel, and wrapped tiny labradorite beads onto the ear wires themselves. Red and grey is a fabulous combination, especially if the grey has unexpected flashes of light when you move your head. I thought that this was all I was going to make, when a parcel arrived from Hong-Kong with the prettiest beads I've ever seen. The manufacturer cut amethyst beads into tooth like nuggets and heat-treated them - the final treatment was a turquoise blue dye. I'm always a sucker for the combination of turquoise and amethyst and simply had to make this into a necklace as soon as I opened the package, it was too compelling to wait any longer. Tiny 2mm pearls and pyrite beads space the beads out, and a 'lost wax' cast Kenyan sun bronze bead is a focal point. I am really looking forward to my holiday - work has been hard, but enjoyable, and now it's time for a break. A wedding is always fun and it will be great to see my family again in happy circumstances. Missing three weeks of cold weather in the UK is an added bonus!
That's me for now, folks. Have a wonderful week, and I'll catch you soon. Until then xx Hello everyone, how are you today? It is getting colder and yet not so cold that the leaves have dropped from the trees - global warming, for sure! The clocks went back an hour this weekend and I am not looking forward to waking up in the dark, spending the entire day in a building under artificial light only to come out into the night all over again. No wonder we are Vit D depleted and depressed! It's taken me over 4 weeks to make this piece and it was made originally to showcase the colourful koi fish I picked up from one of my suppliers. However, by the time I finished the piece, the lotus flowers dominated the necklace, made using the technique 'Painting with Beads'. I began by making the lotus leaves individually and attaching them and the fish to the necklace. The fish were anchored securely to the necklace underneath the leaves and the flowers They look like they are swimming under the leaves, between the flowers and as this is how they behave in life, as they are shy creatures, it seemed to be the perfect way to attach them to the necklace. And then the fun began! The water in the pond is made of thousands (it felt like millions by the time I was finished) of little beads from Japan and the Czech Republic in varying shades of blue and white. I worked on it a little bit at a time - the repetitive nature of adding bead after bead after bead was strangely soothing, and even when I had the worst day at work, this necklace helped me unwind at the end of it. It was originally meant to be called 'The Koi Pond', but the flowers soon became the most visible part of the piece. The soporific effect of adding the beads one by one made me recall a poem by Alfred Tennyson called 'The Lotus Eaters'. The Lotus eaters were a mythical race of people who lived on an island in North Africa - they sound like really chilled out people who ate the fruit of the lotus which made them forget all their woes. They obviously didn't have any killjoy doctors around, as we would have stopped that practice stone dead by adding warnings to the packaging or handing out leaflets to stop any fun that could be had, with immediate effect, thank you very much. When I was researching the Lotus Eaters, I even found an image from a painting by Tim Lane that would be perfect for such a leaflet - a medics doom and gloom leaflet would most definitely have it prominently across the front - like the images of lung cancer on cigarette packets today. The lotus fruits and flowers were the primary food of the island and were a narcotic, causing the inhabitants to sleep in peaceful apathy. After they ate the lotus, they would forget their home and loved ones, and long only to stay and munch on lotus with the Lotus-eaters, completely forgetful of their return. Those who ate the plant left off caring about home, and did not even want to go back and say what had happened to them. The story goes that though they wept bitterly and begged to stay, Odysseus forced them back to the ships and chained them to the benches so they couldn't escape and set sail for home. They don't look very happy in the picture, do they? Reminds me of a misspent youth when my mother came looking for me and found me where I shouldn't have been!! I could so easily have been a lotus eater. The Lotus EatersThis one will be my last embroidered piece for 2023, I think. I'm going to be in India for almost the whole of December attending weddings and engagement parties and it all sounds like it will be a lot of fun. There are a lot of loose ends to tie up at work, as well as a long stint on call which I'm not looking forward to. That's it for me folks. I hope you've enjoyed your read and will come back for more. Have a great week and I'll catch up with you shortly.
Until then xx Hello everyone, I hope all goes well with you and yours. I'm back after a couple of weeks where I've been busy at work and trying to keep my head above water. A few days off this week have helped me get back into the flow. My neice is getting married in India an December and I plan a little trip - I'll have to go in a few days early to get some clothes for the numerous pre and post events that will swirl around the wedding day like a mist - one running into another, exhausting, exhilerating and loads of fun. This week, I started a fresh embroidered piece, but had some time to put together a necklace that I had designed earlier. When I see elements that I think will go together, I put them all into a plastic baggie with a crude drawing of what I envisage. In spite of that, the jewellery usually turns into something else altogether, because I find other elements to add to the original (and also because my drawing skills are shocking, and so is my memory). This time, however, I stayed with the original plan and here it is, Spears ad Shields - a tribalistic necklace that is a daytime piece, taking you to the office, to lunch or a tea party. Spears and ShieldsThe Koi PondThis one is taking a load of time - I found the little resin koi carp on one of my suppliers websites and they were so colourful that I picked them up straight away. Deciding what to do with them was more difficult than anticipated, but eventually, I knew they had to go into a pond. The lotus leaves were made separately and then appliqued over the koi to ensure that the fish were stitched on securely - I placed beads under each leaf to elevate them, so that they seem to be floating over the water, with the fish peeking out from under them and the lotus flowers that I put in next. Now, I have to block out the pond itself - covering the whole thing bead by bead will take me ages. Taking meetings from home on Teams helps, though - I sat in front of the laptop all of yesterday, listening to the delivery of the MBRACE report, which is the maternal mortality report for the UK, sewing beads on one by one - two birds/ one stone!. I've started to put the blue pond in with a 'bead-soup' of blues, whites and transparent beads with a few other colours thrown in for good measure. If my vision proves right, it should be very pretty when it is finished, but we'll just have to wait and see. Yesterday marked a year since my mother passed away - it felt strangely flat. My sister and I comforted one another as best we could, but there just didn't seem to be the right words. Mum wasn't given to emotional outbursts - she was a very pragmatic and sensible woman, so I guess that is what she would have expected from us. I do miss her, though.
That's me for this week, folks. I shall spend a bit of time of the koi pond, and catch up with you when it is done. Have a great weekend, and I'll catch you soon. Until then xx Hello folks, I'm so pleased to see you here again today after a long time. Well, it seems like a long time to me - I've been so busy at work and hubby dearest gave me the unwanted gift of the flu - I've been coughing and spluttering all over the place, with no chance of taking time off work. I know it's a bad look when the doctors look more sick than the patients, but with all the industrial action going on, I guess they are happy to see any doctor at all - my health is immaterial. I'm hoping I lose the last remnants of the lurgy over the weekend as I'm on call all week, next week and being below par does not work well in those circumstances. The piece I'm about to show you took simply ages to make - it started off as a squiggle on a card while I was waiting for the speaker during a 'leadership' away day. I enjoy making these 'collage' pieces where a number of disparate elements are brought together. I've had the sections of shell in my stash for almost 10 years and decided that I was going to use them. I had to figure out how to attach them to the backing without the use of glue and what I was going to add to enliven the piece. As everyone knows, I'm not afraid of colour, so I decided to go all out and use a whole bunch of them - the pendant was going to hang from a predominantly orange/red necklace, but I decided to contrast rather than co-ordinate. This one's most definitely for a brave woman who likes to be noticed, who will walk into a room fearlessly ,wearing it around her neck. PebbledashThat's me for today, folks. I shall now go back to bed - all this cough syrup is making me drowsy - but it doesn't seem to be helping my cough. Come Monday morning, I have to be well - that's all I can think of right now.
Have a wonderful weekend and I'll catch you soon, Until then xx Hello everyone, how are you today? We've just come back off a lovely break in Paris and I have gone back to work feeling refreshed and relaxed. I guess I really needed the time away from the day job. It was really warm and humid in Paris, and all we did was to go from cafe to cafe, drinking Aperol Spritz's, listening to the buskers, and relaxing in the sunshine. There was, I'm told a haze of fine dust from the Sahara high in the atmosphere, giving rise to some beautiful sunsets over the Parisian skyline. It was unseasonably warm and humid so we ducked into the Galeries Lafayette to take another look at their beautiful ceiling and went from floor to floor breathing in expensively perfumed cool air. Hubby checks out watches and tries on hats like most women try on shoes, so we spent a good hour or two not buying anything and then went onto the rooftop for a light lunch and to take in the views of the Paris skyline. There was the obligatory visit to the Notre Dame which looked so sad without it's beautiful spires although there was evidence of loads of work being done with scaffolding and tall cranes all around it. They had brought the statue of the Virgin Mary outside as the church itself is closed and there were a number of women kneeling around it rolling their rosary beads around in their fingers and muttering their Hail Mary's in various languages. The spire ought to be back on by the time the Olympic Games come to Paris in 2024 and I hope it will be just as beautiful as the original again. Hubby hadn't been to see either of the famous Parisian spectacular shows at the Lido or the Moulin Rouge. Unfortunately, the Lido closed it's doors in September 2022 so we ended up at the Moulin Rouge to take in the can-can dancers. I have to admit that I didn't enjoy it too much, having been once before, many, many years ago. They made us queue for about 30 minutes, the food was indifferent, the chairs tiny and uncomfortably hard and cramped and the show, tired - but that's just my opinion. Mike enjoyed it, so, mission accomplished. There was a lazy afternoon spent at the Pompidou centre which houses the museum of modern art and a huge library. I wanted to go back to the most interesting building I've ever seen, with its structural system, mechanical systems, and circulation exposed on the exterior of the building. Initially, all of the functional structural elements of the building were colour-coded: green pipes are plumbing, blue ducts are for climate control, electrical wires are encased in yellow, and circulation elements and devices for safety (e.g., fire extinguishers) are red. I saw it when it first opened in the early eighties and fell in love with the idea of an 'inside out' building and the interesting Tinguely fountain outside. Unfortunately, on this occasion, the fountain was drained for restoration, and the works of art in the fountain looked deserted and forlorn. I'm a great fan of the art by Niki de Saint Phalle and the fountain was such fun, with the water spraying from whimsical sculptures to the sound of music by Stravinsky. Alas, there was none of that on this occasion, but the street performers and cafes were enough to make it an interesting afternoon. This is what it should have looked like - but hey, one can't have everything! Pic courtesy of Pinterest There were the obligatory walks in the Marais district, around Montmartre and of course, the Eiffel Tower. Now I'm back to work, I feel so refreshed and ready to go. One underestimates the power of a good break - the two years of Covid got us out of the regular routine of taking time off between fraught situations to release all the tension that builds up inside. I even found some time to make a piece of jewellery and photograph it for these pages. SaraThe pendant is a little slice of ametrine, topped with a faceted aquamarine. When held against the light the ametrine is pale and almost transparent, but when worn against another colour, or even the colour of skin, it seems to spring to life. I hadn't realised this, so I looked for beads in my stash to give it an injection of colour. The quartz needles pick up on the blue aquamarine and contrast well with the ametrine. As I photographed it, I realised that wearing it gives the ametrine a new life of it's own and I had worried needlessly that it was too pale. The little clasp is set with a blue topaz. That's me for this week, folks. Have a fabulous weekend and I'll catch you soon. Until then xx |
Follow
|