Hello folks, thanks for joining me today. Another very cold week has gone by and I've been up and down to Manchester to take part in interviews on behalf of Health Education England, thankfully on the right side of the table. It was mighty cold up there with the freezing air blowing off the Pennines, turning my breath into little icicles. Back home, I turned the heating up full volume and thawed my bones out by an open fire and turned my attention to my beads and baubles once I felt human again. The interviews were held at the Etihad Stadium which is the home of Manchester City football club - the club is owned by Sheikh Mansour of Abu Dhabi who reputedly bought it for a mere £210 million. Well, what's 210 million to someone who owns a £400 million yacht! Shankha (conch)Ornaments have been made from shells for aeons - conch shells come to a point at both ends and the inhabitants of these lovely shells are marine gastropod molluscs. The molluscs are used as food and fish bait, and can even produce pearls. I found slices of conch shells in a shop in Portobello market in London and thought that they were so pretty that I had to buy them. I've hoarded them for over four years now and decided to finally use one of them in a piece of jewellery. I wrapped the slice of conch shell in yards of wire and decided that it needed a rather special necklace to go with it. Shell beads are used in shamanistic rituals in tribes all over the world. I used beads in keeping with this notion and added Chinese bone, Nepalese coral, and African turquoise to the necklace in generous amounts, making it suitable for an international shaman. NefertariNefertari came into being when I wrapped a couple of citrine teardrop beads that had slightly misshapen points in wire to disguise the tips. I liked the effect so much that I wrapped all the beads I had in my stash as I watched television, and then had to find a way to use them in a necklace. I'm very fond of the teardrop shape and have made a number of necklaces in the past with colourful crystals, and I reused that template to make a two stranded piece, along with turquoise and sea sediment jasper. When finished the colours in the necklace reminded me of the bust of Nefertari in the Museum in Berlin - The bust of Nefertari was created around 1340 BC by the court sculptor Thutmoses. The limestone core has several layers of stucco on the crown and shoulders, and there are also small areas of stucco patching on the face. The necklace on the bust is coloured red, blue and gold, and must have been stupendously beautiful in its day. I see this one worn with an evening dress, but also over the buttoned up collar of a plain shirt during the day - have you any other styling suggestions? I've been active on Instagram recently, having been encouraged to do so by a friend and posted a picture of a copper bracelet I made a few years ago. A lady got in touch with me and asked me to make one for her - who says copper bracelets have to be boring? It's bad enough that one suffers with joint pain without having to add insult to injury by wearing ugly copper bracelets. This is what I came up with for her. That's all I had time for, folks. I am working all weekend and I'm keeping everything crossed that it will remain quiet for me. Have a fabulous week and I'll catch up with you next Friday, same time, same place,
Until then xx
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Hello folks, nice to see you again today. I am in sunny Bristol as you read this, at a NHS conference surrounded by midwives and obstetricians. It has been three days and I will soon be back home with hubby and the cat who are waiting patiently for me. On Sunday, I shall reveal the new collection for Autumn - showy necklaces that can be worn over winter clothes and sweaters - the Caprilicious Line of Lagenlook jewellery. I've been hard at work putting this small collection together and as I've made most of the elements myself, I've really enjoyed assembling them. I decided to ask one of the midwives who works in the unit to model them for me and she was happy to oblige. She came by on Tuesday after work, with a bag of her linen dresses and patiently changed outfits and jewellery while I clicked away. She looks fabulous, don't you think?? So, 'what's different about this range?', I hear you ask. Well, for one thing, the pieces are meant to wear with winter gear, although they can of course be worn all year round - in the throes of winter, I usually bundle up in warm sweaters and loads of layers. These can be quite heavy and the last thing I would want is a weighty necklace to make matters worse. Winters are drab and depressing, what with the rain and snow, mist and fog, dry skin, runny noses and frozen extremities. To make matters worse, the clothes are usually dark and monochrome, so the injection of a bit of colour into the proceedings never goes amiss. I always like to wear a vibrant piece of jewellery to brighten up my day and give my outfit a bit of ZING! So here's a sneak peek at a couple of necklaces I made for the Lagenlook line - the rest will be on show on the website and Facebook page on Sunday the 24th. Blue SkiesIn the meantime, I shall leave you with the only necklace I made that does not belong in the Lagenlook Collection. The beautiful agate slab nuggets were sent to me by a friend in a bead swap and I couldn't resist putting them in a necklace. I guess it will have to be worn when warm swaddling isn't a necessity. The pendant is a work of art with a mosaic of abalone, black lip oyster mother of pearl, and a Siva Eye at the centre. There are some very lustrous beads, pearls, blue agate, blue silvered glass beads, and loads of seed beads along with the beautiful black and translucent agate slab nuggets. I love interesting shaped beads and these are a delight to look at and to touch. Do come and visit the website on Sunday when the Lagenlook line will be up and running on it's own page.
Have a great week and I'll catch you mext Friday, same time, same place, Until then, xx Hello readers, and lovers of unusual handmade statement jewellery, it is nice to see you again here at the Caprilicious blog this week. I hope my readers in the USA had a fabulous Thanksgiving celebration - and now have a chance to do some shopping at crazy prices on Black Friday. Although we don't celebrate Thanksgiving here in the UK, Black Friday has crept into the lexicon of marketing speak - so we have quite a few sales on here too. I thought Caprilicious ought to join in as well, so for this weekend only, ending midnight GMT on Sunday the 30th, I offer a 20% reduction with the promo code - 13579 - do take me up on it, and of course, tell your friends - an opportunity to do some early Christmas shopping without moving from your armchair - let your fingers do the walking. This week, I found time to play with wire to the extent that my fingertips hurt - by the time I had finished, they were screaming for me to stop. But you know what it's like when you find a beautiful object - you need to play with it - it cannot be allowed to languish in a cupboard. I acquired three beautiful, whimsical lamp worked beads with bees and butterflies romping around in a beautiful make believe meadow of flowers. The fact that they came out of someone's imagination, are one of a kind and handmade, makes them so much more interesting to me now - at one time, I'd have just thought 'how pretty', but now, I am in awe of the person who conceived and created these beautiful beads. I used a design by Nicole Hanna to wrap on two of the beads - I just flipped the design upside down on one of them so that it looks different, until you look at it carefully - or I let you in on the secret! Bare copper wire was used, and then antiqued with chemicals and polished up with steel wool to give the finish you see here in the pictures. I used threadwork necklaces from Nepal to carry these little pendants - they are colourful and pretty and seem to go with their whimsical mood. A Night on the SandsThe third bead from this artisan had a violet coloured night sky, with what appeared to be a sandy beach, complete with a wave and a shell, in the light of a crescent moon. This one was hung on a leather cord. I had a bit of time to play with polymer clay over the weekend and made some more pixie people - I made ten beads and hope to assemble necklaces using them in the near future. These beads have been sanded smooth through 3 grits of sandpaper and 3 grits of Micro Mesh, but have yet to be buffed up to a high shine - I ran out of time. Singin' in the Rain Circlets made of shell with an onyx bead at their centre resembling raindrops, were used to carry a conus shell pendant. The pendant is inlaid with abalone and a Shiva eye in its centre, and I added a few more Shiva Eye shells to the necklace to echo the pattern in the pendant, along with a Nepalese accent bead. The onset of autumn must be affecting my psyche - both my necklaces this week are to do with storm clouds and rain. Black Clouds and Silver Linings is a piece instilled with hope for a better future - the sun will come out, and this too, shall pass. This is a picture of the leaves on the paving outside our house - my poor husband has to go out in the cold and sweep them up - I do feel sorry for him, but not to the extent that I want to go out and help - no sirree! I was brought up to be a Little Miss Muffet and sweeping leaves is not my idea of a fun thing to do on a cold and windy morning - if it was left to me, I would just leave them for the wind to blow away, eventually. Black Clouds and Silver LiningsI used Tektite - I love the tactility of it - in this necklace with three dimensional silver tone chrysanthemums and a beautiful, showy clasp. Being busy at the day job meant that I didn't have the time or the energy to create any more jewellery - in fact most of these pieces were created over the weekend and I had little or no time to take photographs to display them on my virtual shelves. I like being busy though, time seems to fly by - it will soon be time for my trip to Bangalore, the exhibition and other interesting happenings. After my post last week, people were kind enough to write in with their choice of invitation for my exhibition and the front runner by far was the wirework peacock - so this one is going to be the official invitation. The red and black picture received so many votes, however, that I am tempted to use it as a poster or banner at the venue. If you haven't already, be sure to save the day and come and see us in Bangalore. That's all I had time for this week folks, have a fabulous weekend and I will catch you next Friday, same time, same place
xx Hello good people, here's your weekly dose of statement jewellery from Caprilicious. Once I have posted this, I am off to Hamburg, to visit with a friend and have a few days away by the Baltic in her lovely bungalow by the sea - not that I'm rushing or anything, just saying..... My muse capriliciously tripped along from one style of jewellery to another, seemingly without a cohesive thought in her head, and I followed, led by the nose - I just do as I am bid and see what transpires (hubby often wonders why I won't follow him in quite the same way)............................. ChantillyI blame my mother for my lacemania. She was/is a true lacemaniac, and in my childhood dressed my sister and me in imports from around the globe - she turned up her nose at what was produced in India. Every outfit we had was edged with a hint of lace (imports were expensive, thankfully), and that has left it's mark on us - both of us drool over lace when we see it, but today I would combine it with other elements to detract from the 'girly' effect. Chunky jewellery, leather waistcoats, boho bracelets, trilby hats, slouchy boots, 50's sunnies (not all at the same time, admittedly - the gangsta rap look doesn't suit me either) - these are what I wear 'for badness', a word learned from Gabrielle, an old Irish friend! I learned this style of wire work from an Indonesian friend - in her country these wire medallions are made into brooches to pin back their headscarves and it takes hours to painstakingly coil fine wire around a thicker wire, and then curve and coil the thicker wire into shape, embellishing it with beads as one goes along, without the use of any tools other than a pair of wire snips - but the final effect is so pretty, it is most definitely a labour of love. Chantilly lace has been made since the 16th century - handmade in France and Belgium and worn by fashionable ladies in Europe and America - and much loved by brides even today. If my mother could have laid her hands on Chantilly lace when we were growing up, who knows what damage she would have inflicted on our psyches - todays little hints of 'badness' would have become a deluge, to counteract the Little Miss Muffet-ness of my childhood - Phew! Whilst I love the colour that polymer clay and beads have brought into my life, it is no secret that wire is my first love. EclipseI make this pendant time and time again - inspired by the work of Nicole Hanna , and I love it. It's asymmetry draws me to this design. The markings on the matte blue agate complement the wire work. And as I went about my business, pottering about the house and going back and forth to work, my muse caught sight of a polymer clay faux bone medallion I made earlier, meaning to eventually turn it into a tribal piece - she decided the medallion had waited long enough and clicked her fingers -lo and behold, Zanzibar came into being! A silk, vaguely Chinese looking silk choker was unearthed, my stash raided for colourful wooden beads and Cowrie shells, and they were all put together using waxed linen. I think the necklace is fun and can be easily worn in summer with T shirts and linens, as well as in winter over jumpers. I have always wanted to go to Zanzibar which is an archipelago off the coast of Tanzania, once a Portuguese and then a British protectorate, a Spice Island that sounds warm and exotic - one day perhaps. Just now, I shall have to make do with the necklace. ZanzibarSarayuThe Sarayu is a river that runs through the north of India and is a tributary of the Ganges. The turquoise beads in this necklace carrying the conch shell pendant, and the flow of the necklace, reminded me of a river - I used the 'stare hard at it and call it the first name that jumps into your head' technique. This technique works well when I like a piece of jewellery - Bang, a name jumps up and bites me on the nose - if, however, I don't feel any rapport with it, I could go cross eyed and anoxic from holding my breath and concentrating hard with no results. Needless to say, such pieces end up on the scrap heap. The pendant is a black and gold disc from Indonesia - one I made earlier was red, black and gold and equally beautiful. Earlier on in the year I made a pair of earrings I called The Bollywood Barbie Earrings - what I imagined Barbie would wear if she went to Bollywood. In the process of researching this for my blog, I came across Rachel Chitra's blog - she had written a post about the scarcity of dolls in India. We had quite a few virtual conversations, and I thought no more of it. Rachel is an Indian journalist and blogger and sent me this link today - she very kindly wrote a little blog post about Caprilicious Jewellery. That's me done before my little mini break in Hohwacht. Have a fabulous week and I'll catch you next Friday, same place same time xx P.S - I know more of you read me than you let on - go on, put your heads above the parapet and leave me a comment, show me some love darnit, I deserve it - wouldn't you agree?? - the app might ask for your email id, but don't be frightened - it is just to make sure you are human and not a robot selling snake oil from Outer Mongolia xx This lovely piano solo by Kevin Kerr expresses the emotions I have tried to capture in this necklace. To me summertime is all about butterflies and dragonflies, mellow sunlight, tinkling music and flowers - I don't think about the slugs and snails and weeds and rain that are such a nuisance - I must be a romantic at heart, although I would deny it hotly, if someone said that about me. Happy Friday, readers and thanks for joining me today. This week, I've written two posts - the last one about Statement Jewellery, posted on Wednesday will be a guest post on a friend's blog later on in the year - but you caught sight of it first, right here. I didn't want to add this weeks pieces of jewellery to the guest post and decided to write a separate one instead. My muse see sawed wildly this week from the conventional and pretty, to the wild and crazy. I kick started the weekend by making wire and resin dragonflies. The problem with this was that each coating of resin took at least a couple of days to set - this gave my mischievous muse time to draw my attention to all sorts of other ideas - I was a bit overloaded on the ideas front and my mind was spinning out of control! And while I waited for the resin to set, off Ms Muse trotted dragging me in her wake, this time in the direction of Cubism and Pablo Picasso. A few lessons ( quite a few, actually - because I cannot draw) off the internet in drawing a face from two different perspectives and I set about making this piece, which in the end was made into a brooch by the addition of a pin. It was an awful, grey and rainy weekend, which might have sparked the need for bright colour. I love it, but I do feel the need to offer apologies to Pablo. In my defence, it is more difficult than one would think, especially for someone who cannot draw in one perspective, let alone two at the same time! - try it and see how you go - and then, once it has been drawn, to successfully convert it to a polymer clay piece - eeps! not sure I'll be doing this again any time soon. This is a gift for a very wacky and fun friend of mine - we are to visit her in Hamburg soon, I hope she will love it as much as I do. And the dragonflies showed no sign of being ready yet, so on we went, my muse and I, plodding on with another piece. Images from the Subconscious - Mind Games!While I was researching the making of the 'Picasso' pin, I looked at a whole load of stuff on the internet that set my mind a buzzing - among others, the art of Romero Britto, and the South American god of Fertility - the Kokopelli - colourful images that seemed to stay with me in my dreams. No wonder then, that my next piece was shaped by them. This is Kokopelli, a Native American fertility deity. He is usually depicted as a hump backed and feathered flute player, and he takes care of both the harvest and fertility - which in the end mean one and the same! I was looking for a colourful piece to replicate in Polymer clay, but passed him up in favour of the cubist face - another time perhaps, I thought.............
And the dragonflies were still wet........sigh! Oh well! ZehraConus snails are venomous though beautiful and are the species of snail whose shells are seen in most collections.The species most dangerous to humans are the larger ones which prey on small bottom-dwelling fish; the smaller species mostly hunt and eat marine worms. They have a venom gland and a hollow tooth like a harpoon or proboscis through which they inject and paralyse their prey before eating it. This pendant came from Indonesia and is set with cross sections of conus shells in coloured resin, and I added faceted onyx, and pyrite nuggets which gleam in the light - they aren't called 'Fools Gold' for nothing! 'Zehr' is the Arabic word for poison - although Zehra means beautiful! Either way, I think the name fits this pendant - would you agree?? MayuriThis peacock feather pendant came from Indonesia as well - I was quite taken with the way the edges of the feather had been beaded like a Rastafarian's dreads - hard work, and done so neatly - I have a great deal of admiration for the artist who made it. It can't be fun to play with feathers and glue and beads - just imagine the mess at the end of it. Together with a string of freshwater pearls and a couple of enamelled Indian beads, bought during my last trip home, a simple, but elegant necklace was born. Of course the word Mayuri really means a peahen and is a misnomer - the poor peahen hasn't been born with the elegance of the male bird - but hey, let's not quibble, eh! At last, finally, the dragonflies were ready to be used - and about time too!! The Dance of The DragonflyI think it was worth the wait, don't you?? As a bonus, I have a few leftover dragon flies, which will eventually work their way into other pieces, later on.
That's a wrap for this week folks, I'll catch you again next week, same time, same place. Have a lovely week xx |
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