Hello folks, thanks for joining me once again. As always, it it lovely to have your company. I've had a couple of weeks off from work and it has been heavenly lazing around, lying abed till 11am, watching movies on Netflix into the wee small hours. I do feel guilty about not achieving anything but I've firmly squashed those thoughts - I reckon I deserve a break. After all, at this time of year I'm usually sunning myself in India, visiting with my mother and family. Both hubby and I have had our first dose of the vaccine with absolutely no problems. I went around the corner to Coventry, but when I tried to find a place for Mike, we were offered centers in Birmingham and Leicester. I had to keep logging onto the site morning and night for three days and finally got him a spot in Kenilworth which is easily accessible, although it is just over 12 miles away. We have a car and the ability to get there, I wonder how other people are managing. It seems crazy to me, as there are two vaccination centers where I live which we couldn't get into, but Public Health England - or whatever they call themselves now probably have some reason for the craziness.
Rhapsody in BlueA jazz composition written by George Gershwin in 1924, this piece of music was written for a solo piano and a jazz band, and synthesizes jazz with classical music. The opening bars are as well known around the world as Beethoven's Fifth, and it is an American classic. I hope I've done George Gershwin justice when I named my latest necklace after his beautiful piece of music. While the placement of the larger beads was fun, I have to accept that sewing in the 'greenery' in between was extremely tedious - the dark spaces of felt board between the larger beads needed to be obscured and it seemed to take forever and a day. However, once it was done, it was very pretty and the memory of the tediousness of the task seemed to vanish. The picture of a wildflower meadow is one I used for inspiration when I set out to make this necklace. That's me for this week, folks. I'm back at the grindstone on Monday and working all weekend. I'm afraid my muse has gone on holiday, so I shall content myself with making a few pairs of earrings in readiness for the Earrings show on the 28th. Have a wonderful week and I'll catch you next Friday, same time, same place.
Until then xx
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Hello folks, I hope you're enjoying the weather this weekend. I don't want to rain on anyone's chips, but if a couple of minutes in the sunshine are very possibly the best we're going to get to smile about this year, we'd best enjoy it before it's all gone. I've been rooting through old albums from holidays long past - nostalgia for what was, and what might never be again. This is going to be a quick post as the garden beckons - the sun is shining and i'm off to sit under a parasol and sip a Becks Blue shandy with hubby and Wilfred. The bees are buzzing around and I caught an opportunistic picture of one rampaging through the sweet peas with pollen smeared all over it's bottom. Last week I was playing with a moonstone from my Jaipur stash and had just finished attaching it to a necklace blank with a beaded bezel - I had no real idea where I was going with it until I saw this picture of the Keukenhof gardens, just outside Amsterdam that I visited many years ago - possibly in 1984! It was my first trip into Europe on a tour bus and the Keukenhof gardens were impossibly beautiful. I'd love to go there again, but it is just open to the public for about eight weeks in the Tulip season between the end of March and mid May. It's still a bit chilly at that time and although I plan to go back, every time we think about booking a pre summer holiday, it seems too much of a chore to pack all our winter gear and stout walking shoes/wellies (there are 32 hectares of garden so even a short walk is very long) to go on holiday when we can be as warm as a piece of pie, right here at home. I decided that I would sew colour blocks of 'flowers' around the central moonstone which would represent the body of water in the picture above. There are plenty of water features in the Keukenhof with lakes and ponds and canals galore and although the gardens are shut at night, I imagined what they must look like on a moonlit night. Here's the necklace right up to where I stopped last night. That's all I have for you this week, good people. Have a lovely weekend, wear your masks when you meet people, and stay safe. It isn't over yet, not by a long chalk. See you next Friday, same time, same place. Until then xx Hello folks, thanks for joining me again today. This is a week where we have some good news - the pandemic appears to be slowing down, the numbers of people admitted to our hospital have fallen as have admissions to ITU. We are preparing to return to quasi normal although I don't think normality will be achieved for a long time yet. It pained me a great deal to watch the Panorama investigation by the BBC about the inability to supply us with the correct equipment. PPE is the story worldwide, and many countries have been caught with their trousers around their ankles. I am not usually a tearful person, but yet, this is my tribe and I'm not ashamed to say that I was in tears at the end of the programme. If you haven't watched it, do click on the link above which should take you to the BBC iplayer. You will have to sign in or register, but if you can't get through, perhaps you'd like to read the gist of the story here. I've been playing in the garden which has started to wake up, as have the weeds, unfortunately. Perhaps it is this that has inspired my next piece of jewellery - I am taking my time over it as is extremely intricate with hundreds of beads sewn into a small, tight space. As I told you earlier, I am using up all my old stock of beads, cabochons and brass Vintaj focals - there has been a tendency to buy more and more and stash everything away to keep the house tidy and I am shocked at how much I have, stashed away in various drawers. I decided that no more buying shall happen and that I would put my foot down with a firm hand - and then went and bought some seed beads in a colour I didn't have that were absolutely necessary for this next piece - sigh! Addict or what!! At least it was only a couple of quids worth, rather than loads and loads. Last week was International Jazz Week and to commemorate this I bring you a trio from Bangalore, India - Sandra Oberoi and her daughters Tiara and Tiana - can't get more international than that! I went to school with Sandras mother, Shirley and it is wonderful to hear the next two generations make such beautiful music together. Sandra teaches music in her own school, Harmony, in Bangalore and she sand for us at our school reunion earlier on in the year. I picked out an art nouveau Vintaj piece from the stash this time, made in the style of Mucha's illustrations. The woman in the piece appears to be sitting in a windswept garden, surrounded by flowers - clearly she wasn't schooled by nuns or she'd have gotten a beating for sitting so wantonly with her knees visible to the world. 'Sit like a lady' they'd have said - but this hussy obviously doesn't care. Is there a stream by her feet? Is she waiting for her lover? Or perhaps she's just having a Bollywood heroine moment where she's singing to a long lost lover. I'm not sure what is going on with this lady but she looks like she's having a chilled out time. I took a couple of days to decide what to do with her, and decided to sit her in a wildflower garden, under a wisteria. The shape of the necklace needed to be finalised - after the last piece, I didn't fancy tacking on extra pieces of Stiff Stuff, such a bloomin' nuisance. As hubby and I are now distancing from one another, we have moved out of the little TV nook into the main living room and I'm trying to keep the area generally tidy. Unfortunately this piece required me to dig out every colour of flower shaped bead I possess and others as fillers and I now have a precariously piled up table that Mike has kindly placed by my chair. I've already had an accident and spilled a box of blue beads. Wilfred enjoyed batting them around the room with his paws and it took an hour to pick them up. By the end of Day one, I had the piece cut out, our heroine was sat to one side of it and I had started on the wildflower meadow - I used up blue roses I bought when I was in the USA a number of years ago from Michael's - whoever heard of blue roses? - they must be wildflowers, right? Or at least a figment of someone's wild imagination! I hadn't decided whether I liked it yet, but decided to plough on - I could always cut the piece up if I hated it, but by the end of Day two, it was beginning to look like it was travelling towards where I wanted it to go. And by the end of Day four, I had covered the meadow with flowers. I have yet to add grass between all the flowers and then begin on the Wisteria. I've been spending considerable time before I fall asleep in my lonely bed (sob!) planning this plant - the trunk, the flowers and leaves and hopefully will come up with a credible interpretation. There's plenty of time to plan this for at least another day or two while I finish the meadow. These work-in-progress pictures were all taken using my phone and I apologise for their quality. I shall of course take my good camera out for the finished piece. Spring blooms symbolise hope as the cold dark days of winter transform in the bright spring sun. Wildflowers come out first - violets, primulas, cornflowers, anemones, poppies, daisies and dandelions flourish in meadows symbolising the hope of good things to come. I looked for these colours and added them into my 'painting' lavishly - as well as the blue roses; but please, don't be too picky, let's call it artistic licence and just go with the flow. We can all do with a good dose of Hope just now, right? That's me for this week, folks. Stay indoors, take care and be safe. Have a good week, and I'll catch you next Friday, same time, same place. Until then xx Hello folks, thanks for joining me again. Last week, Mike and I went to the ballet - he got us tickets to The Sleeping Beauty in Birmingham. To avoid the nuisance of having to find a parking space and driving around the one way systems which are totally clogged up due to repairs and urban regeneration projects, we took the train in to Birmingham and made a day of it. I love all dance forms, and this ballet, with the evocative music of Tchaikovsky is close to my heart. Mike has the music on vinyl which he sometimes plays when we are in the garden and it is quite magical. Before the matinee they had a short programme about how the show was made and set out costumes and ballet slippers for kids to try on and have their pictures taken. While I waited for Mike to deposit our coats in the cloakroom I saw this young family with their two daughters delighting in the costumes and took some of my own pictures with their permission. These kids were a delight to watch - just look at the expressions on their faces, they were quite the divas! RainforestThis pendant has been a long time in the making. I made it bit by bit, gently feeling my way through the mist of a lack of formal design - I started with a butterfly and then added a flower, and then snaky vines and a waterfall of a tassel and created a mini scene from a rainforest, with the butterfly flitting over an exotic flower. I added three rows of crystals and a beautiful abalone clasp and suddenly it was done! As with many other Caprilicious pieces it is a showstopper, for extroverts only! And if you think my made up flower is a bit strange, check out this flower that grows in the rainforest - when I first saw this picture I thought it was 'fake news' but no, it is called the Hot Lips Flower (Psychotria poeppigiana). It grows on a small shrub that lives under the rainforest canopy. The bright red color attracts birds to pollinate it. Well, that's all I had time for this week folks. I hope you enjoyed your little read of my ramblings. Have a great week and I'll catch you next Friday, same time, same place.
Until then, xx Hello folks, as this post appears in your inboxes, I shall be setting up at The Handmade Fair in the grounds of Ragey Hall. I've had the week off work to get organised and have been racing around preparing for the show. The weather forecast has never been watched as anxiously as it has this week and of course the weathermen are predicting low pressure and thunderstorms. Aw shucks! But surely the intrepid British won't be put off by a little thing like rain? We shall wait and see. Earlier on I had planned a couple of necklaces and decided to make them even though it was going to be a last minute attempt. It felt like being back at medical school and swotting for exams right until the very last moment - I even used to read my notes in the car while my mother drove me to the exams, convinced that if I didn't I was sure to fail. I made flowers from copper clay and that kept me busy all weekend. Copper clay seems to be much more forgiving than bronze and is easier to manipulate. I spent a load of time sanding and polishing and refining until the flowers went into the kiln and I could do no more. Oh joy! two of them came out looking perfect with a beautiful ready made heat patina which I decided to keep, and simply covered over with wax polish for posterity. The third one predictably, was a nightmare - it split during the first firing, so I held it back and repaired the split, and in the process accidentally broke off the bail. I then had to replace that with a new bail, all the while holding the piece like a snowflake - and believe me, it is very difficult to file a snowflake or attach something to it. In the end, it came out of the kiln looking as if nothing had ever gone wrong with it and butter wouldn't melt. I breathed again. The necklaces were kept deliberately simple as a contrast from my multi strand pieces, to be able to offer differing designs to my customers. I made the clasps from a design tutorial by Kristine Schroeder while waiting for the flowers to sinter in the kiln. I had a few pairs of earrings planned, and this was as good a time as any to make tham up. These dragonflies were sent over from the USA, but I bought the wrong ones - there was no hole to hang them from. They languished in my stash until I decided enough was enough and that I should follow my own slogan - 'have wire, can do'.... I wired the dragonflies to colourful circlets and hung them on sterling silver earwires. A couple more pairs of earrings, and I was done. I announced that the tool kit was closed and embarked on the mammoth task of organising my jewellery into piles to take, and piles to leave behind. Unfortunately the minute I decided to leave a necklace behind, it threw such a tantrum that I was forced to give in and add it to the box that was going with me, until in the finish I had only a few pieces left in the drawer at home. This of course, would only make the task of deciding which ones to display harder on the day - I knew that but simply could not find it in me to leave my babies at home. A Tiffin Carrier TrolleyFor those of you who don't know what a tiffin carrier is, it is a lunchbox, usually stainless steel, in 3 - 4 tiers which carries a lunchtime hot meal. The boxes are packed in a cylindrical PVC case, and collected by a 'tiffin carrier wallah' who delivers it to the educational institution/ office in time for the midday break. He then collects it after lunch and takes it back to wherever it came from. I saw a friend use a make up box that closely resembled a tiffin carrier and I sent away for one - so here's my jewellery case for the show. It packs away over 100 necklaces. My tiffin carrier trolley is now all filled up and ready to go. We were allowed onto the site to set up on the day before the show - we took some of the heavy stuff like tables and chairs to the stall. The approach road to the marquee was about half a mile long through luscious greenery and we got to park up close to it and offload the contents of the boot. The marquee was a hive of activity with people setting up all around us. I found the forlorn little space allocated to me and a little bubble of hysterical laughter welled up from deep inside. It was so tiny that just putting my handbag into it seemed to half fill it up. And I had paid an arm and a leg for this tiny space!! Now what?? My table refused to go into the space and had to be put in on the slant. I wish I had seen this earlier, I'd have got some little shelves to put on the walls. The brochures all show the larger stalls with shiny happy people, smiling all over their faces in what appeared to be acres of space. Now, a quick rethink of the set up was required, including the contents of my tiffin carrier case. This lady was opposite me, she probably wasn't too happy to be placed so close to another jewellery stall. I, however was not bothered as my jewellery is completely different to hers and our client base will not be the same. The Caprilicious woman wouldn't wear her jewellery, and I daresay her customers wouldn't touch my jewellery with a bargepole. I went over to chat to her - her stall is bigger than mine, but only by a tiny bit and she had paid the equivalent of three limbs to my two, for it. She told me to go to Ikea and buy another smaller table, and that mine was sticking out into the aisle, 'so you will need to get permission from the organisers.' There's no way I was going to buy another piece of furniture that I won't have storage space for at home, and might never use again. My table, although on the skew, will not be in the aisle when I finally set it up. There's even space for me to sit behind my display although getting in and out may be impossible - ah well, I'll work that one out when I need to. Perhaps I shall just sit there, imprisoned by my jewellery! Or, swing out over my display on a rope like Tarzan, which is how the vendors in the vegetable markets in India get in and out of their overstocked stalls. You can see the rope dangling from the ceiling in the foreground of this picture, that the vendor uses to swing in and out of his stall - the first time Mike saw this he was gobsmacked - he got the guy to go back and forth just to reassure himself that this was really the way it was done, and left him a hefty tip which caused my mother to go into meltdown at her profligate son in law! Mike got busy putting up my banner and drilling in some screws to hold picture frames in which I plan to display some of my necklaces. And then, we were done. I didn't take any stock as a night sheet with padlocks to cover the stock for security would have been an extra outlay. I had already paid extra for Wifi, for a plug point to recharge my phone if required and run my PayPal card reader as well as a couple of spotlights, and stumped up for public liability insurance for up to £5 million. So, just an arm and a leg, and a few fingers off the other hand, then! I came home and collected all my bits and bobs together in the middle of the living room floor and went slightly green about the gills - there was just so much to carry - display items, packaging, jewellery - and all to fit in such a tiny space!
We looked at each other and shrugged, we shall just have to grin and bear it. I have always tried to do the best I can in every endeavour and this will be no different, if it doesn't go well, it won't be for lack of trying. I shall post pictures as I go along, so do take a look at the Caprilicious Facebook page or Instagram feed. I will catch you next week with a full update. Have a fabulous weekend, and look out for me next week, same time, same place Until then xx Hello readers, thanks for stopping by the Friday account of this weeks statement jewellery from Caprilicious. I attended a school reunion this week and ended up making little pieces of jewellery, as I was pushed for time. I do not like to lay a piece of wire work down overnight - the wire seems to 'set' into shape and is difficult to manipulate again when it is next picked up. This is because of a phenomenon called work hardening. For those of you who are interested, this is how it happens..... the lattice of crystals within the wire has a regular, nearly defect free pattern. As it is manipulated, dislocations occur in the crystalline structure and tiny micro-fractures appear from the stress, which in turn hold the wire in the shape into which it is bent - this property is utilised when making jewellery, but if over manipulated, the wire is in danger of snapping. When left overnight, the micro crystalline wire structure settles into it's new pattern and is stiff and hard to manipulate - there you are, a bit of science for you! DahliaInspired by the flowers in my garden and the yellow jade hand carved flowers I had been hoarding so carefully, this necklace is bright and pretty. I had been wondering how to attach the flowers, and still show off their hand carved beauty to its best effect, and then I had an Eureka moment - of course! wire is the answer to any problem (well almost) - I should have known that! I wired the flowers onto the necklace of purple agate - and Voila! Ibadan
StarlightI love these stars - they are dyed mother of pearl, and very light and pretty - but it is ever so hard to string them right. They have to be pieced together almost like a jigsaw puzzle if they are to lie flat - they had to be redone so many times, the air above them started to turn blue - but I would not be defeated - on I plodded, muttering and swearing under my breath, restringing them again and again, until I had the effect I wanted. I'll bet you cannot tell from looking at it how much work went into the dratted thing. Sweet SwirlsI made the clasp from a design by Nicole Hanna many moons ago, and had not yet found somewhere to use it - why not just use it in the bracelet where it was meant to go? - sure, but wouldn't that be too easy?? - this debate kept going around in my head, until I finally gave in and made the bracelet. Once I'd done that, I made another - the design is so pretty, I want to make loads of them in all different sizes and colours. RaindropsI found these lampwork beads at the Newmarket bead fair last year - they have been crying out to be used, and eventually got their turn to be transformed into earrings. They have these pretty spots on a white background, like little raindrops. Indian Feathers EarringsThis is a design by Iza Malcyzk - I've had it for a long time, but hadn't tried it out - she gave it it's title and said it was an ethnic design - I think she means the North American Indian, I've never seen feathers like these in India! They didn't last too long on my shelf - they flew away to their new home in under ten minutes! That's all for this week folks. Next week, I have decided to put together a necklace inspired by the 'shirt necklace' worn by Isabella Rossellini in the film Death Become Her. I've never seen anyone so beautiful and charismatic and the scene where she climbs out of the water, wearing only this necklace will stay with me a long time. I have been slowly collecting the beads and baubles required to make the Caprilicious version, and all I shall say now is that it will eventually go to one very special and lucky lady. And now I'm off to a Statutory and Mandatory all day course at the hospital, where I shall learn some riveting facts about Manual Handling (my answer is to call a porter) and Health and Safety, Fire and other interesting stuff that I would never have known about if they hadn't made it mandatory for us to attend the lecture on an annual basis.
Have a lovely weekend, and I will be here next week, same time, same place xx Hello readers, thanks for stopping by to read about the statement jewellery made at Caprilicious this week. It was my privilege to provide a piece of jewellery to the Children's Unit at the hospital as a raffle prize - the manager who requested it of me was very complimentary about the piece I handed in - I was quietly pleased with it myself, and the reaction on the Facebook page was heartening when I posted some pictures there. The carved jade flower had been lying around in my stash, just waiting to be used and this is a very worthy cause, very close to my heart. If you're wondering what the mention of statement jewellery in the opening line was all about - I've been reading blogging guides - and the theory is that a googlebot, which in my imagination looks like the picture above, worms it's way into a website and if the raison d'être of the blog is mentioned in the first few sentences, the botworm gets the message - and when people look for 'Handmade Statement Jewellery', the Caprilicious Jewellery website comes up in a Google search - having done this for a few weeks, I was quite gratified to find that I haven't been misguided by the bloggers guide. However, I don't know any woman who goes to Google when she wants to look for handmade statement jewellery! I certainly wouldn't do a Google search to look for jewellery, would you?? What beats me is that knowing this fact doesn't make me chase the botworm any less frantically - just shows how competitive I really am, I suppose, and also that I like to test a theory before I accept it as common wisdom. AnatevkaAnatevka was a fictional shtetl in Imperial Russia where the musical Fiddler on the Roof was set. We went to the Eutin Festival in Germany, where they had this musical on, inspiring me to create this necklace. I acquired a necklace of hand knotted shell pearls in beautiful colours of bronze/ cream, peach and shades of grey - the pearls are large and very beautiful, and though I normally would have cut up the necklace to restring the pearls, this one was so well made, I couldn't bring myself to wantonly destroy someones painstaking work - in fact, I had to agree that I couldn't have done it better ( a rare admission for me ). I decided to make a pendant for it, and string it onto the necklace directly. An agate druzy cabochon, surrounded by wire lace, with pearls and crystals thrown in just grew and grew until two days later, my muse declared it finished. Although wire lace looks pretty, it is hard work on the finger tips which resembled Shreddies by the time I was done - but hey! I love the way it looks, so won't complain. The pendant is very baroque in appearance, and suits the necklace - and the name! If you want to know what shell pearls are, here's a link to a very well written article I found during my research - I couldn't have put it better myself. And with this, I decided to put my Lacemania aside for a while - and my fingertips heaved a huge sigh of relief!! I've had two new helpers this week - Charlie and Wilfred have moved in with us - they must have been techies in a previous life, they are fascinated by the moving cursor on my laptop screen, and keep trying to help me type this blog and won't take no for an answer. They are also interior decorators of sorts, and are helping me to remodel my house and change the decor, by systematically destroying anything they dislike - Mike's 40 year old German oil lamp (he's had it 40 years, but it was an antique when he first bought it) is something they have taken a dislike to - only he refuses to part with it - the boys are most annoyed that it is now out of reach! Silver MonsoonWith my fingertips sore and out of commission, I decided to give them a rest. I have these peacock feather pendants in from Indonesia - the ends have been fringed, much like a Rastafarians dreadlocks, with beads, and I love the effect. I used shards of electroplated quartz needles in the necklace, strung with spacers of crackle quartz in a deep peacock blue and a couple of enamelled beads from India. The quartz needles remind me of the silver rain that sheets down during a monsoon - the rain in the UK though persistent, is usually gentler. DurgaDurga is a wrathful form of Parvati, otherwise known as Mrs Shiva, and the mother of Ganesh the elephant God. Kali is an even more angry form - women of all ages, at different times of their cycles have fleeting resemblances to one or another avatar of this multipurpose Goddess. According to legend, Parvathi was peed off at something- or someone (possibly, but not necessarily hubby), and she knitted her brows together in a frown - a third eye originated there ( watch out - the gaze from that third eye when provoked into opening can burn you into a frazzle). When someone else peed the already irritated Durga off, she went wild, hair unbound, arms akimbo - and she didn't stop until she killed the annoyance, hung his head around her neck and drank his blood. She laughed and laughed, and did a dance that a whirling dervish would have envied, until suddenly to her horror, she found that she was trampling on her poor husband Shiva - Oops! she said and stuck her tongue out - and an ancient photographer took her picture (or maybe the wind changed and her facial expression stuck), so she is doomed to being immortalised as the crazy one with her tongue stuck out, hair wild, with strings of demon's heads hung about her person. This story, I am sure will resonate with my female readers - we've all been there, pootling along, minding our own, when along comes this nuisance - whether we turn into Durga or Kali depends on the irritant! Anyway, I digress - this necklace is made of a pendant from the Banjara tribe in India, with two paisa coins from 1962. I put them on a rope, which can be tied so that the pendant sits where you would like it to and can be worn with all sorts of necklines. It looks like something Durga might like to wear - well, she's most definitely a Caprilicious woman.................... That's it for this week folks. Charlie has destroyed a bunch of silk flowers I had prettifying a dull corner of the house, and the two brothers are now flicking the flowers around the house like crazed confetti - I'd better go and rescue what's left of those poor flowers. Have a fab weekend, and I'll catch you next week, same time, same place
xx Hello folks, it's hot outside - and I love it. Statement jewellery has had to be put aside for a short while to extract every ounce of pleasure from the sun while we can get it. We spent a long weekend in Germany, by the Baltic Sea - and anyone would have thought it was the Caribbean, it was so warm. My friend Margrit loved the little cubist inspired brooch I made for her, as I hoped she would, and found an outfit to wear it with almost immediately. She has a lovely, airy, Scandinavian-style country cottage, and the most beautiful garden, full of the most fabulous and lush flowers, bigger and better than anything I have seen in England. Equally, the slugs and snails (Schnecke - pronounced shnake as if spoken by Sean Connery) in her garden are bigger and eat more than any English slug I have met - she goes out every night with a torch to catch them in flagrante and drown them in a bucket of soap suds, and the deer (she calls them Bambi - aah! ) come in after she retires indoors for the night and chomp their way through anything the slugs haven't had yet - so it's a running battle to keep the garden going. Margrit needs to be vigilant indeed to keep her garden looking as lush as it does - I love my garden very much, but cannot imagine working quite so hard to keep it. And the pièce de résistance.................drumroll................ I said to Margrit, I don't need a tan, I'm brown already - and, in an aside, thinking I was being humorous I added 'and, I have no white bits', to which she replied, quick as a flash, 'neither have I' - sure enough, I looked around and there were loads of people in various states of undress, sunning themselves into a 'no white bits' situation. All except Amelie, Margrit's young granddaughter, who stayed determinedly pale as a little starfish, and was even more overdressed than I was, which is saying something! So that's all I did all week long, folks, roast myself gently on the sands along the Baltic coast. I had no time to make anything, and I've shown you the reason why.
I trust you are all enjoying the summer too, and I will have something for you next week - I've had a few ideas whilst on my travels. Catch you next week, same time, same place xx Hello readers, I hope the summer is treating you well - here in the UK it still hasn't caught up with us, but we live in hope, now that June is here. The foxgloves, whose seeds I collect from seedheads in the garden and strew around the garden and on the bank opposite the house every year, have come up and look ever so pretty. I'm not sure who the whimsical person was who named the flower, but I can just imagine Mr and Mrs Urban Fox - and there are at least two of them in the park opposite our house - slipping their paws into the flowers and going off, tripping the light fantastic, arm in arm. So with that bit of whimsy at the forefront of my imagination, I set about making this weeks pieces - advance warning--- a lot of them involve flowers. Daisy MaeI bought strings of clear quartz beads in India in a prayer shop - they were strung into a 'Mala' which is meant to be an aid to meditation and prayer, clear the mind and get your chakras spinning. I'm afraid I bought them because they were pretty and shiny, and paired with pewter daisies, tiny turquoise beads and a very lovely turquoise clasp worn to one side, they make a very pretty necklace. If it helps the wearer with their psychic health, well, that's an added bonus, but I cannot vouch for that particular outcome. I had to string the third strand while wearing the piece and looking into a mirror, to get the daisies in exactly the right place, so that they would hang at the bottom of the necklace when the clasp is positioned to one side. It took me ages, to get the positioning just right, and Kevin and Betty looked on in amusement while I struggled - I couldn't use either of them as I needed to have the necklace on a 'real' person to get it just so. Stone RosesHand carved turquoise roses and teardrops are assembled using bead weaving and knotting techniques in this very different necklace which sits close to the base of the neck. Necklaces with Afghani PendantsI had two last pendants in my most recent delivery of pendants from Afghanistan and I made polymer clay beads to go with them over the weekend. As I had all the canes made and stored earlier, making the beads was quick and easy and the necklaces almost made themselves once the beads were ready. PsychedeliaMorning GloryBright and sassy, the necklaces in the Tribal Bling section are able to effortlessly go from day to night, and from Eastern to Western attire - one just needs to be brave enough to wear them. I have strung them on two strands of beading wire so that although the pendants are heavier than most focals, the necklaces are robust and will take everyday wear and tear. This is my little kiln, and I have ignored it for a while - I am always trying to run befor I can walk, and then, when I have a spectacular failure, I retreat to lick my wounds and the technique that unwittingly caused me grief gets put on the back burner. I decided to break my duck and try some simple designs again. Having cracked a 20 gm packet of Precious Metal Clay in 99% silver, I made three pieces of jewellery, and these worked out more or less how I wanted them to - maybe I'll play some more! Summer RainI combined a piece made with silver with a polymer clay and resin 'cabochon' made with inspiration from a class taken with Debbie Carlton. The polymer clay is embellished with silver foil and the pattern on the clay looks like raindrops hitting parched earth - hence Summer Rain. I made earrings to match with a piece of leftover clay. I hope you've liked what you've seen this week - do leave a comment and tell me what you think. That's a wrap for this week folks, catch you next week, same time, same place
xx My muse was in the grip of an obsession she was powerless to resist, and swept me along with her enthusiasm. Everyone loves orchids, and I once harboured a secret longing to grow them in my conservatory, and get a really good collection going. However, when I thought about it more carefully, I remembered that I was married to a renowned murderer of pot plants - and why on earth should the poor orchids fare any better than all the plants in our house which have given up the ghost one by one, and kicked the bucket, happy to depart just to get away from the over zealous attentions of Mike?? So, having managed to tame my longings for an orchid arbour, I have ended up, from time to time making orchid jewellery. I bought these beautiful orchids online - they were vanished by my house elf for a long while - I got so fed up of looking for them ( my house got a spring clean in the bargain while I turned everything over), I bought another lot - and once Elfie realised that I would not be deprived, he gave up in disgust and threw the first lot back at me. Last week, I made some earrings with them, and they were bought up almost immediately. So here are some more I made to replace them..... And while I had these on the go, I played with wire and made......yet more orchids! They were sufficiently similar in size to turn them into earrings, once I decided how to hang them. I made the ear wires up myself - shop bought ones simply wouldn't do - they had to be shaped and hammered into position with a nylon mallet to give the wire strength and keep it all from falling apart. The wires are coated with nylon, so that they do not react badly to skin ( or is it the other way round?? - anyway, you know what I mean). ClareI bought this beautiful ox bone face from Robyn of Indounik, a lovely lady who lives in Indonesia. I was looking for a face to make a piece of jewellery to fit one of my favourite songs 'Clare', by Fairground Attraction - Clare is a 'serpentine seductress' , trained in New Orleans in the dark arts of voodoo. I have other bone faces, but this one, with the design carved into it seemed to fit the bill perfectly - the piece I planned was a pendant with loads of swirling wire, with a seductive, dark look - in the end, the piece took 9 feet of 20 gauge wire and miles of fine weaving wire, and once the copper in the pendant was treated with chemicals and darkened, she looks a lot like what I envisaged in my mind - I am happy with her. I showed it to Robyn, and she remarked that the free flow of the wire must have been a bit like meditation 'Wow, Neena, that's a truly incredible piece - so intricate and so intriguing. I'll bet that's like me shunting bits of paper and photos and other things around a scrapbook page, you find going where the wire wanders like a form of meditation '. ClareAn old friend came to spend the weekend with us, and as we chatted and rehashed old times, I played with a spool of wire and this little rose was born. It seemed to be entirely the natural thing to do once the formalities of the meal had been dispensed with. And finally, last but not least, after all those floral offerings, I made a linear pendant, inspired by the work of Nicole Hanna - well, it has very soft lines - I used a lamp work glass bead in orange and turquoise as the focus - I am in awe of people who make pretty things with glass - it is such a difficult thing to do. I have recently bought a large stash of lamp work beads in whimsical colours and designs and no doubt you will see them from time to time. That's all I had time for this week, folks, have a fabulous weekend, and I'll catch you next week, same time, same place
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