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
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Hello everyone, how is 2023 treating you? I hope you all had a great New Year's celebration, whatever you did. I was working, so took in some food for the people at work and celebrated with them. Fortunately the weather improved for a while and getting about wasn't a problem, although this week has been cold again. I haven't been able to get to the blog for a while due to pressures of work and life in general, and many apologies for that. However, I hope to be back to write at least a couple of blog posts a month - I'm going to stop kidding myself that I will be able to do more. Life has become so busy that I can't seem to spare the time to play with beads. I have mentioned the bead embroidered piece that is still is in its 'fugly' phase and I just have to wait until I can decide whether I want to tear it up or carry on. Just now it sits on a necklace bust, glaring at me, willing me to pick it up and do something, anything, with it. Instead, I decided to sidestep it and for my first piece of the year to use a strand of dragons vein agate that I'd been hoarding for a while. I love the look of dragons vein agate - the stones themselves are tactile and smooth, and the markings look like they have been taken from a magical and fantastic tale. I tend not to buy brown coloured stones and am attracted to bright and colourful ones as a rule. However, these were so pretty, I bought two strands. One of them was paired with a pendant of hand carved white jade in an effort to brighten the piece but I wasn't satisfied until I added a crystal in a beaded bezel to the lower edge of the pendant. A few pearls, some Tibetan shell beads, capped with silver and a handful of little blue Japanese seed beads to brighten the necklace even further and, Voila! it was finished. When I tried it on after the addition of the little crystal teardrop, it seemed too long to me and I shortened it. It now looks like something a sophisticated woman of the world would wear to a luncheon date in a posh restaurant. LadyThis week, I'm planning to play with black rainbow pearls - I love those oil slick colours. And then maybe, I shall go back to the fugly one and make a decision, one way or another. I can't bear to look at it anymore, sitting there, crying, 'Me, me, me', every time I walk by. That's me for now, people. I'll be back in a couple of weeks, same place, same time.
Have a wonderful weekend, and I'll catch you soon. Until then xx Hello folks, thanks for joining me today. It has suddenly gone all sunny and warm on us here in the UK, but since Monday is a Bank Holiday I can almost guarantee that it won't last. After the debacle of the Handmade Fair I decided to take it easy - one of my oldest friends was visiting me from Vancouver and I had the pleasure of having her and others who live in the UK come and stay. It was fabulous to catch up and discuss old times and find that although so many years had passed since we last met (about 40 to be precise) we had not changed fundamentally. The weekend flew by and her visit was over too soon, unfortunately. Now that we've met up, we've pledged not to leave it so long again. I spent some time taking photographs of the creations I had left over from the Fair. I had made some necklaces using a technique taught by Loretta Lam. The beads and pods are made from a very light clay - Ultralight - which handles like marshmallow when uncured and is very light when it comes out of the oven. The beads are cured and then a veneer and embellishments are applied in stages. They float when placed in water and are light and easy to wear. As you can probably see, the embellishments and veneers have been applied so that the necklaces are reversible. The technique is labour intensive but interesting and the necklaces are chunky but light, different and most definitely fun. This necklace was literally made from left overs - a veneer from a class I took in March, canes from last year, a sunflower from a tutorial written for Bead and Jewellery magazine and some orphan beads in my collection of beads that I made earlier on and didn't use up. The lady pounced on it, and tried it on - that was it, love at first sight! She refused to take it off, bought a pair of earrings to go with it and wore it around the show. I hope she gets a lot of enjoyment from it, bless her cotton socks! I was given carte blanche to modify this necklace into something a bit more sophisticated by a client in India. She came to my show, made a few purchases and came back for more - on the second day, she carried a bag of beads which she trusted me to take back to the UK and modify in my own time, at my own pace and to my own design. Now that's a whole bowl of trust! And I mean to deliver to all her expectations, of course. These are rather beautiful tourmaline beads, but strung together on cheap thread, with an adjustable gold thread 'clasp' and don't look terribly special. I added rice pearls in a random manner to bring a bit of brightness to the necklace, and a beautiful diamante clasp to one side to take the degree of sophistication up a notch and I hope you'll agree that it makes the necklace fit for a queen. The lady I am designing for is sophisticated, smart and smouldering with a distinctive style of her own. Her style is certainly unique and she dresses like a diva with well thought out, dramatic accessories. I think this one will suit her personality down to the ground. I spent the rest of the week at a conference in Leeds related to the day job and am due to be involved in some very interesting and exciting developments.
Have a lovely week, and I'll catch you next weekend, same time, same place. Until then xx |
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