What is Statement Jewellery??Hello readers - this is the start of a series of blog posts to explain the ethos of Caprilicious Jewellery and why a piece of statement jewellery is the perfect accessory to make any casual outfit go from basic to spectacular! The idea for this post came to me when I was talking to one of my colleagues at my day job about Caprilicious, and he stopped me in my tracks by asking me (with a very puzzled look on his face) 'What on earth is Statement Jewellery' ?? - at first I laughed because I thought he was joking, and then I realised he truly had no idea what I had been talking about. I had to step back and think for a minute before I answered - I had never before been asked to explain it. And then, as a wonderful coincidence, I was asked by a fellow blogger if I would write a guest post about this very subject, and I jumped at the chance. So, what is Statement Jewellery?? and what's the difference between a statement piece and a signature piece???..... To my mind, statement pieces make you feel good, reflect your personality and the way you are feeling at that particular moment. They stand out and are noticed as unique and individual - making your wardrobe basics come together in a way that makes for visual interest. Larger pieces will obviously make an impact more easily, but small and delicate can make as much of a statement - they just give out a different message about you at that point in time. A statement piece should make you feel happy with your look, reflect your personality, and help you to walk tall, and feel confident. In any given week, a woman might want to wear leather, copper and spikes in a very edgy and modern look on one day, and vintage lace and flowers on another - as I said, it's the way she feels when she wakes up that particular morning. Signature PiecesSignature pieces are statements that people recognise as your particular style - Cleopatra eyes, Jackie Onassis sunglasses and pearls or Frida Kahlo and her monobrow and flowers are examples. The wearing of jewellery could easily be your signature - can you hear people say 'Ooh, she always wears the most interesting jewellery!!' when they talk about you?? To be continued next week.. In the meantime, do take a look at the pieces made at Caprilicious recently. Unchained MelodyI made the butterfly with miles of wire, and as if that wasn't enough wire, I made a couple of twisted rope sections to bind it down into a necklace. I watched a real butterfly flit around in my garden as I sat weaving in the dappled sunlight and thought how lovely it looked - like the embodiment of a piece of music hand written on a page, and I had the urge to unchain my little wire butterfly. Safari SunsetThis picture was my inspiration for the piece 'Safari Sunset' . The pendant is made of annealed corrugated glass from Italy and has a tiger stripe on it, which got me thinking of a safari. I wrapped in about twenty feet of wire and attached a tree silhouette to the front of the frame. The little sunstone squares and orange agate beads are from India and my sister in law brought me the trade beads from a safari holiday. I love the warm colours of this piece. The copper wire has been patinated and waxed to hold the patina. The two pieces I made this week are almost diametrically opposite to each other - one of the days I will have to sit my muse down and ask her why she is so capricious - of course, I know the answer - she is a Caprilicious Woman and she lives by her strapline - Delicious jewellery for the Capricious Woman!!
That's my lot for this week folks - have a great weekend and I'll see you next week, same time, same place xx p.s. The other two articles in this three part series can be found here and here.
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The view from the Tea Bar - is my gurning little friend trying to tell Mike something? Hello all, I hope you have been enjoying your summer - in the UK we have had approximately 20 days of warmth, mainly in dribs and drabs - last weekend was good though, with a chance to sit outside in the sun - barbeque food flying off the shelves in the supermarkets - no one celebrates a sunny day like we do in the UK - we have so few. We have a thermometer mounted on the fence outside a kitchen window from the counter we call the 'tea bar' ( we drink a lot of tea in this house) and Mike tells me the temperature on the fence about twenty times a day - and it has been .... warm ... ish. To celebrate our 30 seconds of summer, I made a couple of pieces with warm coral - I had some enamelled pendants made earlier, to which I had added polymer clay bezels, and I pulled out my collection of coral and turquoise and set to work. The first piece was inspired by the pendant, which reminded me of a tropical sunset, and the Flame of the Forest trees which are so common in India. We had some in school, and they had long flat seed pods, which we used to cover with silver paper from cigarette packets - we had no access to foil in those days, or Toys'rus - heaven forbid - and use them in mock sword fights. They are certainly a beautiful tree when in bloom, and the coral shards I used mimic them perfectly. The second pendant was made using a cloisonne technique, where cells made of wire are used to keep the enamel colours apart - I made something resembling a 'tablet' - perhaps for a shy person as a gift to express his love - what can say it better than hearts and flowers - and very non calorific too. I added wire flowers and a heart, and more coral and turquoise, and this one is one of a kind - most definitely. A lot of people from a jewellery forum I belong to recognised it as my work, even before they read my name on my post - I think wire is truly something I love to play with, and obviously, it shows! Love Letter My newly acquired stash of crystal beads was by now feeling ignored, after all the attention it got last week, so to placate it, I made some dragonfly earrings - what better symbol of summer than a dragonfly - and here they are. The wings are made of Czech pressed glass daggers, and the earrings are on extra long kidney earwires. Eastern Promise I acquired a number of pendants, beads and baubles from a Nepalese artisan of the Limbu tribe in Kathmandu. The owner of the company supports indigenous tribal women, and the designs are made in the mountainous regions of Eastern Nepal, bordering on Bhutan and Sikkhim. Although relatively expensive, they are so beautiful, I was not able to resist them. I want to make 'East meets West' fusion pieces of jewellery, that go with any sort of apparel, and have scoured the recesses of my mind for new ideas with traditional elements. The artisans themselves are well paid by the company that sold them to me, it warms my heart to find ethical vendors from the East, there is so much to be said for paying a fair price if it gets back to the right people. Do feel free to leave me a message if you like the pieces that follow on these pages, as I use up the stuff I bought - they are too pretty to be put away in a drawer and forgotten about. I have enough for two to three weeks of enjoyable creating - it is bound to take me that long to find different ways of showing off these beauties, as I am keen for them to be as fantabulous as they deserve. Yes, I have been busy - what with buying these, looking at them over and over, rummaging in the old stash, making the necklaces, photographing them and putting them online, both in the Facebook shop and on this website, doing a weeks work at the day job - Phew! - but I just got so excited when I acquired these, I couldn't resist making them up. I did buy a few more, but I have had to go looking for Lapis Lazuli beads to make them up - what I have is so pretty, it needs just the right beads to go with it - so have spent time sourcing the lapis beads, as well as all the other things I have had to keep up with this week.
Next week, I look forward to a visit from an old friend - we haven't met since 1971 and I might not have time to do much in the way of jewellery making. I leave you with a picture a friend from a jewellery making forum put up on her site. See you next week. xx I was at work in the day job all last weekend - and this time the Gods weren't smiling on me - it was literally the weekend from hell! I was in and out of the hospital, picking up pieces that had been dropped by others, soothing ruffled feathers - and whatever could go wrong..... did. So I came home each day and pulled out my beads and clay and soothed myself calm - it was so nice to be able to do that - and I think the people around me benifited from that! A three day weekend can be so tedious, when everything is unravelling around you. Shiny pretty things - to appeal to the magpie in every woman I took delivery of a bunch of crystals from someone who was closing down a bead shop - so while I sat watching the telly with Mike, I put together some pretty chandelier earrings - I felt the need to dive straight into the crystals - I usually hoard pretty things for some crazy reason, but it would be madness to hoard half a kilogram of mixed crystals. I poured them through my fingers, sorting them into little piles and picking the ones I wanted to use - like a wide eyed AliBaba in the cave of treasures - and these are the chandeliers I made with this multicolour medley of crystal beads. Love's Sweet Scent This piece evolved out of my disastrous weekend - I mixed myself some pretty buttery yellow clay to make flowers from - had just about had enough of various shades of pink - someone recently said that yellow is a difficult colour to create with, and apparently, some people wont wear yellow as it causes their skin to look sallow. I thought, maybe it could be used as an accent - to brighten up a piece of jewellery - a little bit of it can't hurt - and it is so pretty after all. A floral theme seemed to evolve - I made peony type flowers - which will go into a brooches, I think, and a bunch of jasmine flowers and buds - these are the little plump jasmine that have the most delicious scent - ladies in India might wear just the one in their hair and you can smell it from a mile off, if you have a halfway decent sense of smell. They are usually a creamy white, but I claimed artistic licence and made them in the yellow of the winter flowering jasmine found in more temperate climes - they are still pretty recognisable though..... I think! My mother has a bush in her garden which yields loads of flowers - enough to use as offerings during her prayers, and for the ladies of the house to wear in their hair should the mood take them. I remember my dad bringing home little packets of jasmine garlands, all ready for pinning into mum's hair - and she always shared them with her daughters - I wonder if it was a secret message between them! Anyway, mindful of the edict that too much yellow would not be appreciated, I wove my jasmine into a little corsage, and teamed it with turquoise coins, pearly beads and dark blue sunstone in a statement collar - I love making those. I am sure, come winter, when the only flowers we can find easily are in the supermarket, they will gladden the heart. These jasmine are evocative of my childhood, and the bush growing outside my bedroom window, and I called it Love's Sweet Scent. The jasmine has been set low enough so it won't jab the wearer in the neck - I just love this necklace. I also made some silver components in my kiln - more flowers!- I need to decide just what to do with them, so will just post a little sneak peek into what is to come. The polymer clay peony has very thin petals, to try and resemble the flower as closely as possible - it may be too fragile on a piece of jewellery that may be knocked about during regular wear, and will have to go into a brooch, though I originally inteded to use it on the wrist in a wide bracelet - like a prom corsage. Jhumkas - Indian style in Wire and Crystal I made some beadcaps using wire and crystal - when my friend Suj saw one of them, she said - Oh you can make Jhumkas out of them - Jhumkas are bell shaped danglers, and almost every Indian woman has a pair of these. They used to be simple, in gold and pearls, but have now become so fanciful, they are almost unrecognisable. I made mine in copper wire with some of my crystal bead stash in a colour combination of green and gold - very dressy. As these are all lightweight beads, the resultant piece is pretty and ornamental, yet light and easy to wear.
My little piece of Caprilicious silver this week is a tiny fine silver bud, about an inch long, made in the kiln, antiqued and polished, with a tiny red Cubic Zirconium emdedded into it. It comes with it's own chain, and is perfect for someone who likes her jewellery a bit smaller - as you all know, a lot of my stuff is 'in your face' and cannot be overlooked when worn - maybe because I was once innately shy, (although I have grown out of it now) but there was another side to me that was a bit 'song and dance', and didn't know quite how to reflect that, so preferred my apparel to do it for me. I could not buy chain store stuff if someone paid me.
Most of my designs are made with me in mind - if you don't want it, I should be happy to wear it myself - so, the corollary to this is, if you like the stuff I make, we must be kindred souls - Soul Sisters, even! That's all for my week this time around - see you same time, same place next week xx |
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