Hello readers, nice to be able to chat to you again today. In a marked contrast to the last couple of weeks, I've had a couple of days off which made all the difference and gave me a bit of a respite from the usual grind. When I can, I like to go down to London - it is only an hour and ten minutes away from me on a train and the tickets are relatively inexpensive these days if booked in advance. I had to go down anyway for a meeting to do with work, and rounded off the day by meeting Nimmy Victor of Sanskara Designs. Nimmy mainly makes beaded necklaces with gemstones and silver elements in a beautiful ethnic Indian style and I have often admired her designs from afar. We've never had the occasion to meet, and I thought it was time to remedy this. We arranged to meet at Camden Town tube station and spent the afternoon together checking out the shops, eating street food, and finishing off with a drink at the bar in Gilgamesh. It was great to meet someone like minded and bounce ideas off each other. I took her a polymer clay pendant I made, and she brought me some gemstones. She also gave me a carnelian cabochon and a Pietersite tumblestone saying, 'I'd like you to make something for me with these two, please.' That was it - no instructions, no colour choices- no pressure then! Here are some pictures from our visit to Camden town. As you can see Camden Market is quirky and colourful. It was a bit quiet, but that was because it was a Monday afternoon, I'm sure it gets really busy around the weekend. It was freezing too, and we downed loads of hot tea to keep ourselves warm. We felt really sorry for the poor traders - they were in unheated premises, and weren't allowed electric fires due to the risk of fire. I caught the 9pm train back from Euston tired, but happy. I decided that I was going to set the carnelian cabochon in a bead and soutache pendant. The tumblestone of course, would have to be wire wrapped. It's a long time since I've been back to the basic wire wrap that I learned six years ago, using square and half round silver wire, but I was determined that I would succeed in wrapping an awkward shaped slippery stone, which was also rather pretty, so I'd need to allow most of it to stay on display, rather than cover up it's beauty with wire squiggles and curlicues. I glued the carnelian to a piece of backing and beaded around it until it was firmly held in place by a bezel of beads. Many soutache pattern books attach braid directly around the glued down cabochon, but I've never trusted glue as a permanent attachment and feel that if I'm going to take the trouble to make an elaborate piece of jewellery, I'd like it to last a little longer than the unknown lifespan of the glue I've used. Once that was done, I encircled the stone with soutache braids and made some pretty curlicues at the ends, filled with corals and pearls. More beads and even more braid followed until I decided that I ought to stop before the pendant became too unwieldy. There was more to do, I had to embellish the edges with a picot and cover the back with ultrasuede. I also had to devise a method to hang the pendant. Decisions, decisions!! And then a minor mishap occurred, and I ran out of beading thread! I hadn't kept up with my supplies, or lack thereof, and had run out of thread in the middle of a project! There's nothing worse than having to stop when you've just had an idea how to do something that seems incredibly important and ephemeral. I went online and bought another reel immediately, and was surprised and pleasantly astonished when it arrived in the post the next morning. Ta Dah!! The RevealAnd it was done - I put a bail on it using beads, backed it with ultrasuede and that was it - or was it? I kept looking at it, and the bail seemed so plain, there wasn't any oomph! to it. So I picked it up again and added two more beads and all of a sudden, I was satisfied. Phew! There wasn't any more space to add a single bead - although momentarily I considered adding more to the picot edge, or even another edging behind the picot. But no, I put my foot down with a firm hand and that was definitely that. Besides, I still had the Pietersite tumblestone to deal with, so I got busy looking for my stash of silver square wire and clearing the decks of beads and other detritus from the soutache pendant. This one had to be really, really simple, in stark contrast with the previous piece - after all, this is Caprilicious Jewellery, and I cater to every mood and caprice including my own. I went back to basics and made a spartan setting for this stone. It is a lot harder to do than it looks, but very rewarding. The stone was too fat and odd shaped to do much else with it unless I used my new found skills to solder together a frame. This way is just as nice, in my opinion - what do you think? Will she like it?? The pietersite itself has a chatoyancy that only just shows up at the bottom right of the stone in the photographs and is very pretty. Caprilicious will be at The Custard Factory in Digbeth, Birmingham on Friday, the 1st of December - if you are in the area, do drop in - we are there till 8pm.
That's me for this week folks, have a fabulous week and I'll catch you next Friday, same time, same place. Until then xx
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Hello folks, how are you this week? I've been a busy little bee, flitting from flower to flower, making one thing and another and am so pleased that my efforts have been rewarded. I had a number of half finished projects in a box waiting patiently for the last touches that would make them truly beautiful (hopefully) in my eyes and I set out to finish them off. Our suitcases finally arrived, three days after we did, so while I waited there was no unpacking to do and acres of time to fill and I decided to use it productively. I wove a torque necklace before I went on holiday and it was the first candidate I picked for a makeover. I had some copper flowers in my stash that I had rediscovered after a couple of years - Oh, that reminds me I haven't shown you the earrings I made with the flowers, either. Anyway, I used the rest of these flowers in the torque necklace, and tucked a few large crystal beads under them so that they flash with movement. I wasn't prepared for the love this necklace received when I put it on Facebook though, and that it sold within the week. BlossomHere are the earrings I made with the other flowers - I soldered them to copper backings that had been fold formed or texturised, and then patinated them with verdigris and red oxide patinas, sealed the patinas and hung the earrings on contemporary silver earwires. I've always found copper a rather masculine metal and have made attempts to feminise it by the addition of flowers, pearls and silver - I think it works well in a modernistic bohemian sort of way. Would you agree?? I had a conversation with one of my returning customers from the USA. She has a bubbly personality and likes her jewellery to reflect that. She said she'd love to have a piece of jewellery created just for her- she wanted me to use carnelian beads and I suggested a turquoise focal to go with it. She asked me to make her 'something using carnelian beads and a pendant that is fun, not staid and boring' and I spent about five days painstakingly stitching around a turquoise blue howlite bead until I was satisfied that it was sufficiently 'fun' enough to satisfy the lady. I then unearthed a strand of carnelian petal beads that I'd been hoarding and strung the pendant. There's always a moment of anxiety before the reveal - will she like it, will she find it fun enough? I put it out on Facebook and people said how nice it was. However, it had been created especially for one person and if she hated it, I would have been gutted. I needn't have worried. I WhatsApped her a picture and her excitement was palpable. Here's what she said. "I saw it. OMG Thank YOU!!!! 😍Love the vibrancy of the colors. Definitely a smile-from-within piece!! Absolutely!! Not boring at all. Says - fun, vibrant, mischievous, bold, daring, sparkly and indomitable". So she liked it then, that was reassuring! This piece took so much time and effort that her words were music to my ears and I sank into a relaxed, happy stupor. I went back to the day job and as usual September is manically busy from all the Christmas conceived babies.
That's me for this week, folks. Have a fabulous week, and I'll catch you next Friday, same time, same place. Until then, xx Hello readers, thanks for joining me again today. We are in mid August now and there are but 18 weeks, or 129 days to Christmas. That means that autumn is just around the corner but I refuse to think about that, all I want to do is to enjoy the last few days of summer left to us. I spent my days as a child in tropical warmth where we were required to stay out of the sun and we spent our days cowering indoors till the sun was low on the horizon. As kids we couldn't understand the idyllic life the kids in Enid Blyton books seemed to live - long summer holidays basking in the sun, scoffing lemonade and tinned peaches. Now that I live in more temperate climes, I want to go out and sit in the sun lest I blink and miss it altogether - I have to confess that tinned peaches are overrated, in my opinion. This week, I made a necklace with coral beads I received in a bead swap from a friend who lives in Scotland. She makes exquisite, dainty pieces of jewellery at AleksandraDesigns and didn't want the coral, so we rummaged around in our collections and came to a very satisfactory mutual arrangement. The coral heishi beads are irregular and very brightly coloured. I teamed them with wood jasper rectangles, slab nuggets of chalcedony and some chunks of bloodstone that a friend sent me from the USA when I first started out in 2011. Artisan made Nepalese beads, inlaid with turquoise and coral, and bone beads from Tibet, hand carved and coloured red and blue were added for even more colour and interest - just in case the coral wasn't showy enough! It paid me to have that clear out as I found so many pretty beads that I'd forgotten about in my collection and I can't wait to use them as I go along. ScandalI made these earrings to go with the necklace I designed for my customer in Bangalore. As the necklace is very flamboyant, I kept the earrings small and simple. They are about the size of a fifty pence piece - and for those whom that analogy means nothing, the earrings are about one and a half inches long. My sister in law went to a party wearing this necklace - I made it a couple of years ago and it isn't one of my more flamboyant pieces. Someone at the party fell in love with the necklace and had me make one for her, having obtained permission from my sister in law - I will be sending a whole bunch of pieces to India at the end of the month so thought it was about time I got it made and ready for delivery. That's me for this week, folks. I'm working at the day job this weekend and hope to salvage a bit of time to play with an idea I've been incubating for a while. Come back next week and see if it worked. Have a lovely week in the meantime and I'll catch you next Friday, same time, same place.
Until then xx Hello good people, how are you this fine morning? I've had a lovely relaxed week, playing with sheet metal and hammers, soldering bits of sterling silver wire onto my fold formed copper components and playing with patinas. I decided to use all the copper sheet remnants that I would otherwise have thrown away and make as many little pieces as I could, practicing a bit of soldering along the way. I formed shapes and curlicues in silver wire and soldered them onto the copper. Filing, patinating and burnishing the shapes I created and then hanging the earrings took a lot of time but I was having fun and hardly noticed it. I did shudder with horror though, when I looked at my hands - they are all pitted from cutting sheet metal, where sharp edges have poked holes into them - they have also been impregnated with copper dust from filing the edges smooth, and of course I forgot to wear gloves and picked the pieces out of the warm patina solution, turning the copper in the little cuts dark brown - now I've got a jewellers hands!! Unfortunately that doesn't go with the day job, so I spent ages soaking them and scrubbing out the brown bits - not so much fun, I can tell you! I particularly love the leaf earrings I made that I called my Weebly leaves - I patinated them with verdigris and stitched tiny glass ladybirds onto them. Cool, don't you think? Why Weebly leaves? - You'll have to read about my ongoing saga with Weebly to find out! FandangoI finally finished the pendant that I was making last week. Strung on a simple necklace of baroque pearls it is sumptuous and fun at the same time. I saw a picture of a woman in a dance called the Fandango, and I searched for the picture for you. The artist has caught the flamboyance of the movement in the green skirts beautifully and I was attempting to recreate that energy in the necklace. I've finally found a way to capture the movement of a dance without taking a step - I'd rather have done the real thing though, but am now at least thirty years too late.
That's me for this week, folks, I have to go in to work now, so I'll say goodbye now. Have a fabulous week and I'll catch you as usual next Friday, same time, same place. Until then xx Hello folks, and how are you today. This week has been dogged by rain and has literally been a wash out. I've been having trouble with my website all week and the folks from Weebly seem to have no idea how to deal with it - indeed, as I type these words, I have no idea whether they are going to reach anyone at all, and if this is a complete waste of my time. I pay these guys a hefty sum of money each year and if I cannot reach customers and readers, there's not much point to it, is there? I used to see a blank page when I tried to load my website on previous occasions, and now to my horror, the message above is what I can see. We hosted a barbeque last weekend - and that was a washout too - it didn't rain heavily, but kept up a miserable drizzle which meant that everyone came indoors and the house was in a terrible state by the time we finished, with around twenty people tramping through it. Cleaning up has taken the bulk of my spare time, but everyone enjoyed themselves, and that was the main thing. Michael insisted on cooking outdoors on the barbeque - which although meant to be portable, is so heavy that we would need to harness it to an elephant to move it. The last time this happened to us a few years ago, four strong men were required to move the damn thing from the garden into the garage. With all the uncertainty and moving from the garden into the house, back and forth I was quite exhausted and forgot to get pictures, which is quite rare for me as I am generally quite snap happy. Between furious bouts of cleaning up, redistributing leftover food into the freezer and to people who would take it home, I set out to create a soutache pendant and am still at the stage where it is only half finished. I've taken some pictures quickly with my phone, so that you can be part of my journey, as ever. Hopefully you will get to see it shortly when the guys from Weebly wake up and come to work in a couple of hours and I can set them to work sorting out my website. This is how I intend to complete the piece next week, and find some way of stringing it into a necklace. The dichroic glass cabochon at the centre of the larger piece was bought at an art fair and is really pretty. Unfortunately, I cannot remember who the artisan was. That's me for this week, folks. I shall go to work now, and sort out the good chaps from Weebly when I get back. If you can read this and have any suggestions for me, do share them in the comments below. I am thinking of moving over to Wordpress - what do you think? I know it will be hell on legs to make the move - but what choice do I have? This is annoying me so much, I've taken to grinding my teeth when I think of my website, and very soon I shall have no enamel left on my molars. Catch you next week - hopefully, same time, same place
Until then, xx Hello folks, hope you are well this fine morning. The sun is shining and all's well with the world - well not all, given recent events in the UK, but it feels like it in the sunshine. Those of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere know the importance of going out in the sunshine and basking in the rays - we see the sun so little. I've was out in the garden, weeding and sorting out the pot plants, spraying the roses and generally getting my hands dirty. Between times, I embarked on my most ambitious project yet. A client in India handed me an old necklace of her's to remake - two strands of lovely jet beads with a few tarnished diamante spacers, and when I told her I was planning to make a soutache pendant in blue, she said she'd prefer green. So I picked a couple of colour treated green solar quartz cabochons out from my stash and started to think about what I was going to do with them. The jet beads were so shiny and beautiful, it had to be an evening necklace. I decided to add diamante chain, and a couple of beetle wings to the mix with no idea about what I was going to do with them. I fixed the cabochons and wings onto Lacy's Stiff Stuff which is a felted stiff card for beading and set out to put them all into beaded bezels - by now I had decided that it would be a two part pendant, with the wings flanking the oval stone, I beaded away well into the night every evening after work. It was like watching a story unfold as I really had no set plan - the whole thing was evolving as I went along and I was keen to see how the piece would look at the end. I made the bottom part of the pendant first and embellished it with beads and soutache braids that accentuated the green of the cabochon and the jet beads in the necklace. And then came the top - the cabochon was vaguely teardrop shaped and I had to decide which way it was going to hang - with the pointy end or the broader end, and place the ends of the soutache braid accordingly. Decisions, decisions! At last it was time to see how the two went together, and hey presto, it was a good fit. My only criticism was it looked a bit top heavy, so I had to come up with some way to increase the bulk of the lower half. I added another row of Japanese Miyuki square glass beads and edged the top part of the piece with green crystals, as by this time I had decided that this pendant required, nay, deserved, a tasseled fringe. This piece was becoming a tour de force - and I toiled over the tiny beads every night, only stopped by the fact that I ran out of the pale green crystal beads and had to order some more, praying that the colour would match the ones I had already used. If they didn't, I was getting ready mentally to cut the fringe out and start again with the new string of beads as nothing was going to stop this baby from being a beauty. Fortunately for me, the colours matched and I finished the fringe off - all I needed was four more beads, wouldn't it have been such a shame if I had to start over for the want of four beads? That'll teach me to count my beads before I start! For one reason and another, work was ever so busy but this pendant occupied my evenings so gainfully that the week flew by. The back was lined with blue felt to add colour between the Miyuki squares and the whole thing backed with black ultrasuede. And finally, it was time to join up the two halves of the pendant. I strung the jet beads simply, using little green seed beads as spacers, and an extension chain with a Baroque crystal on the end and it was done. Ta Dah!! - The final revealWould you agree that it is fit for a princess?? I certainly think so and hope that Omana, for whom it is designed, agrees with me. I hope she feels like a princess when she wears it - I know there's nothing like it in Bangalore where she lives and she should certainly have all eyes on her at whatever event she decides to wear it to Here she is in another piece by Caprilicious. I can so see her in this necklace, can you?? That's me for this week folks, have a fabulous week and I'll catch you next weekend, same time, same place. Until then
xx Hello good people, I hope the sun is shining on you wherever you are. The countdown to the Handmade Fair begins and I am busy sorting out my display and props so that I can make a creditable attempt to reproduce a boutique look in my tiny space of 1.5 x 2 metres. I have been looking at ideas and picking the best jewellery to make the highest impact. I have had to resist the impulse to put everything out on the table and create a jumble sale effect, or wear everything I've got like the sunglasses salesman in the photograph which I took at a tourist spot in Mysore, India. The tiny shops in India are crammed with goods, with everything from fly - swats to flowers, and follow the rule - 'stack 'em high and sell 'em cheap'. I, on the other hand need to strive for a degree of sophistication, and the mantra 'less is more' plays on in my mind over and over. We drove up to Ragley Hall on Sunday just to make sure we find it easily on the day and are not struggling with Sat - Nav's on top of everything else. The pile certainly is imposing - sitting on top of a small hill, with gently rolling greenery surrounding it and a drive through some very pretty, very ancient English villages. I've got a few days off over the weekend and next week and plan to put the final touches to the pieces I have selected and tag them with prices and pack them up ready to transport. In the meantime, I busied myself with wire and produced a couple of little pendants. It brought back to me how much I love wire and have missed it. Both pendants are inspired by the designs of the most generous Nicole Hanna, with a twist in the design introduced by me. I embroidered and soutached (is that a word??) around carnelian flowers and stitched them onto a leather strip to make a cuff bracelet held up by an aluminium core. A couple of necklaces and I was done for the week. And now I have to go and lie down, having caused myself to become so anxious I'm practically hyperventilating!! The thought of the Fair being so close I can almost smell it is a bit scary. I was so calm earlier on, I don't quite know what's happened to me, all this hand wringing angst is not really my style.
I shall speak to you next weekend, same time, same place - until then, have a fabulous week, see you soon xx A worker may be the hammer's master, but the hammer still prevails. A tool knows exactly how it is meant to be handled, while the user of the tool can only have an approximate idea. Hello readers, nice to catch up with you again. There are now about two and a half weeks to go till the Handmade Fair at Ragley Hall, and I approach it with mixed feelings. Excitement and a frenzy of preparation is combined with dread and anxiety. I think it is every makers secret fear that nobody will come, nobody will like their creations and that it will all be for nothing - indeed, less than nothing as there's been a load of cash spent on this venture. Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained! Let's go for broke, and all those other cliche's with which I have been fortifying myself. I've found a fabulous helper to see me through the setting up of the stall - Gabby Armstrong is the daughter of one of the midwives at work. She has a degree in visual merchandising and works in retail for a clothing store in Coventry, arranging their displays. She dropped by to take a look at the jewellery, and is going to do me a visual story board. She has been to the show at Hampton Court on previous occasions and knows how it works, so that's an added bonus. Gabby was quite enthusiastic about my jewellery, and had a whole load of ideas to share. And bless her cotton socks, she has volunteered to meet us at Ragley Hall and help me set up - amazing luck that I happened to have a conversation with her mother and she mentioned what her daughter did for a living!! I thought I'd show you some of my arsenal of tools - if you've seen them before or even used them, I apologise if you find this bit boring- just scroll down a bit further to get to the jewellery. This one is called a Chain Sta' - I saw in a brochure from the USA, and found it so quirky, I sent off for it. The two arms come off and it lays flat (this is important for storage) - each arm has a clamp at the top, and a chain link bracelet or necklace becomes ever so easy to make. The horizontal bridge at the bottom has a ruler and ensures that beads can be added at regular intervals. I make my beetle wing necklaces using this tool, without which the chain would twist and the jump rings attaching each wing to the chain would be all over the place. I'm sure one of these can be rigged up using an aubergine, two soda cans and a spear of asparagus, but hey, I like my tools and love ones that work even more. The next one - a pair of ceramic tipped precision tweezers - it makes it easy to pick up and set little cubic zirconia into metal clay with these babies. If they were a bit longer they could have been used to stabilise solder when using a flame as the ceramic tips would be fine at high temperatures. And finally this weeks purchase, the bracelet bender tool. I have been making bracelets with soutache and beadwork in leather, lined with ultrasuede. Between the leather and suede is a layer of aluminium to hold the shape of the cuff without adding any weight to the piece. The last load of aluminium blanks were imported already curved into cuffs from the USA and worked out to be very expensive. I've recently found a vendor in the UK who is prepared to cut sheets of aluminium to my specification which is so much cheaper, but the aluminium strips are sent out flat. I got this tool to bend the metal over and voila! a cuff bracelet blank. What a fun tool!! These are some of the pieces I made this week - I have'nt put them on the website, but will do so if they remain unsold after the Handmade Fair. Tabriz Branches of bamboo coral and Moroccan silver beads - simple, but very exotic. I'm reading a book about Rumi the poet, and Shams of Tabriz, who by all accounts was a very charismatic man. I went on line to read a bit more about Tabriz and what an exotic place it sounds like. The Bazaar of Tabriz, an UNESCO site in particular, sounds fabulous - I thought the Kapali Carsi in Istanbul was beautiful, but this one sounds like it would be a closely run race. A charismatic necklace, for a charismatic woman, methinks. YinYin is the Chinese female principle of the universe, characterized as sustaining and associated with earth, shade, and coolness. I made this necklace with some of the beads I bought in the Chinese quarter in Kuala Lumpur. The beads are huge, about 3cms across and carved by hand. I teamed them with Greek beads from a holiday in Santorini - they are ceramic and heavily electroplated with gold and lustre, and strung them on a piece of Brazilian leather. I tied knots between the beads as spacers, but it looked wrong, so I undid the necklace and remade it without the knots. I added a handmade chain and clasp with an extension on the back so that the necklace can be worn fairly long if necessary. WingsI wanted to show off my new jewellery beetle wings, and do something very different with them - when combined with gaily dyed marabou feathers echoing the colours of the wings, they look very 'carnival'. Here's the soutache and leather cuff for which I needed the aluminium insert mentioned earlier . Begonia I spent all weekend making this flower from bronze clay and then wrought a clasp for the necklace, from a design by Kristine Schroeder. When I looked in my stash, this string of amethyst beads called to me and I accented them with a couple of carnelian beads and a pyrite bead. So, as you see,I have been working hard this last couple of weeks to have enough stock for three days at a fair full of handmade enthusiasts. It is Bank Holiday weekend here in the UK and it will probably rain. Have a lovely week people, and I'll catch you next Friday, same time, same place.
Until then xx Hello good people, and a very happy Easter to those of you who celebrate it. Easter eggs are everywhere and I'm going to resist them this year, as always figting a loosing battle with the flab. This year I have the whole of Easter off work and nothing planned, and it feels glorious to think I have no responsibilities except to relax for four whole days. I shall however be making more pieces of jewellery for The Handmade Fair. I spent ages thinking that I had a lot of stuff ready and then someone bought up a bunch of necklaces, leaving me with a hole in my inventory which needs filling, and quick! Seal of Approval I love pendants made of handcarved jade and buy them regularly, forgetting each time how irritatingly annoying they are as they never have an integral way to hang them. Perhaps they are meant to be displayed on a plinth or little easel - but as far as I'm concerned, as jewellery, I need to find an engineering solution each time. Each one is different, so one answer doesn't fit all, unfortunately. However, I've always loved finding solutions to problems and enjoy a bit of a challenge. I managed to hang the pendant on an improvised bail made of coiled wire and added prehnite nugget beads in a lovely shade of pale green. I left the necklace overnight, and by the time I woke up, had decided that it needed a bit more 'Zhoosh'. Four more strands of beads were added, and only then was I satisfied. Turquoise, ruby with zoisite and Czech glass seed beads went into the necklace in a tousled, bohemian look. KalinkaI started to make a soutache bezel around an ammonite fossil, not sure what exactly I was going to do with it - perhaps a centrepiece for a cuff bracelet? or a bail for one of my jade pendants? - in the end it seemed to cry out to be strung simply on a strand of Biwa pearls, rather than be part of another piece. The reds and greens reminded me of the military uniforms worn by the Cossack Guards and the Russian folk song 'Kalinka' began to play in my head. Beetle WIngsBeetle wings are a tour de force of nature - the jewel colours are amazing. This will be my sixth necklace made from these beautiful wings that once belonged to the Indonesian Jewellery Beetle. My very first necklace was commissioned by Meghna who wore it to a cocktail party thrown by her parents. Two rows of wings, with a glass tear drop adding a bit of weight to the centre of the piece, drawing it down into the decollete' - a simple, yet effective piece. These necklaces are difficult to photograph lying flat, the wings seem to have a mind of their own. I used up my entire stash in this necklace and hadn't planned on buying any more. Mike was aghast and twisted my arm into placing another order from the shop in Thailand, so it would appear that there are to be more of these on my pages. I will have to think up new and novel ways to make the necklaces as I don't really like to repeat myself. As an aside, the owner of the online beetle wing shop in Thailand is called Ronnie Biggs!! It is either a joke or he is named after his notorious ancestor, in which case, Trains, beware! That's all I have for you folks. Have a fab Easter break and I'll catch you next week, same time, same place. Until then xx Hello folks, nice to touch base with you again. I hope you all had a fabulous Christmas and Santa was kind to you. We had a quiet one with a couple of friends and we consumed more calories than we normally do in a month. And soon it will be 2017 - hasn't this year just flown by? It seems to me that it was only a short time ago that I was in India and now I will be packing my cases all over again. I'm only playing this for you because I love the song, it is so catchy - in an act of genius Apple are using it in their latest ad for the MacBook Pro. Enjoy! With my belly full of food, snoozing like a replete python seemed to be the order of the day. I did play with clay for a while, but my heart wasn't truly in it. I tried to remake the hibiscus I broke last week, but fo some reason I couldn't bring myself to finish the flower, eventually running out of bronze clay and doing a bit of shopping online to replenish my stocks. I made a little flower pendant and because the petals were shorter than the hibiscus it was infinitely easier to put together. I fired it in the stainless steel pan adding carbon on top once the first firing was done, instead of firing it first on a steel mesh and then moving it to the pan. I didn't want it to meet the same fate as my hibiscus.
Colour Me BeautifulBecause I am addicted to colour, Caprilicious Jewellery is as a consequence colourful and highly visible. I take any opportunity to add a bit of vibrancy to my jewellery and soutache and seed beads have been a fabulous way of achieving this. Seed beads and braids are easily portable and I've been able to sit in front of the telly, sewing away all evening. I thought I'd make a couple of pendants strung on torque necklaces this week - little projects that weren't terribly time consuming and seemed ideal for a week of festivity. With the two I made this week, I now have three of these little pendants on non tarnish enamelled copper wire torque necklaces. I really like making the necklaces - they are very strong, thick wire, moulded and hammered into shape. The pendants can be slipped off and the torques used on their own, or with other danglers. That's me for this week, and this year, folks. See you again in 2017, same time, same place.
Happy New Year to you all, take care and stay safe xx |
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