Contemporary Minimalism

Hello readers, thanks for joining me today. Britain has been swathed in a heatwave and I'm afraid I've basked in the sunshine, gardening, swimming and eating outdoors - generally pretending that I am living in Australia, knowing that my bubble will burst all too soon. Still, it has lasted four days so far and seems set to go on for a while more. 

I took the opportunity to chill out in the garden, and merely managed to finish one piece of jewellery for which I've had the components made for over two years. 

I attended a course where one of the tutors was Christine Dumont.
​This is what she has to say about herself on her website "Born in Belgium, I have lived in the Middle-East, Morocco, Canada, UK, Malta and Belgium. After a career in healthcare computing in Canada and Europe, I now devote my creativity to art and writing. My jewellery pieces are made mostly from polymer clay...The potential of polymer clay as an artistic medium has yet to be unlocked and I am excited at working at the forefront to shape its future."
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She is softly spoken, slim, chic, and the kind of essentially European woman who makes me feel like a hot, sweaty, galumphing, unsophisticated mess. Her jewellery is very like her and she taught us a very interesting technique which took me so long to perfect that I came away with the components in a box, to be made up at a later date. 

As you can tell quite easily, this is not a Caprilicious piece - it is starkly simple, and in a style that I call contemporary minimalist. Christine calls these necklaces 'Cellularia'. The beads are made in two pieces -  a hemispherical piece with a perforated lid and therefore light and hollow.

​ I did my best to 'Neenafy' it - adding beads, ribbons and other elements but they just looked stupidly out of place. Finally, I gave in and put the components together as Ms Dumont intended in her ​Cellularia necklace. I felt like an impostor pretending to sing in an alien language, much like Charlie Chaplin in this classic clip as The Tramp who made up a song with foreign sounding nonsense words when forced to sing, and made an excellent fist of it!

I played with clay last weekend when I had a few minutes to spare and will probably have something to show for it when the pieces are finished next week. Here are a few pendants I made.

Vivid and colourful, they are more my style, however, the Cellularia necklace is slowly growing on me and I am beginning to like it. I have no idea what I am going to do with these pendants - they have been sanded and polished to a high shine without the use of varnish. They gleam beautifully in the light, but I'm unable to capture that sheen in a still photograph, unfortunately.

That's me for this week folks, I hope the sun is shining on you too, wherever you are. Catch you next Friday, same time, same place. Have a lovely week,
Until then
​xx