Herpetophobia, by Caprilicious Jewellery

Hello, good people, how's tricks today? Once again, it's lovely to touch base with you and I hope over the years that I've earned the compliment you pay me when you come back to look at the Caprilicious Blog. This week we are going to have a short post as I have been working on stuff, but it is as yet unfinished.

An enquiry came in about 'Woodland Fantasy', from a young lady who said she'd been eyeing it up for a while but in the end couldn't bring herself to make the final gesture of purchasing it because she had a dislike of lizards. 
Lizards, by far get a really bad press - I myself am not particularly a fan, but they have an incredibly sinuous shape and are beautiful to create with - the ones in this necklace, I thought were pretty cute. Unfortunately I couldn't just whip them off the piece, which would have been an instant  win win situation for both of us - I'm not able to add or subtract elements once the necklace is given its backing, so I did the next best thing - I agreed to take on a commissioned piece, sans lizards. The lady said she was into saving bees - so I sent away for a couple of pretty cloisonné bees and started the piece off with a labradorite cabochon I brought back from Jaipur.

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This piece of Labradorite is particularly beautiful - I've shown you three pictures taken from three different angles and the flash of blue is clearly visible when the light shines on the cabochon - it looks like sheet lightening to me. 
Labradorite can display an iridescent optical effect (or schiller) known as labradorescence. Thanks to the parallel formation of mineral inter-growths within the structure of the stone,  light bounces back-and-forth, which creates its distinctive shimmery, ethereal effect. Not only is this visual appearance extremely attractive, but it also represents the energy of the Labradorite crystal healing properties. By guiding you toward the light and out of the darkness, Labradorite is meant to open your eyes to the magic and possibilities that surround you. 
Labradorite was first found in Labrador, Canada. According to native Canadian lore, Labradorite is said to contain the Northern Lights, or the Aurora Borealis. It is believed that the lights were “set free” by one of their ancestors who broke through the rocks with his spear. According to the legend, the lights that remained were set into stone, and thus Labradorite was born. Deposits have also been found in Madagascar, China and the USA, Finland, Russia and the Ukraine.

Herpetophobia is a fear of reptiles - lizards and snakes. I'm not a fan of creepy crawlies myself, and I totally understand this. When I trained to be a clinical hypnotherapist, we were taught to cure arachnophobia or a fear of spiders with NLP - to get the person to imagine they held a spider in the palm of their hands and the spider was wearing red lipstick and false eyelashes and fluttering it's eyes and smiling at the person whose hand it was sitting on. A more disgusting image I cannot imagine! I would've told the instructor straight away that that thought wouldn't have cured me at all and he'd need to tailor a different strategy for me, if I was a sufferer. I've heard of kissing frogs to find your prince, but this might just be taking it a bit too far.

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I also found myself some Zen time by making a pair of stud earrings - I dangled a silvery grey baroque pearl from the lower  edge of each stud. Simple, but effective, I think.

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That's me for this week, folks. At close of play on Friday I have a week off to play with beads or whatever else I fancy. Google tells me that at this time last year I was in India, having myself a fabulous old time. It saddens me that I cannot be with my mother who, at 93 cannot last forever - I know that that particular clock is ticking, but there's not much I can do about it. We make do with video calls at the weekend, but obviously, it's not the same.
Have a wonderful week, friends, and I'll catch you next Friday, same tie, same place.
Until then,
​xx