The Flight of the Bumble Bee, by Caprilicious

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. 

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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 Bumblebee 

I 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