Tricked you. I might have a good time, but neither alcohol nor dancing is involved. No flirting, no movies, no night on the town, no girls' night out.
Still my muse and I had, well, not just one, but actually two balls today and I am almost sure they won't be the last ones.
Maybe you remember my wrecking ball? The name comes to you courtesy of Maureen, an SJA friend (by the way, you should check out her blog and shop sometime). These balls are different. The wrecking ball is almost solid. These ones I wanted to make hollow, so I could fill them up, like a candy. Well, not really. A filled candy is meant to be eaten. I love liquid fillings and the sensation on the tongue once the outer wall is breaking. You shouldn't try to eat the ball pendants and I will tell you why.
First I made this one.
It is from black coated copper wire. I tried different things to fill it with, but in the end I decided to take a silver-colored kind of embroidered ribbon because it gave the best contrast.
Now I was eager to try other combinations. As I often do, I reached into the "current project bag" in my nightstand without looking inside and out came the green-golden colored wire. I tried different ribbon and beads for the inside, then I found the last bicone crystals that were left over from my "Green Fairy" necklace. Perfect!
I guess now you know why you shouldn't eat these pendants. Ribbon feels strange on the tongue and is hard to chew and crystals could break your teeth out.
Better stick with wearing them around the neck! ;-)
I often say that I like my hook and the wire to lead me to a design. That doesn't mean I never have a plan of what I'm going to do. When I make a setting for a cab, I know it very well. Sometimes things don't work in my favor, though. That's what happened on one of my recent projects.
It started out harmless enough. A cab in the shape of a drop which usually is the easiest to work with for me was supposed to end up in a crochet bezel of fine silver wire, but somehow it didn't want that. It wasn't so much that it kept slipping out, I had that before and I have forced smaller cabs than this one in a bezel, it wasn't so much that the wire wanted to run off the spool and start kinking, it wasn't so much that from too much kinking the wire gets tired and starts breaking easier - it was all of that together! I used a very fine hook which can give fine silver wire even more stress (from my experience). I had already fixed three accidents although it would have been smarter to stop there and then, but it worked out. The wire breaking in the last row was the last straw, though. My patience had been tested long enough. I ripped the bezel off the cab and started squishing it. I would have even jumped up and down on it, who knows, but the tall guy was watching me with that sceptical look he gets when he feels I am overreacting.
Now I had this squished almost solid piece of silver - what to do with it? I got out my hooks and the wire spool I had in reach, light purple and started to make a little silver ball that was held together by purple lines of crochet. They are not straight, they can't be as I just followed the stitches that I could use in the silver.
For an extra color kick I added one of my handwrapped bails in purple.
Actually I am quite happy with it now. Maybe the wire breaking was one of my muse's jokes!! ;-)
