Tackle that stash - Snow into water

In the last ten years, I managed almost 100 Friday posts called "Tackle that stash" about making deliberate attempts at using mostly old stash of mine. I'm talking stash that has been around for years and years.
Maybe I even tried to use some of it before, but didn't have quite the idea or I wasn't happy with what I made and ripped it up again.
The last one was a year ago when I actually used up a ten year old bead soup and was very proud of it and a bit relieved.

I thought it was time to try that again, go through my drawers - although I'm still pretty harmless in regards to the size of my stash - and use some of the stuff that deserves to finally see the light of day.
One time it may be something quite small and not very spectacular, other pieces may take more time, effort or playing.

I started making jewelry a little over 15 years ago. Back then we did a Secret Santa among some friends and my Santa sent me a surprise mix of findings and beads that I still have leftovers from.
The white agate beads were part of that mix. There were not many and stringing has never been one of my techniques, so I never really knew what to do with them and only used a few.

The clear Delicas are from a bead order more than nine years ago. That sounds incredible, but I mostly use clear AB, so I still had one unopened tube out of the three I had ordered back then.
The clear drop beads with a beautiful AB finish are from one of the surprises bead mixes I like to add to my orders because they often challenge me to try out different designs. They always make me think of water drops.
It looked like the perfect combination to me.

Only when I had finished the dangles, I went through the storage box with my single beads. One thought was to use clear crystals for a look of ice and water, but seeing the agate beads made me think of snow melting into water instead.

I hardly have any drop beads left, but there are enough dagger beads, so I might be getting back to the ice and water idea, maybe for the next stash tackler?

The Fairy Mouse

I'm still here although I took a longer break due to personal reasons. I haven't been lazy, but you will see more about that in December for a new advent calendar of mine.

The wire had become a pretty rare guest in my creative world lately, but the other day I was determined to step away from the beads and bring the wire back. As usual I didn't have a plan, all I had were four short strands of thicker wire and my working wire.
Let me tell you about the journey I took with them which led me to a peculiar creature.

It's strange how four strands of wire can be "bound" together with more wire, and then you look at them and you start seeing something - if you are lucky, that is, and your muse is playing along. As the length really wasn't enough for big experiments, it was only natural to bend the component or whatever you would have called it at that moment in the center.
One thing I saw was a little octopus like one I had made before. It was good to know I would have a plan B, even if I didn't have a plan A. I'm saying plan B because I didn't really want to make an octopus. I wanted to make .... an eye ... an eye with feathers ... did I have a cab I could use ... the faux amber, perfect size ... and the feathers on the end (please note that none of the steps went as quickly as described in this post, I held stuff up a lot and looked at it and put one thing on the other, unwove (is that even a word?) wire and so on, and never took one picture of the process because I couldn't disturb the muse, right?) ... and now I had an eye and the "amber" kept moving a little, so I had to get the wires in the back tighter ... shining through the cab now, not sure I like that, but I'll leave it for now ... next the feathers?

No worries, I won't go on like that, but I wanted to show that this is pretty much how the process of creating often works for me.
Before the feathers my eye fell on an agate slice. THE agate slice. I got it in an early Easter sale, shortly before the pandemic made me stay home. Don't ask what agates have to do with Easter, the hardware store kept them in a basket at the table with decorative items on sale. This particular slice had been out of the stash drawer several times, but had always refused talking to me. This time, however, it said "look at me, I'm a mouse". An eye with feathers and a green mouse. Weird. Leaves instead of feathers. Leaves, woods, a green mouse ... a fairy mouse!

That's when it all came together. My mouse needed a big ear, swirls and scrolls on her body, a long tail with swirls and even swirly whiskers.
When I finally held it against the light, I noticed that especially the lower wire behind the cab seemed to add more dimension and life to the eye.

It really is an odd little creature, but aren't we all? ;-)
Now it just needs a bail and/or chain if I decide to make it a pendant. It's not a lightweight. Maybe it would look nice in a shadow box with some kind of woodsy background?

Tackle that stash - Bead embroidered brooch with blue lace agate

If you ask yourself now if I will ever show anything but bead embroidery again, the answer is no.
I'm just kidding! It's just that my latest wire and felting project got stuck somehow and the brooch I'm about to show you got finished.

The blue lace agate has been another one of my long term companions, so-to-speak. It's a very irregular stone that is drilled sideways at the top, and it has become another one of those seemingly eternal experiments. I won't tell you what it was once before because then you may have a hard time seeing anything else in it ... but maybe that was just me. Possibly someone else would have had the perfect idea from the start.

The only thing I actually planned for this piece was to glue the agate onto the backing and bead a bezel for it. The first problem came up when I tried to find a good way to deal with the inwards curve on one side.
From there the piece - I didn't know then if it would become a pendant or a brooch or a component for a necklace - took over. It demanded something to run across the stone and secure the bezel for good. Not that the stone was about to fall out, but the curve in the bezel just didn't look right. I wanted it to follow the stone better.
And I wanted to make said "something" look as if the stone were overgrown by the beads from the bezel. When I looked for beads to add to the edging, I came across a pair of earrings I had started ripping up because the seed beads in them had started losing their color just by lying in a drawer (just in these earrings, though, very strange). The royal blue crystals looked like the perfect match for the mostly icy colors I had already used, with a hint of blue added by the thread.

In the end I thought a brooch would be the best choice for this piece. The small asymmetrical fringe is right under the "growth" to emphasize the organic feeling.
I can tell I'm slowly getting more comfortable with making asymmetrical pieces. After all the stone didn't give me a choice, so it was easier to go with the flow.

This is what the brooch looks like worn. Sorry, the vintage dress my manikin is wearing is not the best background for it, but I didn't have anything better on hand so quickly.

Have you ever wondered ...

... where the yarn for my yarn baskets is coming from?
Maybe you have been following me a little over the years and got to meet some of the sheep I couldn't have done without. These are just three of them, Belle, Spots and Myrtle.

It has always been a happy little flock, and none looks like the other.
These three have already left me for the big world out there, Belle and Spots live in the USA now and Myrtle is in Canada. I guess they like it there because they never bothered to write, the little beasts. I know they are in good hands, though, so it's okay.

And every, now and then a new sheep turns up to help me out.
Let me introduce you to Minnie. She's a real cutie with her sky blue eyes (yes, you can only see one of them). We already had a little collaboration as you can see. I hope I didn't make her work too hard in this heat!

You know what's funny, I just noticed that so far all of my sheep except one have been looking in one direction ... I wonder what they are seeing there ...

Tackle that stash - Agate and labradorite

Last month I really struggled with getting anything done. That doesn't mean I didn't try, but things didn't work out so well. Of course I was quite preoccupied with Ponder, his vet visits, and trying out one diet food after the other because the gang refused to eat. I'm the only one in this flat who hasn't lost weight!
Things have calmed down a little *knocking on wood* and Mabel (my invisible muse) has dared to come back.
So today while diving into the world of Pride and Prejudice on DVD once again I decided to have a look through my stash.

I found some rather short copper wires, leftovers from other projects, and a small agate cab that looked as if it might work nicely with the lengths of wire. The hardest part is always to decide on a weave. Sometimes I start, then pull the working wire off again and try something else, and of course the first idea might get changed completely during work, anyway.
This time I surprised myself again, I didn't know that the pendant would come out like this!
I even got to use one of my faceted labradorite onions which I have hoarded for years now because it fits the slightly subdued look and gives it that bit of shine and sparkle when the light is right.

P.S. Of course I thought of adding a dangle as well at first, I always do, but when I chose the labradorite instead of a tiny bead at the top, the dangle was out, it would have been too much, at least for my taste.

Oldies but Goodies - Agate

When I saw that the topic for this oldies but goodies challenge on JAC was agate, I was really looking forward to some great pieces, and I wasn't disappointed.
Fire agate, crazy lace agate, blue lace agate, moss agate, dendritic agate, crab agate, red agate, or even Stinking Water plume agate, it was obvious there would be some fun to be had here.
The name comes from the river Achates in Sicily (now Dirillo), by the way, which was one of the places where was agate found in the olden days.

Just look at the variety in all of this jewelry!

1 Cat's Wire
2 MC Stoneworks
3 Jewelry Art by Dawn
4 The Crafty Chimp
5 RioRita
6 Violetmoon's Corner
7 Robin's Jewelry, Antiques, & Collectibles

Komodo sun

No, I'm not out to "hunt" the dragons, but the dragons ... wait, let me start at the beginning.

You know that with most of what I do I'm not bound to a certain spot. Somehow I haven't had one of my night sessions in my library armchair for a while, but last night I went up there and got drawn in by my Robin Hood DVD (the old BBC TV series) while rummaging through my storage box. It's amazing what things you can find when you haven't even been looking for them, that strand of andalusite I had been saving, some silver beads I had forgotten about, Tundura sapphires, a small bag of leopard skin jasper and an agate ring.

After a little thinking, humming along with Robin's Merry Men and fiddling I had an idea and this is the result. The way the beads lie next to each other reminded me of a lizard ... a dragon ... Komodo! And when I found the matte black agate I still had fit right into the middle, I was really happy.

Komodo sun pendant

Nothing much has been happening in my life beside that. I read, I work, I play, I get tortured by the cats (Ponder cooking bead soup for me by jumping on my bead mats for example), I get loved by the cats (nothing like a tiny cat like Meffi sleeping on your head, yup, not next to my head), pretty normal everything and probably pretty boring to you. Sorry about that ;-)

Inspiration versus stash

It is a win win situation when that happens. In this case I have three pendants.

I got the everyday design, a lovely big hole lampwork bead by Melissa Vess hanging on a drop, crocheted from fine silver wire. I see it with a blouse and jeans for example.

Wire crochet drop with lampwork bead

I got the unusual one of a kind design, modern, bold, full of contrast between the black and the white parts.

It's made up of a piece of white shell, a matte black agate, both caught in fine silver wire crochet bezels, and opaline and black Swarovski crystals.

Wire crochet one of a kind black and white pendant

Last, but not least I got an elegant and feminine design, dainty and beautiful, made from apatite beads almost hiding away in a little silver wire crochet "bowl", surrounding a white pearl. From that bowl dangles a headpin with five more pearls.

Apatite, pearls and silver wire crochet pendant

And you know what? They are all listed already. Just click the caption under the images!

Tears of the cloud

Once upon a time there was a little rain cloud. It was pretty cute for one that doesn't look all fluffy and white like cotton balls, but no one noticed. Whenever it went out to play, all the people down there started opening their umbrellas or running off.

The little cloud was very sad about that. Just because she was dark and grey didn't mean she was something to be scared of. She had never done anyone any harm and she didn't intend to.

One day when another bunch of people had fled just at the sight of her, she started crying. Suddenly she heard a laugh and she looked down in surprise. There stood a woman smiling at her who caught the cloud's tears in her hand ... and they were all sparkly and beautiful ...

Tears of the cloud one of a kind pendant

Cheesy, huh? I'm not saying I am this imaginary woman, but I do like rain, not just when I'm inside to watch it through the window.

The beautiful grey agate cab reminded me of a rain cloud, so I decided to really make it one. I crocheted a bezel for the cab, then I made the individual parts of the cloud, attached them to the bezel and to each other and topped it with a handwrapped bail.

The sparkly tears are clear Swarovski crystals which do not only set a contrast, but also bring movement to this one of a kind pendant which is available in my studio now.

Meet Jo! ;-)

This is Jo. I didn't want to call her "The Head", after all she is gonna have to help me modeling my things. This morning we did a little test run with my hats. She doesn't want to smile, but I think it was ok for her, too. After all we were not in a hurry, no Paris fashion shows under pressure in this house.
I guess you will get to see her more often from now on :-)



I am still on the bangle trip. This one is from wire that looks more like brass, it's thicker gauge and very sturdy and it was probably not too smart to give the wire an extra twist every few stitches to give it a different look. Afterwards my fingers hurt, ouch. I think the effort was worth it, though.



This is antique looking thicker gauge copper wire with hematite. I really like this one. It looks much better in real, but hey, it's not easy making pictures at 6 a.m. Especially if you are tired and only up because the furry masters commanded you to. Oh, and if your camera is nothing special. And if you are just a lousy photographer like me :-P



Egg and copper ... I did it and it worked. Why shouldn't it have, though? Everybody told me it would. It looks much better on this agate than the shiny copper. I'll have to buy more eggs, I guess.



Now I should really get myself into gear. I'll go visit a friend overnight and there are still a few things to do around here. It's amazing how fast 5 hours can go by if you don't want them to. On the other hand ... I want to meet my friend and therefore want them to go by. Nah, too complicated for me now, I'll just get going. Litter boxes, here I come!!!