First of all ... you are free to think of these as octopi or octopodes, should you so prefer, but while I used to say octopi and loved my octopi t-shirt, I now like how fun it sounds to say octopuses, and it's not wrong (thank you, Merriam-Webster). Second, when Claire announced the topic for the Art Elements August theme challenge - Octopus - I did a little chair dance. Not only do I love octopuses, but I may also be slightly obsessed with making them. I first got inspired by the polymer clay octopus my friend Star made and which is looking at me at this very moment.
It took me quite a few hours to crochet my octopus from wire. The man came later and was not meant to end up in the tentacles, but you know how those things happen. They are still in their deadly (?) embrace sitting in the ocean department of my Steiff collection.
Then there was Hank, the little lampwork thief, also crocheted from wire.
After a long break from making octopuses (but never not loving them) I started wire weaving, and that really got me going. Instead of telling you each single story I made a little collage (minus one of which it seems I didn't take a picture). There's tiny Barney at the top, and now you can tell how I more and more became obsessed by twisting those tentacles. Gosh, they are fun to make!!
So I decided on a big piece for this challenge, and maybe a small one. The small one hasn't happened yet, and I honestly didn't think I'd finish the big one in time although I started really early this time. My first step was to order small cabs.
Why? This is why. I wanted octopus babies of my own, but instead of making them all one color, I decided on a multitude of colors. I chose agate, sodalite, zoisite, jasper, aventurine, amethyst, rose quartz, and more. Each cab got its own kind of weave, and voilà - an army of octopus babies, ready to take over the world, mwahahaaaaaa!
Actually this was the easy part. How to put them together now? I could dangle them from a chain, but a tentacle army is not quite as effective if those tentacles keep tangling. I kept laying them out like this and like that, I think they got rather tired of me. Just two days ago I suddenly knew what I wanted to do. The video should have given me the idea much earlier. Those babies needed a mom! One of my easiest exercises - well, not really because by now I began getting nervous about finishing this in time. AND I still didn't know how to put it all together in the end.
A little deep breathing, a lot of cursing and some dramatic yelling "I can't do this, I'm useless!" later I had done it - almost. Hard to believe and still true, you can run out of exactly that one kind of chain that you need while still having all others. I just found enough to connect my babies in the back, though. Phew. I rarely make big, over the top necklaces, but this is one of them, and I love each little tentacle. Taking a picture, however, wasn't easy, it was a little crowded in that light tent and a little too early in the morning to take a picture in the garden, and on top of that I only had four hours of sleep.
I'll try to come up with something better later, so please bear with me.
Last but not least I want to thank Claire for this fantastic topic. I have a feeling she and I share the same love of octopuses .... P.S. Oops, almost forgot my own polymer clay octopus. That won't do, he's grumpy enough as it is! ;-)
I love the moon. It is not the first time I've said this on my blog. In 2009 I talked about my favorite perigee ever, a magical event that I never forgot - a HUGE moon and we were heading right into it. Well, we weren't, but it felt like it. I had never seen the moon that big and I haven't ever since, and no, although it was around 5 am, I know it was not a dream. So there was no question about participating in the Art Elements Design Challenge for which Lindsay chose the topic Moon. This time I wouldn't just be participating, though, I would master this challenge like a boss by starting early. I had loads of ideas.
The cow jumping over the moon was the first one, even before I saw the picture in the post. My inspiration came from a different source, Mary Poppins. It would have to be a big moon for me to manage a cow in a good size, and how would I attach it? I'm still thinking about that one. Then there was Little Peter's Journey to the Moon by Gerdt von Bassewitz about a May beetle taking two good children to the moon. Hans Baluschek's illustrations would have made for great inspiration. I didn't have the book, though, but would have wanted it for the details. Another one for the list. Theodor Storm. The Little Haverman. Little Hobbin. The Little Häwelmann. I found all these titles for the fairy tale about the little boy who doesn't want to sleep and uses his cradle for a little trip on a moonbeam. Another inspiration. Ugh. This was getting more difficult than I had planned. Should I even go for the full moon yet again? When I was a kid, I turned the C from my first name into a waning moon (under which I was born, by the way, which I looked up for the first time today) with a big nose, a googly eye and a wide grin for a signature. That would be fun to make once I got better at soldering, but not now. Did I even want to use wire? Decisions, decisions! I kept thinking and waiting for the perfect idea, but then I realized I didn't even have a moon I could use. Rather small magnesite beads were the closest I had and they didn't convince me. Polymer clay was out of the question, I wasn't in the mood for light colors and black cat hair. I had a rose quartz cab. Was there something like a pink moon? A song by Nick Drake, Pink Moon, from his third and last studio album with the same name. Never heard of him. What was I doing?? I was going into the wrong direction and time started running out.
Then I got lucky (was about time, too!). While looking for something else I found the cab I had had in mind all the time, a carved moon face with closed eyes. It called for a night sky, craters and stars. Finally I was getting somewhere! First I beaded a simple peyote bezel with my beloved gunmetal AB and clear AB seed beads in size 11 and 15. Next stop - moonstones. I didn't have any, but I had a ring that I had been wanting to rip up for some time, anyway. I created "craters" by adding seed beads around the moonstones that I sewed on the bezel. Last but not least there had to be a little fringe with a mix of all the beads.
Another last minute project finished, I am getting good at this! ;-)
Please pay a visit to all the other participants in this challenge, too. I promise it's going to be worth your time.
Welcome to this week's Jewelry Artisans Community Oldies but Goodies Challenge. It is all about cabochons or cabs how they are often called, too. Cabochon comes from the French and means a gemstone that is usually flat on the back and smoothly polished on top, not faceted. I remember when I started crocheting with wire. Beads were so much easier to handle for me as a beginner because I could attach them safely with wire. The bezels for cabs had to be just right which was (and sometimes is) even more difficult on free form stones. Faceted stones were a completely different story because of their faceted backs which don't necessarily work with all of my bezels and you don't want to a pendant to sit crooked all the time or a ring whose focal keeps digging into your finger. Just imagine there was a time when I looked down on cabochons because they didn't sparkle. Or on opaque stones. Or on opaque cabs! ;-) Now it's time to stop talking and begin showing some of the entries for this week. Enjoy.
I love Art Nouveau. The patterns in this glass cabochon (made by Deronda O'Neill) always reminded me of Art Nouveau flowers with their beautiful flow on the matte black background.
I felt the cab called for something more organic looking, not symmetrical, with a little flow of its own. First I crocheted a bezel from fine silver wire, widened the stitches here and there and then filled the whole top up with randomly placed freshwater pearls - pearl by pearl individually attached. Shimmering in different colors, those small pearls match the pattern in the cabochon so well and are so beautiful. I tend to sit on them like a dragon on his hoard, but pearls need light, not a shut drawer. Last I added a wrapped bail, very small this time, so it wouldn't distract too much from the pearl clusters. And here's the pendant now ...
Don't miss the new episode of the stash tackler series next week! ;-)
I'm still wire weaving. When I found this light bluish-greenish cabochon in one of my mysterious tins where I keep wire and extremely hopeless WIPs, all I wanted to do was make a simple pendant with it. Before I had tried making it into the background for a willow tree with dagger beads as the branches, but as I didn't even like it after the third attempt, it just ended up in the tin.
Today I set it free from its crochet bezel and started weaving in a mix of light gold and silver. Pretty soon I decided it would be a nice ring. Then when I wanted to deal with the wire ends sticking out in all directions, I thought it would be fun to have some of them run over the stone. That's when Sallah whispered into my ear "Asps ... very dangerous. You go first." Not for real of course, I didn't watch Raiders of The Lost Ark at that moment (follow the link if you don't know what I am talking about ;-)). You might not see a snake moving over the stone, but I do now.
Is it Friday already? I completely forgot! Not only did I have to look after my Esme since last weekend who was sick and refused to eat even the finest snacks I had to offer, but I have also been working on a project for which I had to order the beads *gasp* It's a bead looming project and if I am missing one or more colors, there's nothing I can do. Now I only wish I knew where I have hidden my polymer clay ... Oh well. I set myself a challenge, so I had to make something quickly, a simple design this time.
I never spared a thought for tumbleweeds before. To me they were just part of Western movies, a bunch of tangled twigs or whatever rolling over an empty street or through the desert to create a mood of silence or loneliness. That changed when one of my favorite cabochon suppliers, Stones That Rock, started offering tumbleweed cabs. From our trip to Scotland I had already known the Heathergems. In a feeble attempt not to spend too much money I had resisted buying a piece of jewelry and cabs are not available. So when I saw the tumbleweed cabochons, I jumped on it the way my cats jump on a new toy and got one which arrived yesterday.
I stole this from the website: "This is not rock, but it's dyed tumbleweed. The tumbleweed is harvested
from the Arizona desert, debarked and then the dyed sticks and stems are
heated and compressed for 30 days. This produces bricks of tumbleweed.
From there you can slab it, cut it into a unique cabochon. This is very
lightweight."
Guess what I found when I went into our little garden today! A bunch of very special spiders enjoying the spring sun, crawling around on flowers and bushes.
Ok, ok. Although it would have been fun to discover a new species, I have to admit that these little crawlers are in fact my own creatures. Please imagine now how I throw my head back and break out into a mad scientist's laughter. I had these tiny, just half an inch long carved face cabochons in my stash for more than two years. I took them out of their little bag, put them back, took them out, but I knew it wouldn't be easy to make a bezel for them without hiding any facial features. This time I was game to try it in the wire knit technique and add some beads. When I had finished the first one, I suddenly had the idea to make a spider. After finishing the first spider then I couldn't stop myself anymore ... and now I want to make a whole army of spiders and take over the world, mwahahaaaaaa! ;-)
I'm sure I haven't been the only one to lie in the grass and watch the clouds drifting by, taking on funny or familiar shapes. You don't need clouds to play that game, it works with lots of things, from structured tiles to rocks ... or this cabochon. It's a Mexican Cantera opal and it's not very big, slightly over half an inch only. Cantera opals are the Mexican equivalent to Australian Boulder opals. The opal is still in the matrix, like a window into another world which isn't hard to believe if you look at this little fellow (obviously enlarged a lot, but not color edited or anything).
Looking at it I imagine flying through a mass of clouds with the world underneath me, and is that a big lake possibly? I don't think I have to point out I'm flying into this magic world on a dragon. What do you see? P.S. I "blame" Stones That Rock for my new Cantera opal addiction. Before I saw my first one there, I had not heard of them.
My plan was to take one of my small Mexican Cantera opals and make something with it. Instead I stumbled upon this beautiful glass cab - believe me, my pictures don't do it justice - and decided on a little quickie. Just a very simple wire knit setting, you know, no extras, no beads, no double layers, nothing. Very funny. Sometimes I wonder if I know myself. The pictures can't show what exactly I did. There are double layers in there which hold the freshwater pearls now and the bezel went up a few rows, too. It makes me think that I should take WIP pictures from time to time, but it's hard to remember that if you are caught up in a project. So just have a look at the beautiful colors. Unfortunately that cab was a gift and I don't know where it came from. I think some browsing may be in order eventually.
