I vill bite you - The earrings

Remember that I said there will be something new from the bead soup?
I have been sorting and sorting - not done yet - and while I haven't got around to start on a re-make of the bracelet and choker yet, I have made two pairs of earrings, one for myself and one for sale.

I had to change the design a little bit for this smaller brick stitch version and I also used a different red to make them glow more.
What do you think?

Random Saturday - Soup memories

To me, spring cleaning doesn't necessarily mean pulling everything out of cupboards to put new lining in. Instead I am pulling tiny wire and thread bits out of beads, to be clearer, I am still in the process of ripping up old pieces.

Two of those were from my earliest days of bead looming, a choker and bracelet in the same design, vampire lips.

You could tell that I was still very much a newbie then. I still struggled with the right tension which made the pieces rather stiff, and in one of them I had used satin beads without knowing how easily they would cut through the thread I used.
The reasons to keep them both around for more than ten years were probably mostly sentimental, but it was also a reminder to pick the design up again eventually as an improved version.

Now the time seemed to be right to cut them up along with other old items on my list. Each time I had looked at them lying in my drawer, I had felt a pang of guilt that I hadn't made anything new yet.
Taking that into consideration, it was amazingly hard to cut them up. This large tube of bead soup - this bit is just part of it - is so much more than beads.

It's a beginner's journey to an own and original design, to trial and error and frustration (cue the satin beads again).
It's the joy of seeing a piece coming alive from a printed piece of paper after several hours.
It's the wish to share it with others to see if they also like it.
It's the memory of a personal disappointment.
It's the story of seeing your jewelry again and again, noticing every flaw and finally admitting to yourself that it needs a remake - and seeing it again and again and not getting yourself to actually do it.
And as the last step for now, it's the story of cutting it up and picking it apart - and thinking about what to do with this soup to honor the journey. So-to-speak.

I know it sounds terribly emotional, but I can assure you I didn't shed any tears.
It's just that I hadn't expected it to feel so different from the many other items I had ripped up over the years. Usually it's a relief, maybe with a bit of regret, this time it felt like setting myself a new task.
The old is gone, there will be something new, even if I can't say yet what it's going to be.

Would you have thought that someone could get so philosophical about bead soup on a Saturday night? ;-)

No quote of the week or By the way.

I want to apologize if things don't go normal the next few weeks, maybe even months. I know you wonder why I use the word "normal" at all.

What I mean is that I can't promise regular blog posts. Not even the quotes of the week because most of my DVDs are in big boxes at the moment. You can see there is none today and I can already say there also won't be any finds of the week tomorrow.

Life isn't easy for me these days and I don't always have control of how and when things happen. Please bear with me and my swinging moods ;-)

And as none of my posts is complete without a picture, I'll show you one of a cuff you don't know. Actually I can't believe I haven't shown it to you already because I have to admit I was pretty proud of the idea.

Tribal

When I saw that this month's challenge for the Polymer Clay Smooshers had the subject "Tribal", I felt a little clueless at first. It might have to do with the fact that the word "tribal" used in German usually means a special style of tattoos.

The idea for my first piece came from an online game. Who would dare to say inspiration can't come from about anywhere? Not me for sure. The game was about archeological finds and this is what came out of it.

It would be wrong to say I was inspired only by that game, though. The netting part, done on fangs, even if these are made from polymer clay, practically cries out Delia Stone. Thanks Delia!

"Rulaman" fang polymer clay earrings

The second piece was a mix of inspirations. I wasn't sure what kind of animal I wanted to use, a bear, a polar bear, a wild cat ... so I started to cut the clay and it ended up as an anteater. I love anteaters, so I was quite happy with that, too ;-)

The rope coming with the pendant is crocheted from gunmetal colored wire with seed beads going all around.

Tribal "Anteater" necklace

This challenge took me back to one of my favorite childhood books, "Rulaman".

As you may or may not know I live in Southern Germany, in Swabia. In our area there are a few very cool caves which as children we of course had to visit, with family or on school field trips. In 1878 David Friedrich Weinland, a Swabian zoologist and author, wrote about those caves when they were still inhabited. My godmother gave the book to me and I can't say how often I have read it since then. Cavemen, fights with cave bears and lions, burial rituals (one fight didn't go so well), hunting descriptions, summer trips to the lake to stock up on fish, the first Cromagnon people arriving, all that was described in such vivid language - and on top the fact that it could have happened just like this where now I lived .... wow.

The book is still published today, by the way. Just saying ...