Under the blue moon

I really have to blame den Dekan for this or thank him. Probably both because it was definitely him who had hidden the blue dichroic glass cab, but because he also made me find it again when he hid something else in the same place before my eyes.
It was a nice surprise, and as I was still in "moon mode" from the moon hare that I made for the JAC challenge "Moon and Stars", I started humming Blue Moon. That's a lot of moon ;-)
We had the old single by Elvis Presley, so that's always the version that comes to my mind first. Those were the times, me trying to convince my mother that I HAD to do my homework to background music aka all my father's old singles from the 50s and 60s.
Luckily we had the old "Musiktruhe" that I have shown here years ago, a TV/radio/record player combination. One of its very useful features was that you could put on several singles at a time (the family doesn't agree exactly on how many) which would then drop down and play one after another. I doubt my Mom would have approved of my getting up after each song and changing the single while doing homework.

And here is Elvis' voice in all its 1954 glory.



My mind began wandering.
Sitting near a lake listening to the sounds of crickets and frogs ... spotting some dragonflies having settled for the night ... under a blue moon ...

With the blue moon, the nightly background, and the dark green blade of grass, I wanted a contrasting color for the dragonflies, so I chose a mix of red beads to embroider them, with clear AB sequins for the wings.
It reminded me of the time a red dragonfly visited me in our little garden once. We don't have a pond, so I guess it had come over from another garden to say hello and then headed back.

Quite some time and a bead order later because I ran out of background beads, I thought this would have made a fun bracelet instead of a pendant, but with the backing already sewn on, I finally decided against that and added a hex bead rope instead.
I tried to take a video to show how sparkly this necklace is, but that didn't work, so it will have to be a late night picture for now.

Universe

I'm not really good at making free form pieces. I have to push myself hard to make something slightly asymmetrical and free form ... well, that takes me back to school when I argued with my art teacher about being too much in love with details and too stuck to symmetry. I can still see him taking my tool from me when we had to do an etching of a forest, scratching some wild branches into my carefully designed wood, telling me that nature was wild. So he was right, but still .... let's say we loved to provoke each other and being almost grown up now I see he did have some points and am able to admit it, too :-P

This piece started out with an attempt of using thicker gauge wire for needle lace. I'm not sure anymore what exactly I wanted to do with it then, but when I found it today and then stumbled upon some more gorgeous bubble lampwork beads by Deronda O'Neill, it was like a sign - possibly from my art teacher *grin*

The beads look like the planet Earth to me with their lovely color and this gave me the idea to turn the silver into the atmosphere surrounding it, keeping it organic and "wild".

"Universe" is available in my studio now.

Chaos spirit

First of all I want to complain. What problem does Google Base have with the word "muse", so it has to block it?? Yes, it bugs me. Mabel has become a dear friend to me and I won't let Google Base treat her like that *lol*

I don't know if any of you remember the crochet ring I made quite a while ago. I was never really happy with it, with the edges, with the way it felt on and I kept squishing it and looking what else it could be good for.
My muse (ha, take that, Google Base!) finally showed me the way.
You know how sometimes you feel you are drowning in chaos? Too much work maybe, too much stress, things happening that you have a hard time dealing with, family, health, your car won't start, you keep dropping things - often those small things add up and one day you'll start crying because a glass falls over and breaks. No, the last thing didn't happen to me, but to a friend and her talking about it made me feel I knew exactly what she was going through. You can handle so much and then an ordinary glass breaks and you feel you can't handle this.

My life is been somewhat chaotic lately, I'll spare you the details.
And suddenly I took this poor squished ring and started weaving silver wire through it, randomly, chaotic. I took my pliers and distressed the silver and added a freeform bail. So that was what the ring was good for. And I was finally really happy with it.
You can find this one of a kind pendant in my ArtFire studio.