Tackle that stash - Mookaite "teeth" earrings

Maybe you remember my mookaite "teeth" necklace that I made a few years ago inspired by a favorite YA novel of my childhood (with regular re-reads) - Rulaman from 1878 about a tribe of cave people set in an area not far from me at all which of course made this an even more fascinating read.
This is an illustration of the fest held after they hunted down the dangerous cave lion to whom they lost so many family members.
The idea that there were cave lions and bears in my area was so exciting to me!

I said then that I might make more using a different Delica color and of course promptly forgot about that until I shared the necklace elsewhere last week.

Last time I used copper and berry for the bead strips holding the stones and even if it doesn't seem this way, I chose the stones by size. The one in the center is the longest and then I chose similarly sized pairs to build the sides.
This time I went for different browns for the strips and as my left over stones were all over the place in regards to size, I thought earrings from teeth would have been something even for Neanderthals - not in combination with metal of course, but after all the plan was not to make authentic Neanderthal jewelry, but to be inspired by it.
Yes, it is indeed believed that they did wear jewelry and makeup.
Of course those earrings would be asymmetrical and probably random in the choice of stones, just the way mine are.

At first I had put three stones on each earring, but I couldn't get the third stone and chain to fall the way I wanted it to, due to the size of the dangles. I think two worked much better.

Here's a longer variation.

Not all of my stash tacklers have to become something big.
My mookaite stash is not even close to being used up with these earrings. I have a little box with different sizes, shapes, and colors.
There are also these beautiful big beads, not many matching pairs among them, but these two cream colored make a really nice one.

Since I got that box in a destash, the beads call to me every, now and then. It will be interesting to see even for myself what the next ones will want to be!

Tackle that stash - Tears of the Jewel Dragon

Sometimes I'm surprised myself when checking for the age of things in my stash.
I still remember ordering two large dragon eyes very vividly because it was so hard to decide on the size and color. Back then I hadn't even given the faintest of interest to off loom beading or bead embroidery and didn't really know what to do with them, especially not with such big ones, but they looked so pretty I couldn't resist.
One of them ended up in a necklace for myself, the first of my very few split loom necklaces, quite early in my bead looming journey. I wouldn't do it like that anymore now, but the necklace has survived my regular "sessions of destruction" so far, instead it's hanging on my wall as a reminder of my first SLN experiment which I don't think I could repeat.
What really surprised me, though, when I looked it up in my purchase history was that I had bought the eyes on June 2, 2013 - the seller is still active, by the way, the price hasn't even gone up that much, but the postage sure has, no surprise there - and shared the finished necklace on my blog on June 28. That was pretty quick given the time the eyes would have taken to get to Germany from the US.

As you can tell, I was not so quick using the second eye which had to spent more than 11 1/2 years in my stash drawer!

For a Crafternoon - a virtual meeting with some blogger friends for chatting and crafting - I needed a project and spontaneously chose the dragon eye for bead embroidery.
To be on the safe side, I usually bead a bezel for my cabochons, so the start was easy.
Of course, I wasn't the only one to be reminded of Sauron's eye. The yellow is missing, but this wasn't the path I wanted to go down, anyway. Only what path it should be instead, was beyond me at the time.

For the next meeting two weeks later, I pulled it out again, bezel finished by now.
My favorite way to come up with an idea is to hold the cab up every, now and then and stare at it, sometimes over a few days, and then rummage through my stash drawers to see if anything is screaming at me - textures, shapes, but mostly colors first.
This time I came across my beloved hexagon beads and my first thought was "jewel dragon". Hex beads in a dark red, a silver-lined red and gold, and black AB for depth and contrast. Seed beads in similar colors for extra texture.
It would be so sparkly and shiny, not Sauron at all.

After I had filled about half of the space with beads, the piece screamed free form. I have no idea why bead embroidery is the one technique that makes me go free form the most. Maybe it depends on how I sew on the beads. If I let them flow into all directions without thinking about a pattern first, it seems to break up the strict boundaries of the cab's own shape and it feels wrong to restrict that flow by making it stay within the same shape as the cab. No rules, just vibes. Does that make sense or is that only in my head?
In that case I don't sew on the beads, cut the edges of the beading foundation, then put on the backing and cut around that edge.
Instead I start embroidering, eventually cut the foundation to a shape that speaks to me and then keep embroidering. Sometimes I even cut some more during the process if it feels right. No rules, just vibes.

It took me some days to get all the beads on, also because I couldn't resist holding the piece up to the light all the time to admire the sparkle which was even more beautiful than I had imagined. I wish I could capture that in the pictures.
With focals as big as this one, I usually prefer some kind of beaded rope, but after trying a few things, straps seemed to be working better in this case.

The necklace was finished, wasn't it? Ah, but those who have known me for a while also know that it's very hard for me to resist a dangle or a fringe, and an idea sneaked into my head.

Now the only question is why the Jewel Dragon is crying ...

Count Catula

First of all let me say I'm sorry for not wishing you a Happy New Year yet. You know how it is, life got in the way. So here I am, very late. A Happy New Year!

Now I want to show you some amazing footage from Bran Castle, also known as Dracula's Castle.
Seems as if the castle has a new owner, and I got an exclusive picture of him. I don't know, there is something odd about him, but I can't quite put the finger on it. Wait ... are those cat ears and a tail??

Picture of Bran Castle by Dobre Cezar on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0 ro)

On top of the hill

Agate Hill is in the middle of nowhere, so nowhere that no one even really knows where that is.
It's not a big hill and there's not much to see, just some stones and a few trees over which the moon and stars shine in the night sky. Of course there also the three houses.
No one knows who is living in the three houses, either. No one noticed how they got built and who built them. They were suddenly there with their icy looking walls and bright red roofs. Sometimes you can hear sounds that make you wonder what's going on there. Gnome workshops? Some of Santa's elves exploring new territory?
Not one has been brave enough yet to knock and say hello ... would you?

Actually that's pretty much how it happened.
The houses were suddenly there. Everything was suddenly there. All I had done was glue the agate "hill" to the backing and bead a bezel for it. The rest was magic. Or my muse. My magic muse?

Every, now and then I wonder if it's a good thing to work like that or if I should challenge myself to plan something, with sketches or a list of what colors I want to use, for example.
On the other hand, those are the pieces that are the most fun to make. Sometimes I'm sorry if I have limited myself by using a piece of backing that isn't big enough for the thoughts in my head. Then again, however, it can be really exciting to take on the challenge if the right idea suddenly pops into your mind.

When the focal was finished (with black faux leather on the back, by the way), I went through my beads for inspiration. The dagger beads had just the right color and luckily I had just ordered the blue crystals that I used in the rope.

Now I only need to find out who lives in those houses.

Rulaman and the mookaite "teeth" necklace

When I was a child, I had one favorite book, well, among all my other favorites ;-) You can tell from how the book looks that it has been read a lot of times. That book is called "Rulaman" and was written in 1878 by David Friedrich Weinland, a German zoologist.
The youth novel is set in the times of the cave people who used to live in our area. While not being without flaws, after all research has continued, it has everything, love, fights with the people from other caves and with dangerous animals, everyday life, betrayal, revenge, birth, death, travel - and the "old Parre", the oldest woman in the family.
I have always been a fan of hers, she's tough until the end.

Illustration from the book (by Heinrich Leutemann)

Now what does Rulaman have to do with a new necklace of mine?
In the book there is one chapter on how the group hunts the dangerous cave lion responsible for the deaths of many family members. His fangs are given to the bravest men. At the time I thought that was utterly fascinating. Today it would probably make me sad.

I had these mookaite "teeth" around for a while. I tried more than once to wrap them in wire, but it never worked out. They were too wide at the top to make a nice wrap, and the shapes, though similar, weren't the same, the bead holes were crooked, at one side instead of through the center, sometimes higher, sometimes lower - I just didn't like the look.
Finally I had an idea, though. How about bead caps? Or even better, to accommodate to the different shapes and bead holes, how about bands of peyote to hold the stones and little "handles" on top which I could make longer or shorter depending on how much of the stone looked out?

It worked like a charm. I used a mix of copper plate and galvanized berry Delicas for a bit of contrast. Galvanized beads are always a risk because the color can rub off, so a silver color is looking through. Using a mix from the start, the small spots where the silver is shining through contribute to a vintage look rather well, I think.
I finished 15 "teeth" before I ran out of beads. I still have more of the stones, however, maybe I'm going to combine them with a different Delica color.
For the chain I chose an antiqued copper tone rolo chain.
Aren't the colors of the mookaite beautiful?

SilhouetteCat and the mermaid

No, they are not a couple even if the title makes it sound like that ;-) Although you never know if they have met under a full moon, SilhouetteCat sitting at the pier maybe, looking down on his friend who has come from the depth of the ocean to say hello? I wonder what kind of conversation they would have.

Let's start with SilhouetteCat.
If you have followed me for a while, you may know that he is one of my favorite HeatherCats and I have made several versions of him.
This one is my second bead embroidered version and the first one in color, all because I couldn't resist turning a shimmering checkerboard cab into a moon.
I hadn't planned a HeatherCat. My first thought had been a tree "holding" the full moon, but luckily I used a big piece of backing as if Mabel, my muse, had been whispering in my ear that a moon needs a cat ...
Once I had beaded the bezel for the moon and added some rows around it, I knew that it reminded me of Heather's SilhouetteCat.

So I added the black cat -  with the body changed a little because I didn't want him to reach up to the moon.
Now some stars. In bead looming, my night skies often have dots for the stars, but this moon was so big that I felt they needed to be bigger, too. I didn't have any cabs that would have worked, though, so I went with more circles (that's probably why people are reminded of Van Gogh's "Starry Night", but if you have a closer look, you see it's not really that similar and it was not my inspiration).
It was also fun to add the fringe. I still have tons of those dagger beads from when an old project fell through, and the color was perfect.

Then I was at the usual point, what kind of rope to use. Of course I thought of my beloved Herringbone, but neither the 4 bead nor the 6 bead rope appealed to me this time because the different blue tones had different sizes.
I remembered, though, that I had just got some faux suede ribbon and there were still a bunch of crimps from my early bead looming days, and indeed the braids looked much better.
Now I'm really happy how the whole piece turned out!

And the braids actually brought me to a WIP that has spent nine months in my infamous WIP drawer - my mermaid.
I hadn't even posted about her here because I thought she would be done much earlier, but I had had the same problem with the rope. Bead loomed strips didn't sit right, the Herringbone ropes didn't look right.

Luckily the other spools of faux suede that I got were a dark teal and a light blue which went perfectly with the colors I used in the mermaid's tail.
Actually, the first idea had been to make just a fish tail with all those sequins, but a tail by itself always looks so cut off, so instead this large mermaid started evolving, getting more and more hair and this big fish tail. It was fun ;-)

It's amazing how satisfying it is to finish a long time WIP because the right idea has finally come along and I'm very glad she made it out of that drawer that has proved to be the end of the line for some other pieces over the years.

The mystery rock

Sometimes it really sucks to get old/er. I've had health issues all my life and always think I should be used to it by now. Guess what - I'm not.
It started out with foot pain which then led to my back going out because I couldn't walk right. It's not as if I haven't felt old sometimes before, but you should have seen me these last few weeks. Once one spot was fine, the next one began hurting and I'm not completely through with this yet.
The worst part about it was that it took away all my motivation to even try doing anything fun, like being creative, as all I did was worrying about how to best care for the cats (luckily I had some help from the family) and not crash when der Dekan tried to hunt my old 2 DM fleamarket cane while I did my best to slowly make it to the kitchen, for example.
I was so sure that both he and I would be dying in an earth shattering fall, him because I would fall on top of him! ;-) Strangely enough, we both made it alive. Gundel was smart enough to stay out of it completely.

About a week ago then, I have started working on a new Dawn doll and it felt so good to feel my creative flow coming back.
Two days ago, however, I suddenly felt the urge to make a piece of jewelry. I think it has been before Easter that I last made something, definitely too long!
Going through my cab drawer, I found a rock that I have had for years and years. I even had turned it into a pendant once before, but was never completely happy with that.
I probably bought it as a worry stone back then because it's really smooth.
The last time I had used either brass or bronze wire - it was ten years ago, I only remember how hard it was on my hands - and dark red Swarovski bicones for a wire crochet bezel, and I stuck with the color combo of gold and red for this bead embroidery pendant.

I still love the mystery rock, even if I have no idea what kind of stone it is. What do you think?

Tackle that stash - Mod Heart

Usually I start a stash tackler by going through my stash to see if anything is talking to me.
This time I started with a leftover piece of bead embroidery foundation. When I made my little hedgehog (that I didn't blog about), I didn't know at first what it would be become and how big it would be. Well, not very big as it turned out, so I had a piece of foundation with a hole in the middle and no idea what to do with it - until I cut it in half and ended up with two quite weird shapes.

I took one of them to my cab drawer to see if I had one that was right in size and would give me a good idea when a small rhodonite donut jumped into the way - not the slightest idea how this ever got to me - and thus turned on the experimenting mode.

This was a rather interesting journey. The first steps were easy. I glued the donut on, then I looked for bezel colors. Funnily enough, I had matte seed beads that matched the color of the rhodonite almost perfectly. They came from one of the surprise bead mixes that I like to order, and until now I had been pretty sure I would not be able to use them anytime soon. Does the bead store know my stash better than I do? ;-)
Now what colors to use with them?
I wanted a bit of color and a bit of shine (my way to say that I love to use metallic accents). Was it coincidence that most of the colors I picked were already waiting in my work area? And was it coincidence that I had just found the dark red fire polished crystals again? Of which one fit perfectly into the hole of the donut?
This was almost getting a little spooky!

From there, I was just following the flow. I had cut the edges of the foundation randomly, now I needed to fit a pattern into that.
After doing a few swirls I noticed that I was reminded of clothes patterns from the mod era, almost a little psychedelic, although those clothes would probably have been a lot more colorful.

In the end, the focal needed a chain, and there was really only one way to attach it.
I struggled a bit with the temptation to add a drop dangle to the tip (which isn't really a tip, it's just an illusion thanks to the crystal, the back looks more like a member of the Barbapapa family ;-)) or a fringe from tiny seed beads or fine chain, but then it seemed to me that would have been too much.

This was a fun experiment. Maybe I should try this more often, after all I still have the second half to begin with. I'll let you know how it goes.

The winged scarab

Khepri was the god of the morning sun in ancient Egypt. He was believed to push the new-born sun across the sky in the shape of a scarab the way real scarab beetles roll balls of dung from which their young emerge.
Khepri was depicted either as a god with a human figure and a scarab face or simply the scarab itself.
This is of course only the short version of his story.

When I put a little sodalite cabochon on my backing, nothing could have been more far from my mind than Khepri. It had been supposed to be a little in between project, a small cab on a small piece of leftover backing, with a bezel and maybe some edging for a pendant or part of a ring.
My plans changed rather quickly, though, when I had chosen a combination of blue and gold for the bezel and added tiny golden beads which turned the humble sodalite in a kind of scarab.

It was then when I remembered the winged scarab and went to look for some beads that would work for the wings.
I don't often use bugles, but have some choice in different colors from ordering surprise or destash lots.
After exchanging the backing because my piece was much to small for the new idea, I had to decide how to shape the wings and if I wanted to add the morning sun. Just in time I remembered having red magnesite around which would work perfectly for the sun.
When I had finished scarab and sun, I chose colors for the wings that reminded me of ancient Egypt, turquoise - shiny and matte with an AB finish - gold and purple.

The result was not at all what I had expected when randomly picking the sodalite from my stash.
Next - pendant or necklace? A bail seemed wrong, so it had to be a necklace, and if you have seen my last necklaces, you will have noticed that I love Herringbone ropes for my focal pieces. In this case, I added some dumortierite beads - for lack of lapislazuli.
I'm really happy with how this piece has turned out in the end!

Ready for spring

The last time I had expressed the hope that I would be ready to show something new soon, based on one of the designs I had shared.
For this I used some beads that I have probably had around almost from the start of my jewelry making. It was at a Sunday market in a small town nearby where I found a strand of blue goldstone. Back then, I had only seen red goldstone before, and I really loved that deep blue. If only I had known that these beads would haunt me for years, I am almost sure that these haven't been the last ones because they have been hiding in old pieces that I set aside for ripping up before.
My problem was that I never had a really good idea for them.
I finally found a good use for them, though, even if it meant that I was shamelessly hiding that beautiful blue in the process.

They are perfect to incorporate them in these beaded buds, and as I had three of them, I decided against another pair of earrings and instead made this necklace
With the necklace, I'm also once again embracing my asymmetric side which doesn't happen that often, both with the position of the buds and with the different colors.
Originally, the third bud was supposed to be bronze colored, but I didn't have the necessary size 15 seed beads for that, and I simply couldn't wait for an order because I was afraid the necklace would end up in the infamous WIP drawer.
Now I'm thinking the gunmetal makes for a very nice contrast, too. What do you think?

Erm ... a Happy New Year?

I admit that the year is already feeling rather used AND it is definitely trying to show 2021 that it can do even "better" than its predecessor.
In short, I am still struggling with life as I had mentioned before in December. Private matters, but also what is going in the world, often I just want to hide under my blanket in bed. It's exhausting, it's scary, and sometimes it's hard for me to find the motivation for the smallest things.

Just now I managed to cut up cardboard boxes again and it was pretty amazing to see that most of the boxes were for the cats and just two small ones for me, something for the household (yay?) and a gift. So spoilt, but what would I do without them?
Now that der Dekan has become a tiny bit calmer - as in being crazy in segments rather than for five hours in a row - I even had the chance to get a little creative again.
I participated in an Art Nouveau inspired showcase on Facebook and was determined to make some new items and to use some of my old stash. It took me a while to get into the flow of creating and reach that meditative state, actually one of the designs needed experimenting and cost me some nerves before it finally worked the way I wanted it to, but then it felt so good.

I am sure I have mentioned before that I don't like making earrings, sometimes simply because I forget how I made the first one, but bead embroidery has helped me a lot with that. It's more work for me with having to sew on the backing, but it is really satisfying to end up with two matching earrings!

So here are the pieces I have made so far in 2022, and I'm working on something else based on one of these designs to use up some leftover beads, so hopefully there will be something new to show again soon.

Stay safe and healthy out there and take care!

By the way, I have finally caved and can now also be found on Instagram where I don't just share my work, but also brat ... sorry, cat pictures and items from my personal collections.

The beach is calling

Our bi-monthly challenge mistress at the Jewelry Artisans Community has been messing with our minds. The challenge is bi-monthly, by the way, not the mistress. See how my mind is already messed up?? ;-)
Let me try this again. Every two months we have a theme challenge at JAC and the good lady chose matching earrings. Great. We all know that matching earrings can be very hit and miss for me. Nevertheless I made some, only to find that she had changed the theme to beach to make it easier for us busy people. Serves me right for skipping that one post.

Beach, beach, beach, there was the beach in Wales we never found despite the signs (I still think they were fake and just meant to lure me into a field full of cows). The only beach I really remember was the one near Bodega Bay. Such a long time ago that I was there the last time, more than 20 years!
Seagulls, weird stuff on the sand - probably algae and remains of jellyfish - sand dollars, other birds and shells ... I knew it would be shells.
Shells are so easy to use in jewelry and I had a bunch of bigger ones that I had been gifted by a co-worker. I have netted shells and crocheted around them with wire, I made them from polymer clay, but you may have noticed, I'm having a lot of fun with bead embroidery lately. Sorry if it gets boring, guys.

The hardest part was to choose one of the shells, and once I had glued it onto the backing, the next hardest part was to decide what to do with it now. Actually I thought it was pretty without adding too much to it, and as luck had it, I happened to have the perfect beads to make a bezel in the colors of the shell itself. For a moment I was tempted to just leave it like that, but then added one single row of bronze metallic beads for contrast.
Now it needed a few pearls. I know, I know, that's not original at all, but shells just scream for pearls.
My first idea was to add one row, but then my dangle addiction raised its omnipresent head and I couldn't stop myself from making a little fringe in the center.

The last decision to make was the chain. I thought about a bail, hidden or not, two bails, chain, cord, everything I didn't have, so I ordered beads for a simple beaded rope.
Voilà, here we go!
Do you think it will please the challenge mistress?

Art Elements Challenge - Blue

Actually I would have liked to post this on Friday because it's a real stash tackler, but I just didn't make it in time although I had started working on it weeks if not months ago.
Originally this was not supposed to be an entry for the Art Elements challenge. The challenge made me pick this neglected WIP up again, though.

Let's start at the beginning. I had ordered cabs, among them a carved labradorite cab. My order arrived, I had a look and noticed that the lab had a crack and the next thing was me having two pieces in my hands. Don't you just hate when things like that happen?
I didn't throw it away because I thought I could try something artsy with it. I know, I know, but I'm a Swabian, so I am bound by stereotype to not throwing things away until I'm really, really, 100% sure I can't use it in some way. In ten years maybe. Also, when I held the pieces together I was reminded of a fish of the kind we used to draw as children, with that one curved line separating the face from the body.
Every time I was at the cab drawer, I saw the little "fish", and finally I decided to give it a try with bead embroidery.
I glued the cab, beaded the bezel and gave it a bead eye. Then I put it in my box with the bugle beads that were leftover from the beaded sneakers and the Twin Beads from when I had ripped up a bead scarf the other day. I simply didn't have an idea for hiding the crack yet.
The box has a permanent spot on my bed, by the way, with my macrame board on top because a certain little cat loves to sit on it. Anything for my mistress!

When I saw that this month's topic for the AE challenge was blue, I had almost finished something else and I had found a blue/green bead soup baggie in my stash drawers. It had been a gift and you could tell that someone had made this soup on purpose as the colors were really pretty together. My motivation was back!
I also had an idea for the crack now, a simple beaded strip from size 15 seed beads that was stiff enough to hold the curve and hid the crack perfectly.
Then I embroidered an ocean for my little fish using the bead soup and some of my leftover bugles and last but not least I gave him fins - no idea why, but he looks like a Rudy to me.
Finally, to make his ocean a little more interesting I sewed on some button and potato pearls.

But now what? A brooch, a bracelet focal, a pendant?
I found it was too big for a brooch and I didn't have any pins that would have been big enough, anyway. So I finished off the back as I didn't have to prepare the Ultrasuede for a pin.
It looked kind of nice held against my wrist, but not nice enough to think of a solution for how to make this into a bracelet now.
It needed some kind of beaded rope, but the blue beads were much too irregular for a rope. There were the Twin Beads in my box, though, and I had a lot of the clear mix (clear, silver lined, AB) that I could use for a Herringbone chain with the "ocean" seed beads at the sides.

Here's the result. I have to confess that part of me thought about adding a fringe, but that would have been over the top. What do you think?

I should add that this piece is not going into my shop of course, after all there's a broken stone in this one. It will have to stay mine :-)

This is not a blog carnival anymore, but I will add links to other challenge blog posts later as they come in. So please check back at the end of the month!

Tackle that stash - Butterfly necklace

Yesterday I found a little butterfly body in one of my wire tins where I keep wire ends that I want to use for jumprings, headpins etc.
It looked so sad without wings, so after a while of not making jewelry anymore it was time I sat down and gave it some. The hardest part was to decide how to fill the wings. On the last butterfly I used a lot of crystals, but I wanted to give this one's wings a more delicate look, so some of tiny blue agate and amethyst beads from my stash seemed like the right choice.
Only afterwards I noticed that the colors had been vaguely inspired by those of the male common blue butterfly. It's a pity I hadn't seen that before, so I could have made the lower wing pair bigger and maybe added some blue to the body as well.
I still think, however, that it's cute :-)

Dainty

The moonstone in this pendant has been an old companion of mine. In fact it has been around almost from the very start of my jewelry making journey. There were originally two of them that I had made into wire crochet pendants - not easy with a cab that size - one sold, the other one got ripped eventually.

I love moonstones because I love the moon. I really think they deserve their name.
As small as this one is, it still has a lovely blue glow which made me choose some silver lined light blue seed beads with the clear beads and crystals. I mostly used a thread also in light blue to give the clear beads a touch of color as well, only the picot edging sitting on top of the crystal row is made with white thread. 

Including the bail the whole bead embroidered pendant is only an inch, so it needed a dainty chain as well. When I went on YouTube to look for something else, one of my recommendations was a two bead spiral Herringbone rope tutorial.
I wish the internet would get out of my head!
Nevertheless that was one recommendation that really worked for me - I still don't understand why YouTube seems to think I'm into crazy disclosure stories about English Royals just because I watch one channel about Victorian cooking! - because the dainty look was perfect for my pendant.
Also it's not hard at all to do, and with everything that has been and still is going on, both personal and in the world, and which occupies my mind, it felt good to get lost in a repetitive process for a while.
To enhance the icy look, I chose clear and silver lined clear seed beads for the rope and finished it off with a simple click clasp.

At the Jewelry Artisans Community we have some tiny challenges - tiny because not many people participate - six times a year, the latest one was to make a piece of jewelry with your own chain.
I have often made wire ropes to go along with my pendants, mostly crocheted or knitted, but I never make chains from wire links on my own. My plan was to tackle one of those, but I didn't feel I had the nerve for it at this time.
So it'll have to be this instead.

Art Elements Design Challenge and Blog Hop - Flowers

It has been a few months since I last participated in the Art Elements Design Challenge. While my muse is still on an extended vacation at a place unknown to me, I responded to this month's topic right away.
Flowers, that's easy enough even for me, I thought. The bonus was that I had already planned a flower piece for the Jewelry Artisans Community challenge! Now I had just to pull it through of which I wasn't sure yet.
Stick with me for my story, will you?

Shortly before my birthday in June my pal gave me a wonderful gift. We would go to see Jane Goodall, one of my heroines since childhood, in Munich.
On the way back home the next day we didn't take the direct route, but went along the little towns and villages (where we discovered for example that there's something called soccer golf, but that is not part of this story). Summertime, flowers in the fields, a/c in the car to protect us from the heat outside ;-) it was very relaxed. At one point I wanted to get out of the car and take a picture, though.
This was the field with the most poppies along the way and it brought back memories big time. As a kid and teenager I had a friend with a dachshund. Near the house where we would take Finni for a walk there was a big field with poppies and cornflowers. It was beautiful, and I don't know why, but on my friend's birthday - we've lost touch since - this field is always what I think of first. I guess it's one of those romanticized childhood memories of lighthearted fun.
So we got out and I took a picture of the field on the other side of the road and one of the single poppy on our side of the road. Probably ran away from home to see the world, that one.

Can't you just see Dorothy and her three companions falling asleep in the field of poppies that the Wicked Witch prepared to keep them from making it to Oz?



On with the story. These pictures became the inspiration for my flower/summer piece.
I had a plan. I would do something that I had only done successfully once before. I would bead crochet a rope with a pattern of stylized poppies. That sounds easy enough again, doesn't it?
It wasn't. You have to know that I had tried bead crocheting several times before and I didn't get the hang of it, so I always stopped after a few rows. I hadn't even bothered making a pattern then. Finally I tried it again when I ripped up a piece I had made with size 8 seed beads, a good size for practicing.

Now I was determined. I went to my neglected bead crochet program, ready to go - and it didn't work. I couldn't even download it again, but I wouldn't let such small things get in my way, naaaah, not this time! I downloaded the old version and made a very simple poppy pattern using the colors of size 11 seed beads that I had in my stash.
I didn't have any yarn except what was left over from my bead knitting course, yellow or white. Obviously yellow was not the right choice. A lighter blue would have been better than the white, but it would work.

The pattern was not simple enough for me, it seemed. It's amazing how often you can count wrong while stringing beads or get confused in the middle of an easy bead sequence, so you for example repeat something that shouldn't have been repeated.
There was one moment when I was very ready to throw that beaded yarn against the wall. Once again there was cursing, but in the end I had done it. It was the first miracle.

So I started crocheting and while the tension in some spots is less than perfect - after all I was only used to crocheting with wire - I managed to finish the rope. That was the second miracle.

Next stop, glue trauma. There is no way to explain how much I hate glue and glue hates me. In this case you can tell by the clasp. My glue hadn't been used for a while and I first had to dig out some gunk to get the glue to flow right at all. Which it then did in a most generous and unplanned way.
You would have been so proud of me. I cursed just a little and did my best to clean up the clasp (and my shirt, thank you very much). There's still some on the beads next to the clasp, but this piece obviously isn't for sale anyway, so I took a deep breath and kept going.
Next I filed down the clasp. I had only got a gold tone clasp in the right size, and I'm not really into gold and even less into shiny gold, so I wanted it to have at least a matte finish.

Originally I had planned to add something to the rope, a 3D effect, a beaded poppy maybe, not necessarily a big one, just as a little extra. After I had mde three attempts at beaded poppies, I gave up. I just didn't like the look, and even though this is a simple rope now, it had been quite the achievement for me to finish it at all.
So here you go - a very long story and a very simple result.

I could have made more flowers. I have bead loomed flower patterns, I have crocheted and knitted flowers with wire. I had made them from polymer clay. My only tutorial ever is a small flower.
This simple rope necklace, however, had deserved to be the star this time.

Not only a design challenge, but also a blog hop - please have a look at what the other participants have to show you. It will be like walking through a beautiful garden! :-)

Guests

Alysen - Cat (that's me ;-)) - Divya - Evie and Beth - Hope - Jill - Kathy - Linda - Martha - Melissa - Michelle - Rozantia - Sarah - Sarajo - Tammy

AE team members

Caroline - Cathy - Claire - Jenny - Laney - Lesley - Marsha - Susan

Oldies but Goodies - Necklace favorites

Personally I often find it difficult to pick favorites ... favorite actor, favorite movie, favorite music, favorite piece of clothing, even to decide on a favorite color can sometimes be hard.
Nevertheless the new Jewelry Artisans Community Oldies but Goodies Challenge asked us to name favorites from our own work, necklaces in this case.
I probably feel the same way as many others, the project I am working on at the moment is my favorite. Maybe it has to be that way to help us concentrate on it completely. Yet, looking back over the years I guess we all have those pieces that our heart belongs to even if they have made their way to someone else a long time ago. Perhaps we had a hard time letting them go at all or were not even able to let them go after all.

Now I had to pick from all those favorites for my collage which is never easy. I hope you'll like my selection.

1 and 5 Cat's Wire
2 and 6 MC Stoneworks
3 and 7 The Crafty Chimp
4 and 8 Jewelry Art by Dawn

Art Elements Design Challenge and Blog Hop - Seed Pods

Another month, another design challenge from Art Elements.

The topic "seed pods" chosen by Jen who shared great pictures and stories for inspiration is quite fascinating, but you may remember I'm not a gardener. I knew about the snapdragon heads that can look like little skulls (the plant is called "lion mouth" here, by the way) when the flower is dying, but it would probably have been just a bit lazy to take some carved howlite skulls and hang them on some kind of stem (on the other hand let me jot that down for the future, it might be worth a second thought).

What other kind of seed pods were there I could use for an idea?
Well, actually I had been given an idea five years ago. Back then a friend called my attention to Chinese lanterns or physalis. She said she could imagine me knitting some with wire, and so I did my best to figure it out with a prototype first, ordered some agate beads and made three of them. I plastered the picture all over the net, then put them down and forgot about them. Every, now and then I found them and tried to come up with an idea to put them on something like a branch - sound familiar? - and put them out in the hallway as decoration. I already knew I couldn't trust Ponder with them, they were too much like balls, but the wire I had used was too thin to take that risk and also too thin to use them in jewelry.

Now the idea was back. A few years ago I got lucky on a surprise destash parcel. It was a wild mix of some silver findings, crystals, glass beads, small faceted stone beads, a sterling silver chain with a flower pendant, WIPs (one of the earrings made a really sweet focal part for a necklace just the other day that I donated for a good cause). And there were four orange glass beads which had the perfect size for the pod "filling" (also, if anyone has an idea where I put the three leftover agate beads from the first project, let me know - they are probably in a very safe place).
So I grabbed my crochet hook, knitted four Chinese lanterns in different sizes and oxidized the copper for a more natural look. For my first three I had used a coated non-tarnish copper wire,and they always seemed a bit too shiny to me. After all this filigree look means the pods have dried up. Those skeleton pods are not always that greyish then, by the way, I have also seem in a brownish hue. It definitely is a beautiful look. Mother Nature is a true artist.

Now what to do with them?
I had several ideas. One was a necklace with pods hanging from something like a branch :-P Yes, I know, still the same idea. But hey, that's what they do in nature, too.
Maybe one of my wire crochet ropes would work. Spoiler alert - it didn't. Yes, I put some of the pods together with one I made with orange seed beads hoping it would remind of a dried up, but not skeletized pod - which didn't really convince me 100%, though - on two pieces of rope of different lengths. The pods should then be attached to different spots, but no matter how I tried to bring it all together, the look just didn't appeal to me. Was the rope too thick, were just the rope ends too thick, were there too many pods, I just didn't know.
So it was time for a break from it in which I made a pair of earrings instead which I liked better.

The break took longer than I had imagined. Not only got the heat and my cold in the way, I also had WIP procrastination. It's a disease highly dangerous for artists and artisans that keeps you from going back to a WIP you may have already messed up.
Symptoms are lack of creativity, small tantrums, phases of despair when noticing the due date is creeping nearer which usually brings on even worse creativity blocks with bouts of hesitation to even touch or look at the WIP.
If you are lucky, you are strong enough to break the vicious circle, hold the piece for a while without throwing it into a corner, breathe, and maybe the solution will come to you then.
For a short that seemed to be a twisted wire torque design, but nope, another fail *insert another tantrum here* ;-)

I almost thought this was it for the necklace until it did come to me today. I cut the two already attached pods from the rope, very carefully of course because there's no telling what I would have done, had I cut a wrong wire.
Then I put them on a chain, as simple as that. It was the best decision for the moment. I would have missed my mind if it had been lost completely. The signs were already there.
Voilà, one necklace.

Thank you for following me into my small world of madness and drama ;-)
Please have a look at the other participants' posts, too. It's something to look forward to!

Guests
 
Tammy - Raven - Alysen - Anita - Cat (aka me) - Kimberly - Rozantia - Sarajo - Divya - Caroline - Catherine - Kathy - Norma - Jill 

AE Team Members


Claire - Caroline - Lesley - Niky - Laney - Susan - Marsha - Jenny - Cathy - Jen