Week 17: Happy Fish

OK, Had problems coming up with an idea for this Weeks's theme-- Fishin', Scary Sharks, or Friendly Dolphins. Fish, sharks and dolphins don't really excite me, friendly, scary or neutral. I finally decided just to make a fish with beads and wire... thinking "hey, I'm running late this week, and I have a show this weekend, I need to get this done...." I'm thinking maybe an hour's work right??? WRONG!! It took me hours to get the wires to lay right and straight, and to get the shape to suggest a fish. This is probably my 10th try.. good thing I thought the Multi Brioche agate bead looked good with copper, I shudder to think of the wasted wire if it had been sterling!! Once I got it done, then it's like, OK, do as necklace? I do like my smile on the beast.. hence " happy fish". That and the fact I'm soooo happy it's done! Also, if you click on the picture to see it closer, the fish actually has an eye.. alittle bit of dark druzy, which helps give the suggestion of a fishy-face. Decided that it made a cute pin, so I added a pin back.. that was also a challenge, and in the future I think I"ll try to make the pin while I"m making the piece... and I bet my original estimate of an hour or so would be correct... despite the simplicity of the piece, I learned a great deal in the construction of it. I really love this challenge!!! Yeah YOJ!!!! wooo hoo!

Ok for something completely different!! I actually made this a few weeks ago, just wanted to do something all swirly-graceful. I keep seeing this 1 style of earring with pearls and large swirly-swoops, so I wanted to make it on a larger scale. I settled on a bracelet, and then had to figure out how to make it look good but make it easy to take on and off... after a few trials and errors, I came up with this hinge type arrangement. I test drove it for a few hours.. and it's pretty confrontable and easy to do and undo.. I tumbled it for pretty, pretty, shinny, shinny.... then I had to decide what to embellish it with. Due to the weather being soooo darn inconsistent ( ie, snow on Tues, 70's on weds etc.. life in the Midwest! ) I started to think winter... so pearls it was.. originally I was going to do stones or something. But it made me think of a crown... so Winter Queen's Crown it is. I'm very pleased with it!! and It's easy to make it adjustable-- just add rings for bigger and cut down and re size for smaller! That's a design issue I'm always struggling with... you want to make it fit your customer, but when you are working with wire, options can be limited... normally you can't just add beads like on a stung piece. I"m trying very hard in my wire work to leave at least some wiggle room on sizing.