Week 46: ok, so I"m not on topic.... and odds and ends

Just a quickie to get caught up. I don't have a name for this one, I made it a couple of weeks ago out of copper. One of the mags recently had a scrolled project in it, this is my take. I've done it in 16 ga copper, I slightly flattened with a hammer before wrapping the coils, and then lightly afterwards. I added a vintage crystal from a chandelier. The finish on the crystal has turned slightly yellow with age, which in this piece I think really adds to it! I really like how it turned out, really need to play with this style of wirework more! I'm counting this as week 46. I will be on topic for 47, it's done, just haven't gotten the photo's ready yet, and with the holiday this week I probably won't have a chance til Sunday. I've also got a few pendants and one pair of earrings to show also. The first is a heart pendant, a quick and easy one with a vintage crystal, fun to make though. The 2nd is carnelian agate with black crystals. Earrings are based on an earring I found in Israel, before I made jewelry. It was a broken earring I found on the streets of Tel Aviv, and like a mag-pie I scooped it up. The earring had black glass bead from India instead of the vintage starlight crystal I used. I made my earring longer also, and added the extra scroll/spirals.... again another style to play with more.

YOJ: Week 45 Interconnections

Let's start out with 2 of my babies. Today Jupiter (18 lbs) and Jezzibell (19 lbs) are guarding the dirty laundry. Now why the are guarding the dirty laundry, I don't know. I asked them, this is the look they gave me. Cute though! The knee is of one of my other babies, my real baby, Jesscera.

OK, what can have more interconnections than chainmaile? Nothing!!! Last month I took a class in byzantine chain. I took it with my good friends from South Dakota on a road trip. We met in the middle, Omaha, NE. (Hi Cathie, Hi Sue! ) We had a blast! We set up a mini bead convention /sleep over in our hotel room. It took 3 carts ( one for each of us ) to get our stuff in the hotel room, the hotel staff thought we were nuts ( we are) and even asked us how many people were staying in the room. I'm not sure they believed us when we stated only 3. We stayed up too late, talking, beading and eating. Good fun by all! Anyway we start out the adventure with this class because Cathie wanted to learn it, and Sue and I were certainly agreeable. Here's the funny... I've sort of knew how to do it already, but I'd not tried it in 3 years. Sue likes to play with wire already. Cathie was sort of the wire "virgin" as she's not tried much as of yet. So of course she aced the class and caught on faster than the rest of us!!!! LOL. We all got the hang of it, it's actually one of the easiest to learn, and they showed us a couple of variations in class. We all ran out of rings finishing up projects in the hotel room that night! I ended up doing the variation. This bracelet is a keeper -- I made it with my good, good friends on a wonderful weekend (talk about connections!!!!) and it's darn gorgeous to boot. I used 8mm 5000 swarovski rounds in jewel tones. I made matching earrings, but I guess I didn't get a pic of them.. Also here is the 2nd bracelet I made that weekend, in black crystals. Aha! I have a pic of the earrings for that one! The black one is for the table. I can't wait until the next BeadCon with the gals!!

I've been wanting to do more with rings since.. I ordered some rings, but I got the AR (Aspect Ratio) wrong, but they worked great for another chain, called Queen's Link. Since I"m getting ready for the Waterloo Holiday Arts show ( tomorrow! ) I've been in a Christmas mood... watching Christmas favorites ( White Christmas, Love Actually, Holiday Inn, etc) and making mostly Simple Christmas items. Anyway, I used Aluminum rings to make this bracelet I call it "candy-cane" and it has a small pewter charm of a candy cane to boot. I'll be making more of these. Here are some pics of other holiday jewelry I've been working on the last few days! Wish me luck on tomorrow's show!

YOJ: Week 44 "Moonlight"

This is one of the most frustrating weeks of YOJ for me, and one of my finest. Let me explain. Last week, completely without good inspiration, I googled for a cheat. What I mean is when the subject doesn't conjure pictures for me, I 'll go to google's image search, drop in the phrase for the week, and see if the visuals kick start me somehow. OK, this week I had 3 choices. Cities of the world, lots of pretty cityscape's, but not really my bag. Midnight Stars seems to be the name of some rock group and at least 3 different books. Not a thing for me. So Moonlight Sonata ( which sounds darn pretty but I couldn't get any specific images ), being third was the third search I made. Imagine my surprise when several pics of sheets of music came up, so it's like, oh, it's a song.. alittle research and a quick side trip to You Tube, and I realize it's just about my favorite piece from Beethoven!!!! Gosh I felt stupid. I'm horrible with names, but with the first 3 notes I knew I knew it!!! And boy did that set off a whole cascade of thoughts and images!!!! I made about 5 sketches in rapid response, and scurried up to the beadroom to find the beads I needed to make this wonderful idea a reality.
Time for the frustration. I, who my hubby thinks I own every bead ever made, or at least thinks I've made him carry them at least 3 times, couldn't find the right beads!!!!!!!! argggh!!!!!! I spent a couple of hours on the net trying to find the beads to make this vision of wonderfulness come to life, to no avail. I won't go into the details, because this idea will now lurk in the back of my head until I find the right beads, and whatever the cost, the beads will be mine, and my homage to Beethoven's 14th Sonata will be made!!!!!!!
However this left me up the bead creek without a needle, and I finally just gave up on doing that piece on Saturday. The rest of Saturday, after all my normal chores and all the made up ones that my family comes up with, which means about 3pm, I go up to the bead room and start goofing with wire and such, trying to come up with something, anything for this weeks' theme. (At the bottom of the blog you can see a few of them.) I gave up, and decided I didn't have to be on topic this week after all... it's not mandatory, it's just a guide to get the creative juices flowing, which it had done.. it's not the topic's fault I didn't have the right stinkin' beads to get the job done. (yet!! )



I have a full box of charms, and I decided I'd not made any jewelry lately with the charms, so rummaging through them, I found this double sided moon. That got me thinking about Midnight stars actually.. as in, how do you tell the stars are at night? why, because the moon is out, silly! ( yes, I talk to myself when I create. Yes the beads answer me, the Capri 8mm Roundel Bead on the left has the next question....) So I started to play around with that concept. Somewhere around 1am I got this idea to put the charm on a huge Labradorite bead I had, which then made me remember some wonderful Labradorite beads I bought at Bead & Button this year, and I scribbled a design in my sketch pad. It looked like a moon on a circle for the pendant, with little circles for the necklace. Since my drawing ability sucks, my little circles looked like 2 or 3 circles on top of each other, which made me think of spirals, and a-ha! I'll do spirals on the necklace!!! ( for regular fans, spirals will not be a surprise. For first time readers, I really love spirals in wire.. it's just so much fun and earthy and organic feeling, and they are just plain fun to make!! ) I should have taken a picture of the sketch, it really doesn't resemble the final piece at all, but that's what makes this week's piece so fine!!!! Sometimes the idea in your head is better than what you actually make, and sometimes its so much better than what your head originally says, your not sure how it happened. I got both this week, with the idea I can't do (frustration) and the idea that turned into "Moonlight" (finest)

The spirals on the pendant component are made with 18 GA sterling with crystals ( I've been wanting to try that variation for ages, I love how the double spirals look plain and now I like how they look embellished)

The link components are also 18 GA, along wit the clasp. I like how the matching earrings ended up, fun to design them, I also made a "plain" pair which I don't have shown here, it's just the lentil beads on a ear wire. Also shown this week are the 2 pairs of cross earrings I made, 1 pair made with 21 GA wire and the other are the vintage crystal crosses. Last is a pendant in bloodstone, I hammered the wire before I put it on the bead, I like the look, but it looks incomplete to me.. like it needs dangles or something... hum.... I wonder what's in the bead stash that would look good with Bloodstone........

YOJ: Week 43: Queen of the Harvest

It's soooo nice to be on topic!! I actually started this a few months ago, lost interest, and then thinking of topics remembered the color scheme of this piece, which is just perfect for this time of year! "Queen of the Harvest" has 4 different pearls, and 6 different types of seed beads. Gorgeous drape! Originally, I was going to add a 2nd row, but I really liked how this looks and lays with just 1 row, so 1 it is!! Matching earrings of course.


Since Queen lacks wire working here are a couple of other things I've done recently from the shop. These lovely cobalt earrings have just the right amount of wire work on them, and then this brown glass pendant was another experiment that didn't quite go as planned, but I like the results. I think this linear design would look great with crystals, say 6 or 8 mm.

Since the season seems to be influencing my color choices right now, here is yet another brown item, a 2 strand bracelet. I have a huge stash of large sterling silver beads, and most of them I never even look at... so most of this bracelet was hmm.. time to use up some of those holdouts!! It was fun to use up some of my larger guys... and I think I will do a few more in this vein. Yes it makes them expensive, but it looks great!! and feels great to make. Sometimes I look at the cost of my materials and it inhibits me... I'm afraid the final piece will be sooo pricey no one will buy it. I am trying to get away from this, as anything that acts as a brake on the creative process is a bad thing. With this in mind I used a very expensive but definitely kewl clasp that I think goes perfectly with it!! I'll tell you something else, I am normally hesitant to use brown with silver, but now that I've made several pieces in the last few weeks with brown and silver, I think it looks great! I just wish the picture was better... it's got petersite, pearls and a few vintage crystals. What fun!

YOJ: Week 41 & 42

Well I'm off topic. I got various ideas, but nothing that I could bring myself to do. So these are sort of filler weeks for me. I'm working hard on one of the Nov projects, I"ll post it once it's done. Anyway, for Week 41, here is my version of God's eye. The Ojo de Dios or traditional Eye of God is a magical object and cultural symbol of the Huichol peoples. (Mexico) Originally made as an amulet for babies, the God's eye was made over 5 years, started by the dad if possible. Then each year another band would be added until the child was 5.

My God's eye is much simpler and only meant to be pretty. One is made with copper "sticks" and sterling weaving, then I used LOS to darken. The other one is silver "sticks" and goldfilled weaving, no LOS. Both of the "sticks" are heavy gauge, 16 or 14, which I hammered and texturized to make them look more like something someone would pick off the forest floor. Then I did the weaving with 24gu. It's funny, I was thinking of making something like this ( My daughter brought home a God's eye as an art project from school) and I saw a friend make one out of wire.. so I had to try it too!

Week 42 again off topic. Not even wirework.. but I had these great Caribbean Chalcedony beads and I've been dying to make something with. I ran across these huge sterling beads I had and realized I finally had beads that would do justice to the large patterned roundels. I love this necklace! I used Pacific Opal crystals as they matched the beads quite nicely.

Not sure what to do about YOJ, so here are some earrings

And a Few pendants. And 1 bracelet. Let me start with the bracelet. This took me way to long to make, so it's a good thing I had fun making it. I've been playing with links, so this is a link bracelet with crayon colored American art glass, one shaped like a heart. I'm not an overly heartsy person, but I do like these glass hearts.. heck if all heart beads were like these, I would be into hearts!

And matching earrings of course!


These earrings I made the hearts out of wires to echo the glass heart beads. When you wear these earrings the Wire heart is seen straight on, and the glass is seen on the sides. I like it when you can carry the motif in both directions!

I have 4 boxes of art glass, most of it is Dave Christensen's, hand picked at trade shows. He really makes lovely beads!! Here are some more earrings, just got into an earring kick!

A pair of aventure stars, and very simple amethyst beads. And Finally a couple of pendants. This gorgeous banded agate beads makes a grand and simple pendant.
And then this more complicated dyed slice agate pendant. I love the color!

YOJ: Week 40 And the Topic is......

Well I don't really know what the topic is this week, but that's OK. There is a debate going on right now on what topics to use for the quarter, and one of the possibles is "falling Leaves". What I ended up with after much thought is "Silver Leaf" . I made the wire leaf with 18ga frame and 26ga wire for the wrapping. I have these gorgeous silver pearls, really large one like 12-13mm, that I've been dieing to use, they just seem to call out to me about 1/2 way through the wire wrapping of the leaf. To give the piece texture in the necklace I used 5mm sterling silver spacers, and lovely peacock colored pearls that goes very well with the larger silver pearls. I decided to dig out my LOS (Liver of Sulfur, it's to darken/color wire) finally, I've only used it once before in a class. While I like the overall effect, I do think I really prefer shinny bright silver over LOS. Still it's good to have it as a tool in one's wirework arsenal. This is my birthday weekend, and among many delights, (making this necklace being one!) I also got the loveliest roses from Jerry. If my camera had cooperated I would have had pictures. I'll try again tomorrow. ( I think the rechargeable batteries are dying on me, they seem to have no lasting power anymore)



The second piece is for a co-workers' daughter's wedding. It's always an honor to make jewelry for weddings. I'm hoping I'll get a picture of the bride wearing the necklace if so I'll try to post it at some point in the future. She's got this gorgeous dress with red trimming on it. The bridle shop calls it candy apple red.. I would call it very hard to match red. (here's a picture at this site:

http://www.davidsbridal.com/bridal_gowns_detail.jsp?stid=1325&prodgroup=10 ) See the wonderful bare back on the dress? The client really loved this huge vintage bead, because frankly only my stash of vintage reds were matching the dress. On the other hand she really loved the more delicate looking necklaces. After much thought this weekend, I decided the 2 were not mutually exclusive, and I kept thinking about that exposed back. My solution was to use the big bead in the back almost like a counter balance. I thought the simple wire heart as the dangle worked very well. You can't really see the chain but it's a bunch of little hearts. I did find some seed beads that matched, and used them with clear crystals to give the necklace in the front the touch of color she wanted. She's not seen this yet (I'm sending her this link) but I'm hoping she will be pleased. I do wish the pictures turned out better, I should have used a dark background, you can hardly see the crystals. I used 3, 4, 6 mm clear crystals, seed beads, and 1 large vintage crystal for the middle drop.