It’s ring week here at the studio!

For a long time, I’ve been wanting to develop an original method for constructing a single bead ring, so this week I spent some time playing around with a couple of ideas.  The one I teach in my course at George Brown College is Mavis Llewellyn’s One Bead Ring (published in The Wire Artist Jeweller, September 1999).  According to her daughter Susan, Mavis developed the design back in the late 70s-early 80s as a quick-to-make-project to sell at shows.

Other single bead ring patterns are easier to make (i.e. 3-minute ring), but the shanks (to my eye) are sloppy looking.  In square wire, they often look tortured. If you’re looking for something quick and dirty to sell for $8 and you work “organically”, then Bob’s Your Uncle…

The thing I like most about Mavis’ design is how elegant it looks, especially the shank.  The ones I produced this week haven’t achieved anything resembling elegance or consistency yet, but I’m happy to have made progress.

I mentioned in my Week 6 post that I was making felted beads, and now I can share the results of that effort.  Initially I was going to pair the felted beads with the crochet beads just as I’d made them, in fine silver white.  Then it occurred to me that over time, the silver is going to tarnish, and the necklace will be difficult to clean without taking it apart.

The solution was to add LOS to the silver.

Liver of sulphur stinks to high heaven, but it creates such interesting effects, especially when a bit of salt is added into the solution!  I love how the colours change, and in this case, how they became mottled in the purple-blue range.

A friend of mine asked me to produce a bunch of pieces for her to use in the fall for a fashion show, so this is going to be one of the things I send her.  It’s not my typical style, but it will work well with the clothing being shown.

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I love the quartz family of stones.  They’re durable and affordable, which makes them great for everyday jewellery. They come in a wide variety of colours, which makes them really versatile.

Since I’m still trying to catch up, I decided to go rummaging through my components box and pull together some bits to make this pair of earrings.  Earlier in the year I took apart a bunch of old jewellery that hadn’t sold.  I saved the pieces, because they were well made, and, quite frankly, if I can save a few minutes by using a recycled pair of earwires rather than making up new ones, why not?

Anyways, the celtic spiral I used here was once part of a bracelet.  Now they make a nice pair of earrings.

The other day, while commiserating with my friend Margaret about our work loads and not seeming to be able to stop to catch a breath, she quoted back to me a comment that I’d deadpanned into one of our conversations once:

“Breathing is just sooo overrated…”

This week, I told her that I think that would make a perfect epitaph for my headstone.  That laid both of us flat with laughter.

I shouldn’t complain, because it’s self-inflicted:  I’ve taken on too many projects to try to deal with at once.  As a result, I’m struggling to do anything as effectively as I’d like.  My DH is currently working a rotating shift schedule, 4 – 12 hour days then 4 – 12 nights, which is also wreaking havoc on my regular routine.

As a result, I’m off the rails on the YOJ project.  I so want to be producing quality work, but I seem to only have time for the barest minimum, and even that seems mediocre!

In an effort to catch up, I’m going to just put together a couple of very quick pieces.  I found these little crochet balls while cleaning up the studio a week or two ago.  I made them several years ago, but the project they were intended for didn’t really work out.  I applied LOS to some of the balls, and they are being used in the project that will be posted next.  These two were left over, so I put them together to make a little pendant.

Beaducation has made a bunch of its videos available for free, and last week, while I was pondering my next YOJ project, I watched the felted bead video to refresh my memory on how to do it.  I’ve now made 3 1/2 dozen beads of inconsistent size and nearly rubbed off the skin on my palms… LOL

Felted bead-making is one of those processes that allows your mind to wander, and so I was thinking about the Marquise Series and where I could go next with it.  In the video, Gail Crosman Moore talks about making a lozenge-shaped bead, and it occurred to me that I could combine those beads with marquise elements.  So I spent the next couple of hours constructing various types of marquise elements I thought could work.  Rather than string the elements from point to point, I wanted to turn them on their sides.

What I’ve ended up with initially is a step pendant.  This design needs a bit of tweaking, because the wire looks very light weight.  In its present form, this element will be overwhelmed if combined with felted lozenges.

I have an idea on how to deal with this issue, and that will be the next project.  I’m glad to have broken through the creative block I had a couple of weeks ago though…

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I’ve fallen behind with my YOJ postings due to a bout of creative block.  I keep picking up the wire and the pliers in an effort to make something, and end up with nothing but frustration and a pile of scrap.  Earlier this week I joked on Twitter that I was tempted to solve the problem by piling up my scrap, adding fire and Presto! A brooch!

One of my Job Jar jobs this week was to “Organize beads and materials in the studio”.  Translated, that means “Clean up the mess!”  So I started sorting through a drawer where I’d dumped a bunch of finished and half finished pieces.  Some went into a “for packaging” box, some into a “for salvage” box, and some went into the scrap bin.

Amongst the half finished pieces were a bunch of crochet balls I’d made two years ago.  I thought it might be interesting to set one as a bead in a ring.  Since I was just experimenting, I didn’t want to use silver, so I hauled out the copper wire to make the ring shank.

Once the bead was mounted, it occurred to me that it looked a lot like the little puff ball in “Horton Hears A Who” by Dr. Seuss.  So, I added a little garnet bead to represent the Who’s world.

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This week I decided to go back to and adapt the project I made at the beginning of this Year of Jewelry.  I wanted to explore it a bit more. The idea was to create a “string” of marquise shapes.  The result was a pendant and this pair of earrings.  They remind me a bit of palm fronds!

The most challenging part of the construction was getting each of the marquise shapes to end up on the same side, rather than having them alternate.  Made with hard wire, it had to be twisted very gently, because there was a high risk of snapping.  Getting the pattern to repeat in mirror image was also very tricky and took several tries.  (I have several pendants!  LOL)

I intended the earrings to be large and they are!  They make a very dramatic sweep from the earlobe to mid neck.

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One of my new year’s resolutions was to start using a Job Jar.  My family and friends, who know me very well, know that I’m hopeless about housework.  I think it was Erma Bombeck who said “Nature can’t abhor a vacuum as much as I do.”  That kind of sums up my attitude nicely.

However, I do live with three other (messy) people, so some token effort to maintain order must be made.  So… enter the Job Jar.  I wrote all the various chores on the little slips of paper, and included some fun things, and every day I pick one out of the jar.  The choice is completely random, although I like to think of it as leaving it up to God/the Universe to pick the task that is right for me on any particular day.  Some days I have more energy than others, and interestingly enough, each task so far has been perfect for the day it was chosen.  I do my Job Jar job early in the day, and then the rest of the day is mine to do as I please.

The net result of doing my housework this way is that I’m being much more productive with my jewellery making as well.  So, I feel good because my house is slowly getting cleaner, and I’m getting to work guilt-free on something I love every day.  Bonus!

The studio gremlins paid a me a visit this week and stole this piece for a few hours.  I noticed it was missing after my husband had done a sweep through the house collecting detritus to put out in the garbage on Monday night.  He tends to be somewhat brisk and indiscriminate when he does this.  A frantic search turned up nothing, and I was resigned to it having disappeared into the mass of trash.  On Tuesday, my job from the Jar was “Clean the livingroom.”  It was like a bunch of angels were standing around saying “We want to help you”.  LOL

So, I set to work, cleaning, sweeping and reorganizing the room.  When I picked up and moved one of the toy boxes, lo and behold, there was the pendant!  With a quick prayer of thanks, I put it in a safe location, where I knew I’d find it again.

Like the previous pieces in the series, the pendant is formed using a marquise shape.  When I was first shaped the wire, I thought the pendant looked like a moth.  The form evoked a very strong Art Nouveau influence.  As I added the weaving and the beads, the moth form persisted, and I noticed that the pendant was starting to look like Rainbow Wrapping.

Originally, I was going to hang the pendant the other way around, from the point.  It reminded me of the Star Trek logo.  I didn’t like how the tourmaline drop looked hanging from the long tail though – it threw off the balance.  So the drop was moved to the point, and the tail became the hanging point.

While photographing the piece today, I started seeing the form of an elephant face.   How cool!  I don’t remember ever seeing so many different influences in one piece.

What do you see?  Let me know!

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Last week’s project was about going beyond a simple marquise shape to a compound shape.  This week, I’m going a step further and moving into working in 3D.

The original germ for this piece was a project I made in 2003 as a Secret Santa gift.  The Cathedral Egg Pendant was made of two pieces, connected with bead links.  Cathedral Egg was inspired by a piece, called “Gluttony”, which I had made for the “Heavenly Virtues/Deadly Sins” exhibition presented by Object Design Gallery the same year.

The ladder weaving here was very time consuming to do, but the effect is so nice!

I think this really needs to grace a fabulous lampwork bead by some superbly talented artist.  The problem I’m finding is that I need a big bead:  the base of this bead cap is almost (2.5 cm (1 inch) across.  So, I’m on the hunt for something appropriate.  It still needs to go into the tumbler to shine it up, but I wanted to get it posted.

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I made this pendant in the early part of the week, knowing that the first project for the new YOJ was due today.  Up to now, I’ve been working with marquise shapes as single pieces, either as pendants on their own, or linked together in a bracelet.  This one is a compound structure, made from one piece of wire.  It took a bit of torturing to get it to look like this, LOL, but I like how it resembles a whirligig.