Grunge and Glam

Not a lot of creating this week. After having DH home for six weeks he finally went back to work on Monday( hooray) and then had Tuesday and Wednesday off (darn) then I had to work the next three days. So thing have been pretty quiet on the jewelry front. But I did manage a couple of things.

Decided to play around with some fibres and see what I could come up with. Back in my art journalling days and an attempt at book binding with Vivian I had large hank of recycled silk ribbons that I had bought from her. Not sure if she is still selling them but you could ask. So this is what I came up with.

Plus I wanted to use up some of my extremely large scrap booking stash. This is a little metal tag that I stamped over with black stazon ink.Some of the links and chain are recycled. I wire wrapped the ribbon onto jump rings and then attached it to the chain. Also wire wrapped different areas of the ribbon just to give it some interest.
This was I think, supposed to be a ribbon slider, so I laid it over a jar and bent it slightly so it had a very slight curve and then decided it needed something in the middle. Fossicked around in my drawers and came across a bag of metal letters the exact same gun metal grey colour and thought, bingo, perfect. Now I know you're thinking to yourself why? why did she use the word why? Just another of those serendipitous moments I had. When I tipped the bag onto the table W,H,Y, were the 3 letters on the top. Also I had been watching (more listening than watching) a movie a couple of days previous with Cybil Sheppard (teribble actress in my humble opinion) about a mature age student going back to college and having to share a dorm with a girl young enough to be her daughter. After they got over their initial dislike for each other (it was all very predictable) the girl bought Cybil a long sleeved black t shirt with the word WHY in big white letters across it. So that's how the word WHY came about.
Added dingle dangles and different bead combos and here it it. My grungey "WHY" necklace.
Now here's the glam one. Small recycled white glass beads with a large black lucite flower from the Beadin Path and a black floral magnetic clasp from Spotlight.
Took so many photos to try and get a reasonable shot of this necklace.

Hopefully next week will be quieter and I can create away till my hearts content. That's after cleaning, washing, cooking, shopping etc. etc. etc.

The Drawing Board Calls Once More

Remember my prototype? Well here is the finished piece.
Looks quite lovely doesn't it?....well that's where you'd be wrong. Now if you, like Marnie the manniquin are flat chested and don't breathe it's perfect. But if you feel the need to inhale and exhale and you have bustline any bigger that 32 AA then this isn't for you.
Because the slightest movement and all the discs sort of fall into each other and become concave (a bit like Marnies chest really). So all that cutting of grungeboard and glueing of wall paper and opening and closing jump rings and adding chain and a pretty clasp was all for nothing. Sigh!!!!!
But this wasn't. I love this even though DH said it looked like a dog choker. This from someone who when told a guy told our daughter her hair smelled like a meadow asked, "a meadow, is that like a swamp?" no dear, a meadow is a field of sweet smelling wildflowers. Shrek lives in a swamp.

Another little experiment, black rubber tubing, jade coloured strips of frayed silk ribbon, wire wrapped together and silver beads threaded on.
Look......I even made my own clasp.
So glad I made these after the gold disc disaster. Boosted my confidence some what.

Dull as Dishwater?

Made this the other day but I think it's a bit dull. Needs something to make it pop a bit I think. Four different types of bronze chain twisted together and looped in the middle, some beads that I added very small wooden spacers to, some little round cream beads with a bronze coloured swirl on them, a few pale fudge coloured crystals and a little bird charm.Probably wasn't the best background to lay it on.
A close up of the flower connector and the toggle clasp.
Look at these two. Aren't they the best advertisement for Mac's. Brighita on the right and her friend Julia. Planning their Europe trip for the middle of the year.
What's this I hear you ask? Well it's a prototype of something I'm hoping will turn out ok. Check back over the next few days and see if I succeeded. Keep your fingers crossed.
If you'd love to win a a beautiful piece of jewelry head on over to Dawn's blog and enter her competition. It's easy as leaving her a comment and you could be a winner. Competition ends on 31st January and there's 3 chances of winning, if you leave a comment on her blog, twitter and face book.

"Bless This Nest"

I'm so lucky. This is my gorgeous prize from a challenge I entered on Erin's blog Treasures Found, look how beautifully it's packaged.Here's a close up. Erin has named this piece "Bless This Nest" and you can find more of Erin's beautiful pieces here.
The resin bezel 'bless' was made by Lynne Davies from Expedition D and for more of her fabulous creations you can go here. Lynn has some amazing charms that I covet.
Erin will be having more challenges on her blog over the coming weeks and you too could be lucky enough to win one of her amazing designs, but you have to enter and don't be a scardy cat like I was, humming and haahing for ages before plucking up the courage to post one of my pieces.
Thank you Erin for the opportunity to enter and the amazing necklace.

Wearable Willow Ware

Just before I went away on holidays I took a trip down to my favourite Save The Children Fund op shop. They have the best library of second hand books at ridiculous prices and I was desperate for something to read on the plane. I told myself that I wouldn't look in the SH jewellry section (now that's just silly) and I was only there to buy a book. So while I was waiting to pay for said book I gave the jewellry display case a cursory glance and this jumped out at me and begged me to buy it. It was only $4.00, so what was I to do. The money is going to a good cause I told myself and promptly bought it. It's ceramic with a Willow Ware design on it. It doesn't look this yellow in real life. I'm afraid it's my bad photography.I just happened to have these mottled blue and white beads..........
.......and these little bird charms........
......and two different styles of silver chain........
......and this is what I made.

Also before I went away I made this. It started off as a bracelet (as so many of my pieces seem to do of late).
And became this. The chain is brown polyester, very light and easy to work with. Plus all those little charms gave me the opportunity to practice my wire wrapping. Some of them are still pretty dodgey!
It reminds me of the jewelry from India we all used to wear back in the sixties. That's if you were a bit of a hippy chic which I may or may not have been.

Back To The Real World

We had a fantastic holiday and I won't bore you with a whole heap of holiday pix. This is a photo of one of the yachts in Constitution Harbour that had arrived from Sydney with a huge ocean liner in the background. The view from out motel at about 6.00 am with the sun just coming up over the mountains. Never got tired of that view.
And never got tired of eating these. OMG the fattest, meatiest, juiciest, sweetest cherries I've ever eaten. I ate so many I'm now a bit fat and juicy myself.
It was great to spend Christmas with my sisters in Geelong, Victoria. Then spending a couple of days in Melbourne with a very old friend (she's not old, but our friendship is) and then heading off to Hobart. Tasmania is just gorgeous, I could live there in a heart beat. So much history and would love to have spent at least another week there just cruising around and taking it all in.
Maybe next year!