But What About The Jewelry?

Okay, so I have gone a bit over the top with the whole birding thing lately.  Obsession is nothing if not my middle name ;-)  I thought that the 3-day Memorial holiday weekend would give me time to balance things out.  And that plan was working beautifully right up until it came to my attention that Ryan's English project (due the first day back at school after the holiday) was not QUITE as far along as I had originally been led to believe thought.

As in...it was mostly incomplete.  Still, I thought I'd get him working on it and have a bit of quiet design time to myself.  I got most of a necklace put together and then...heard the panicked cry of "It's not my fault!" from the other room.  Ran to see what had happened only to find out that his (school-issued) typing device had frozen and shut down and nothing we could do would get it started again.  Sadly, by the time it died, he had about 2/3 of the project typed up...except now it was locked inside a dead machine.  So, that was the end of my free time as I spent the rest of the day assisting Ryan to make up as much of the lost work as possible.  We did have a long discussion about the life-lesson of the potential downfalls of leaving your work to the last minute - you never know what might go wrong that you weren't planning on.

So, had to wait until this weekend to get everything finished, but it felt good to be making some art again:

 

 

This is actually a pair of earrings I made a while ago to go with a beach-themed necklace, but they never were quite right.  I made a small tweak to the way they are constructed which made them hang more nicely.

 

 

 

 

This pair of hammered brass rings became part of my color and patina experiments and ended up with a pretty pink/lilac patina.  I then sanded and polished the surface to allow some of the original brass to show through to add a little glow to them.  Sage green Chinese crystals and some dark brass wire and earring hooks finished these off.

 

 

 

 

I tried a patina marbling technique on these brass disks using gold, bronze, jade, and cobalt patinas.  I then painted the brass dragonfly charms with some of the same colors and sanded and polished them to let the brass show through.  A cobalt Chinese crystal picks up the deep blues in the patina colors.

 

 

 

 

Inspired by my birding adventures, I picked up this set of ceramic feather charms from Scorched Earth and wired them up with sterling silver feather charms, Czech glass rondelles, Swarovski crystals and white Venetian glass lentils.  The charms are suspended from a necklace of Indonesian recycled aqua glad barrels, black Mykonos ceramic disks and more of the Venetian glass.  I finished the back with a sterling silver lobster clasp and hammered sterling silver chain to allow for an adjustable length.

 

 

 

 

Here's a close up of the feathers.

 

 

 

 

And a close up of some of the other beads.  I thought the rustic and rough nature of the recycled glass was a good match for the ceramic feathers which have some of that same feel to them.

 

 

 

 

I had one feather left over from the necklace and still had some of the hammered chain so I made a simplified version with just the single feather and a Swarovski crystal.

 

 

 

 

The last couple of feathers became a pair of matching earrings using some of the same materials.

 

I've got lots more ideas for birdy-themed pieces swirling around in my head.  Now, if I can only find the time to put them together!

 

KJ