Index Card a Day (ICAD) - Week Five

 How quickly the time seems to be going as I continue this challenge.  I am starting to amass a nice little collection of cards now and just need to decide what to do with them once it is finished.  Above, you can see: Citrus; Arcade and Font.  Arcade had me thinking and in the end the image was quite simple - just arches drawn with a biro and then some distress ink smooshed on.

 The next photo shows Earrings; Periwinkle; Board Games and Lantern.  For the earrings, I looked at lots of earring images and decided to use the suffragette colours of white, green and purple.  White was for purity, green for hope and purple for loyalty and dignity. (Dignity and Hope are certainly things we could do with at the moment.  I was in the town centre this morning and it felt like social distancing had gone out of the window - all rather worrying.)

 I rather liked the earrings I had created for this Dina Wakley stamped face and decided to make some real ones, inspired by these.

Here they are  - white pearls, green fluorite hearts and amethyst rounds.  Women's voices are still not being heard around the world so this is my little token of support for them.

February Artists' Trading Card (ATC)

Here is my February ATC (Artists' Trading Card), the second in my monthly projects.   I am really enjoying the whole process of making these - gathering the ideas, deciding on colour schemes, choosing images, making the gemstone pieces and using some of my stash! 
The base of the card is recycled packaging cardboard,  which is gessoed to give a lovely surface to work on.  My art journal is also made using this card for the pages.  The card has a gel press printed base of purple, white, silver and grey paint, with stamped 'rain' on half of it.  Half of the card has stencilled raindrops with clear texture paste and added glitter and the other half has stamped puddles, and raindrops with clear embossing powder.  The hearts stand a little away from the surface and are made from the cardboard, with satin board which has been embossed with an industrial pattern.  The gemstones are clear quartz, fluorite, kunzite, rutile quartz, white moonstone and an amethyst charm at the bottom.

The back has stamped raindrops with glossy accents over them to add a watery shine, a stamped snowdrop and the February verse. 
Now to start thinking about March...

A night sky hare

As you know, I do like hares and have gradually built up a small collection of figurines and pictures.  Recently at a small craft fair, there was a stall with hare ornaments, painted by the stall holder.  I was drawn to the hare above with the night sky colours of navy blue, purple, white and silver (only £2.00) and thought I could definitely add a little something to it.
I had seen similar ornaments in ceramic (which I had coveted) in a local craft shop and also on Moonlight and Hares (Karen Davies makes the most beautiful hares which sell out in seconds, but I do have a hare card and print from her which I love) so decided to zhuzh (or zhoosh or zhush, depending where you look) my hare up.  As she (I think she is a she) had the night sky decoration, this dictated the gemstones I used.  Chris very kindly drilled three small holes along her tummy and I set to work creating the dangles.

I chose to use silver plated wire as it echoed the silver moonlight.  I had a lot of fun deciding which of my rather large stash of gemstones to use, but chose those which said 'night', 'moon' , 'ethereal' or 'magical' to me (and are also some of my favourites).  I used amethyst, rainbow moonstone, coated haematite and blue goldstone on the first dangle (to the left).  The middle one has a pearl, a haematite star and the original moon charm.  The third one (on the right) has a blue pearl, crystal quartz and a labradorite on it.  I created a wire spiral to hang her from and dropped a little silver pearl from the centre.  I am really pleased with the end result and she looks just how I imagined she would (which is often not the case, in my experience).

Here she is hanging up and making me smile every time I see her.
Edited to add: thanks to Briony for the idea - here are some photos with a ruler to give you an idea of her size -

She's about 16.5 cm in length... 

...or about 6.5 inches

...and about 6.5 cm or 2.5 inches from the top of her ear to her tummy.

More kumihimo necklaces - finally completed

 I have made a few of these kumihimo (Japanese braiding technique) necklaces now and have finally finished three which just needed the ends completing.  I chose colours that I wear at work in the winter.  The purple one above uses 6mm faceted and plain gemstones.

 The blue one uses 6mm faceted and plain gemstones too...

...whereas this blue/green one uses gemstone chips.  I wanted to use the Chartreuse S-Lon cord in a piece of jewellery, so decided to try it out here.

Here's a close up of the purple stones which include amethyst, fluorite, agate, lavender amethyst.

 The blue one has aquamarine, different agates, lapis lazuli and sodalite in it.

The blue/green one has peridot (which matched the Chartreuse cord beautifully), amazonite, apatite and aquamarine.
I really enjoy the repetitive aspect of kumihimo which does become a relaxing and meditative activity.

Update on the wall situation:  the wall man came to have a look at the damage and said that a fence would be cheaper, but a wall could be put back, although not with the old bricks.  However, this would involve foundations four bricks width each side, so would mean the raised border would have to go and I would need to save the plants I wanted and then start again.  We are waiting for the quote...

Icon jewellery exhibition

 Last Saturday, we headed to the National Centre for Craft and Design again, to look at a jewellery exhibition called Icons.  It was an interesting idea - jewellers were asked to create a piece for a person or thing that they considered an icon. I was allowed to take photos, which is always a bonus.

 This amethyst ring and the moonstone necklace in the next two photos were designed for Tilda Swinton and capture her cool, detached, ethereal quality very well, I feel.

 I loved the sweeping curves of the moonstone torque neckalce.

 This necklace and ring set was created for a polar bear.  The jeweller used resin to create the icy arctic blue.

 Chris and I both liked this one, inspired by The Shard.

 Again, there was a great sense of movement in the design.

 The complex and impressive piece was designed for David Bowie's 'Diamond Dogs' song/album.

 The two iron spheres encrusted in flowers and skulls made from lots of semi-precious gems was made for Alexander McQueen.

 This was another of my favourites as I found the design fascinating.  It looked like a box, but when you looked at the photos, you could see there was a square brooch in the centre, then a square bangle and a square necklace, made up from smaller squares.  Only when the three were displayed together would you see the shape of the angel wings, showing the inspiration.

 A beautiful thing in its own right.

 The blues of this piece appealed to me and on closer inspection, the shape of the towers from the Battersea Power Station appeared.

 This piece was Chris' favourite - Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, was the icon here.

 There was a huge amount of attention to detail shown here, from the complex beading to the printed writing on the back of the oval pendant.

 This quite classic looking Viking/Celtic-type bangle was inspired by a female character from Game of Thrones.

Finally, this simple looking piece of circuit board was designed for Alan Turing, the computer scientist and the jeweller had written that the inclusion of pink referred to the fight against prejudice as Alan Turing was prosecuted for homosexuality and died from cyanide poisoning. According to Wikipedia, he received a posthumous pardon from the Queen in December 2013.
I really enjoyed seeing these pieces - there were many others too, including two for Vivienne Westwood, but the ones I have featured are the ones that appealed to me most.
Here's a little something to think about - which icon would you have chosen?

Tea, cake and a treasure trove...and egg sandwiches

We had a very nice morning on Sunday, wandering around the town and looking in charity shops to see what we could find.  We actually went for the amethyst chip necklace above, which Chris had seen on Saturday but hadn't bought  as he wasn't sure whether I needed it. (Of course I needed it!).  When we got there, the shop was closed, but as luck would have it, the lady was just opening it so I was able to buy the necklace.  I will be re-purposing it to make memory wire amethyst bracelets and possibly a necklace.

The chips have a lovely range of colours so colour grading them will keep me very occupied.

 Having made it to Steep Hill, we stopped at Bunty's Tea Rooms (photo above from their Facebook page), run by a very nice chap Chris knows and a lovely place for tea and cake if you are ever passing. There is vintage china with proper tea cups and the whole place has a vintage look and is very welcoming.  We were going to have egg mayonnaise sandwiches but I remembered we had some nice bread at home so we settled for tea and cake.  Chris had dandelion and burdock cake which had violet icing and I chose chocolate.  Judging by the speed with which the cakes disappeared, I would say they were a good choice!

 We set off home suitably replenished and went into pretty much every charity shop we could find.  here's what we came home with.  Loads of wooden beads and shell beads all just waiting to be made into something interesting.  Chris has a few ideas in mind...

Here is my egg and cress sandwich - one of my all time favourite sandwich fillings - and it was delicious!

Lilac necklace

 I decided to cheer myself up (as the constant rain is becoming a little depressing) and make a new lilac necklace.  I used lilac mother of pearl, amethyst, fluorite, amethyst chips, labradorite chips, blue chalcedony and some Venetian glass beads.

I have worn it already and am very pleased with the way it looks.  As I have used the blue chalcedony in my design, I can wear it with both lilac and pale blue.  Making and wearing it did cheer me up too.

Purple is the colour...

...of this beautiful plant, Primula Obconica, which is flowering away on the kitchen windowsill and which brightens my outlook while I am washing up.  It took a while to find a spot it was happy with, but I think the windowsill is the one.

...of my favourite amethyst with an agate pendant, which is my latest jewellery-making experiment.  It has worked well, but I had underestimated how heavy a single piece of agate would be when you are wearing it all day!  However, the colours are gorgeous, so that makes up for the weight a bit.  I have also discovered that I need to take more care when using crimp beads, so that the tiny ends of beading thread/wire aren't left to scratch your neck - I thought I had sorted this, but it seems that a little more experimenting is required.  I do like a challenge!

Amethyst

As my first love in gemstones is, and always will be, amethyst, I decided that I needed an amethyst necklace but with lots of sparkle and reasonably delicate in design.  Here it is.  Very simple, symmetrical pattern, two faceted rectangle creating a pendant and the beading wire as part of the design, plaited up with two amethyst beads near the clasp. There is also a small amount of silver (in beads) and two fluorite squares to add a different texture.  I have already worn it at work and I am very pleased with it.  I think I shall make more like this, possibly using jasper or botswana agate and definitely amazonite.

Chris has sorted the comments issue for me - thanks, Chris - and it turned out to be a compatibility problem.  Hopefully all is now well.

Jewellery design

This is my latest jewellery design, made as a commission for the friend of a friend.  I tried several different versions before arriving at this one.  It has an amethyst pendant and the necklace itself is made from fluorite, amethyst and labradorite.  The greens and purples of the fluorite complement the amethyst very well and I have used various sizes of stones to add some interest.  I also used a weave technique as the necklace was too heavy with the beads threaded on singly.  I think it is quite eye-catching and am going to make myself some fluorite jewellery next. ( Incidentally, I do like the way that the fluorite reacts to the light - I have only seen this effect in photos so far.)

Jewel colours

Owing to my recent felt making, I had to check my stock of lovely merino wool and ordered some more to replace some I'd run out of.  When I opened the box, I was greeted with this selection: turquoise, aqua, sky blue, purple and royal blue.  In gemstone colours they would be: turquoise, amazonite, chalcedony, amethyst and lapis lazuli.  What a gorgeous treasure chest of colours!

Latest jewellery creations

 

Here are some of my latest jewellery designs - really, it is a matter of having a play with all the gemstones I have amassed (in a very short time, it has to be said!)  Above is a lapis lazuli bracelet, with a gold heart that Chris found in one of the boxes of beads we have.

 This bracelet has amethyst (my favourite) with labradorite and black jasper.  The patterns on the black jasper are incredible and I am going to make a bracelet just using them.

Finally, a bracelet made with amazonite, turquoise chips and labradorite, and earrings with amazonite and aquamarine.  The loop earrings were a result of me having some beading thread left over from a bracelet and trying a weaving technique.  I am still practising with crimping and have found that the crimping pliers I have are not very effective unless there are a lot of strands to crimp.  For less than about four strands, I use my normal pliers which seem to be working. I am really enjoying making my own jewellery. 

My first jewellery making project

Above you can see my first attempt at jewellery making, using some of the gemstones I have been buying recently.  The stones are amethyst, fluorite, black shell and labradorite and I used the weaving technique to create the pattern.  I am really pleased with the result and have worn the bracelet and earrings at work.  I need a clasp for the necklace and then I shall wear that too.  It took me a few goes to get the bracelet the right length as I am not keen on bracelets that drape all over my hand and which have to be shaken back to the correct place. I really enjoyed putting the gems together and making the pieces as the weaving was very therapeutic to do, although the threading required me to wear my glasses!
I have also ordered some blue chalcedony, more (darker) labradorite, botswana agate and larger amethyst stones and I am considering a final order (for now) of the aforementioned clasps, more botswana agate, some jade, some aquamarine and maybe even some tanzanite.  Then I need to make lots of pieces.  Somehow, I think this may become a bit of an obsession!