Week 44 - SIMMERING SUMMER

SIMMER, SIZZLE, BURN!!!
Summer here - sad to say - is all about bushfires (plus lots of great things too) & for some reason that's what this week's theme brought to mind.
Where I grew there was a lot of bushland around us & as a child I remember only too well the bushfires coming right up to our back-fence, and now even though I live in a very developed area, the evidence that not a lot has changed is all around us. If you just go for a drive, anywhere there is bushland - there are all the charred trees as a reminder, plus on the news at night in summertime there are always horriffic tales of fires & the devastation they cause. This is a way of life here and sometimes it's nature, but sadly sometimes it's the sheer stupidity of human-kind. You never really get used to it!!
Anyway , enough of that - this is my offering for this week.
72 headpins later (I didn't have any - so had to make them), plus a fair whack of wire - it's not quite like the picture in my head - and I may end up pulling it to bits yet - this is my necklace for week 44.
The front section is on 16g. wire, the side bits are just a simple 3 strand braid and the back is finished with an elongated cable chain. Oh yeah - it's all just glass beads as well.

Week 43 - MIXED METALS

This week's them is mixed metals. YEAH Remy!! (it was her choice)
I love copper and silver together - so that's the road I have taken. Not a gemstone or glass bead in sight!!
This is a sort of prototype piece for something I may make for a competition later this year - not too sure yet...
For the centre section, I started with 12g. copper wire, which I bent and tortured into shape, I then bashed the bejeebers out of it with my trusty old hammer. The copper wrapping is all 24g. The silver wire that i used to spiral and weave through is 18g. round wire. The tiny bit that I have used to bind the 2 spirals and on the dangly bit is also 18g. but is 1/2 round. For the chain I have used soldered 20g. silver jump rings that I made into an oval shape with my pliers and copper ones made from 18g. There is a smallish hand-made "s" hook doing it up at the back. There are a few dings I'm not totally happy with - so I may tumble it a while longer to see what happens.
This is a very similar design to a bangle I made for myself a while ago & I am extremely happy with how this turned out and I think it just might be a keeper.

Week 42 - BURNING RING OF FIRE

OK - imagination to the fore with this piece!!
This is a pendant framework I made ages ago - soldered and bashed - a la previous designs I have also made.
The 5mm swaros I have used here show heaps of fire in the sunlight - that's the fire bit! And then they sort of form a ring around the spiral - that's the ring bit...lol.
All put together with 28g. & 22g. sterling wire and some tubular silver beads.
A very simple pendant that actually looks not too bad IRL...
Haven't figured out what to hang it on yet - probably something very simple, like black leather or neoprene...

Week 41 - MEDIEVAL NIGHTS

The theme for this week had me stumped, so I decided on a compromise - this is a piece I have been working on for an upcoming competition. It's not an anonymous entry thingy, so I thought it would be OK to use this here.
The medallion shaped bits are on a soldered framework and then wrapped with a kazillion feet of 28g. sterling wire. I have used AB swaros, 4mm rose quartz beads, freshwater pearls and baby matsuno seedies. Each of these sections are connected with wire-wrapped 6mm rose quartz beads, leading into a 2 into 1 chain thingy which has larger matsunos on the bigger rings. I wanted the double chain to go to a single one at the back, so using these gorgeous 2 hole rose quartz beads I wired them so I could do that. I also made a toggle clasp to match with my design. This piece has a really nice glow in real life and no matter how many photos I took I really couldn't do it justice.

These are other pictures that I also took, including the clasp, the connectors and an alternate overall view.

Week 40 - COLOURS OF JASPER

It seems like ages (it actually is) since I last posted anything at all. The last month has been a bit crazy all round. I went away for 4 days to work at the bead and gem show up in Brisbane - awesome fun, but very,very tiring. I don't think I've recovered yet!! Then there were a heap of other dramas as well and top it all off with a huge dose of full-blown 'mental-pause'! You have runs like that though..lol.
This is my piece for this weeks' theme. I started with a poppy jasper donut (my absolute favourite of all the jasper colours) and wrapped it 'Eni-style' using 20 & 28 g. sterling wire and 4mm faceted black onyx beads. It is suspended from a black neoprene choker. I was going to make something a bit fancier to hang it on, but decided I really like the simplicity of this instead.