Some works in progress

This one shouldn't still be a WIP. I want it to look like sunken treasure, & filled the spoon (a shaped 2 peseta piece) with Diamond Glaze. I let the layers dry & it was clear, but now it's clouded up. Do I have to melt it & start over, or what?

I'm not quite sure where this one's going, or whether the wire at the bottom will stay or change, but this guy has been waiting for work for at least a year, and I wanted to do something with words--even though I'm a word person, I don't usually use them in my art, but thought these fit, so am giving it a try.

This one's kind of a steam punk man in the moon, and this piece may be done except for deciding whether it should be a pin or pendant and how and on what to hang it--which is still a lot!
The strange little guy is bone I've colored with metallic wax and/or lumiere paints, the moon is colored a pearly purple with a dye pad, the other parts are pretty much as they came except of course that I've combined them. I'm liking this one a lot, just not sure how to present it yet.

This is a style of face bead I've often used on my doll pins. In this case I haven't decided whether she'll get a body or whether the whole thing will go in some other direction.
The gears can still go around, which I like a lot.
And I absolutely love all the guilloche engraving on this old pocket watch (it has jewels, too, but I don't think they show here).

I found a necklace I made probably 20 years ago at the bottom of a box of things waiting to be listed or reworked, and it included watchworks and had some message about time--apparently I was doing steam punk before the term was invented.  Interesting.

Jesse's necklace

Our friends Zach and Jesse have been putting a new floor in our family room, so when Jesse asked if I could make him a necklace I was happy to do it.  In addition, Caroline, Chase, and I had just received our hemp cord order, and I was anxious to play with it--it's nice quality stuff, not itchy & easy to knot.
So Jesse picked out some colors and beads, and this is what I made.
Note that this is a snapshot--this necklace will never be listed anywhere. I just wanted a record (and maybe to show off a little)

A Little New Work

I've actually made a couple of things not for sale lately--one was this strange bird for a "birds of a feather" swap.

And the other is this bracelet, a comission for a gift for a friend's friend.
It was pretty interesting--the style was set & the colors were more or less chosen. 
I had fun figuring out the long cloth beads and making the somewhat disparate elements come together, which I think did happen in the end. 

I'm still struggling with another piece that isn't quite working, but think I'll take a break and play dolls for awhile!

Made a new necklace

It's not up on etsy yet and it's not steampunk (but the next one will be) and it's human sized, not for a doll.
I'm pretty pleased with it.
I'd decided I wanted to work with more sterling, esp. after I scored some amazing focals to play with. If you've been around, you know I have a thing for faces--well, I got several in bone and this one in pietersite and sterling with carnelians.

(I tried to post the pic below the text, but that must be a trick I haven't learned yet.)

I had a nice string of pietersite ovals I'd bought a few years ago and had been saving for the right project, but when I looked at them with this piece I thought just stringing it with them would be too heavy, not to mention too obvious and too dark. 

So I dug around in my stone stash and came up with a couple of arrowheads (unakite?jasper? have to check my notes before I list!) , some lovely cherry volcano quartz rectangles, a few leaves (again I need to check!). I was playing with these but it wasn't quite working, so I rubbed a dab of "psychic power" oil on my temples and, voila! several of Karen Ovington's business cards (which I didn't know were there) fell into my lap.  Hmmm. 

For those of you who don't know, Karen Ovington http://www.ovingtonglassstudio.com/ makes absolutely fabulous beads which have inspired several of my other pieces.  In fact, if I go to a bead show with $ & know she'll be there, I have a Karen Ovington budget and an everything else budget, which sometimes has nothing left in it after I see Karen's beads.  Anyway, I have a small wood and glass showcase on a shelf in my bead room where I keep her beads, and I thought this was enough of a message so that I should go and have a look. 

Sure enough, there it was, that lovely black, rust, and white bead that looks like a lantern--just the thing! 
So I tried some reddish lave beads--way too pink, but the yellow ones were just right, picking up the tiger-eye-like gold banding in the pietersite and the yellow in the agate.

But something was still missing. I tried beadcaps--no go--separateing the beads with chain or wirework--nope.
Then I started digging through my stash drawers and realized I had these Indian beads, which I think are furnace glass, the kind where you pull a tube and then cut it into individual beads. They are, as I think you can see, white with swirls of black, copper, and gold, and the colors looked perfect.  Originally I tried a sort of fluted lantern shape, but that was wrong, as was the round one. But these tubes, with the colors swirling just a bit, were just what I needed.

So now I had center, left, and right side focal groupings.  Putting them together wasn't quite that simple, of course--the leaves were extremely difficult to attach, and getting a chain through the Ovington grouping required quite a lot of hole grinding in the Indian beads especially, but finally they were ready and I measured and attached pieces of chain between and after them to equal just about 24".

Then there was the question of a clasp. I had some small spring rings, but those wouldn't do. I searched etsy--and it's amazing how many people have commercially-made clasps listed under handmade, something etsy's currently trying to clrear up--but couldn't find on that looked right.  Then I remembered that I had some stuff from the last time I was playing with sterling and stones (years ago, that was) stashed in a drawer and, sure enough, there was a lovely little, but not too little, silver and carnelian clasp with a safety latch--just the thing. 

I put it all together, showed Seth, wore it to my craft group--I wondered about the length, but consensus is that it's right.

So, finally, I put a dress on my dummy, added the necklace, and took some photos.  I may need to redo them--the reflections make things difficult and I don't think I got the clasp--but I want to share some here and would appreciate comments. So here they are (hope I get the placement right this time!)