Flowery Finish

Finally, after days of sawing, dapping, and soldering and continually playing with all the components, I completed my envisioned flower spooly necklace and earrings.  Today I started by sawing out more daisies and then dapping them.  I added some short tubing to the mix and soldered them all together to make these double ended, double flower beads.  They are about an inch long and have a shiny brushed finish.  The new beads were just the thing that made the design--more substantial than the other flower configurations and it was just that that was missing before. 

 

Put it all together and you get this: 

Like the spooly beads before, the ends cup the beads and because of the flower design, creates a wonderful outline around them.  Mixed together with 12mm translucent blue chalcedony beads and some smaller dapped flowers, I strung the beads in a symmetrical design that circles the neck and sits naturally and comfortably.  The necklace is 15 inches long and ends with hand-made, sterling figure eight clasp.  I often throw in a splash of color to these necklaces and here I added a limey-yellow serpentine bead.  Doing this gives the pieces some spark and interest that adds to its originality. 

I just love the way the light bounces off the silver and catches all the reflections from the surrounding beads and environment.

The earrings are made of soldered double flower caps with a single blue chalcedony bead suspended on a sterling earwire.  They wiggle and dance on your ears, while not being heavy.

Look for more flower designs in the future.  It's a theme I continue to use and find inspiration from AND I have a lot more of those flowers ready to go!

Working Through

I find my creativity and mental state are very connected to the weather.  Sunny and I'm on top of the world; gray and rainy--well... gray sucks every bit of creative energy out of me.  Needless to say, it's been raining here for 4 days straight.  I go to work in the studio and everything is a challenge.  Every decision to make is difficult.  I question everything and wonder what am I doing!!!  Where are the days of endless, flowing ideas and designs?! 

They'll return as will the sun.  So in the meantime, I'm just holding on and working through. 

Here's a new necklace with some of my favorite sterling spooly beads.  Handmade from hollow tubing and capped with dapped discs to cup the 20mm beads.  I stamped each tube with a small, repeating circle and added sterling disc dividers to accentuate each ocean jasper's individuality.