Renaissance Faire Wear

At the local gallery I am a member of (Orchard Artworks), we will be having a special Renaissance/ Medieval/ Celtic themed show for July and August. We have guest artist Ellen Tepper joining us for these 2 months, with her Celtic painted glass panels and polymer clay dragons! (clicking the Orchard Artworks link above should take you to a photo or two of the show, once the show set up is complete). Ellen also plays harp, and has many recorded CD's!

The member artists were encouraged make artwork inspired by the theme, so I got inspired!

I started by painting my "dragon eye" cabochons. I made 10 necklaces featuring them. The eyes are different colors: red, brown, blue, green.... It was fun trying to achieve different color combinations, while still having it resemble an eye.
Next was getting the eyes into a setting. Some I simply glued on to a filigree. Others I wrapped the filigree around the edges of the eye. On one I used some wire, to anchor the eye. Once they were in a  setting, it was time to find beads in my stash to coordinate with eye color. I found the yellow choker in my stash. I don't hardly remember buying it. But I thought the orange-ish eye looked good on it, so I went with it!

I will say, I like them, although "eye" jewelry is not my usual thing. All these eyes have been in my house staring at me! LOL. I'm glad to get them to the gallery!!

I also made a couple necklaces with fairies, figuring they were somewhat related to the theme. One necklace has an eye AND a fairie! (2 for 1 - haha).

To keep the Medieval theme going, I looked through my old pins, and found two that I felt were Medieval-ish.
The Shield shaped pin, with a purple center stone called out to me. I got the round purple stone connectors in NYC (see older posts about CJS in NYC).
The other old pin is really a reproduction of an old buckle pin. It's not really old-old, but I like it anyway. I stumbled upon a carved stone butterfly (in my dragon hoard of beads) that was the same warm pink color as the stone in the pin. To that I added strawberry quartz beads.

As I thought more about how to display my jewelry, I was trying to come up with something that looked medieval or middle-earth-like. I was in a thrift shop, and the dark red ceramic bust-shape vase was just sitting there. I hesitated for about 2 seconds! I will have no use for it after the show is over. Maybe I can sell it at a garage sale, if I ever have one!

Here's the photos!!

4 dragon eye necklaces on the bust/vase.

This is not a good photo, but it shows everything I made for the show

 

A closer shot of the 2 old pins, among other things

One eyeball, two fairies

I am looking forward to seeing the show all put together! It will run through August.
Stop by if you're in the area: Orchard Artworks, 520 Tomlinson Road, Bryn Athyn, Pa. 19009

Thanks for visiting my blog!

Agate, bone, and more agate

My friend Sheryl finds jewelry bargains every where she goes, or so it seems! She could keep me busy with project after project, well into my old age! hahaha.
Last time we met, I gave her 2 necklaces (below) which I made out of some of her broken jewelry bargains. She gave me a new project to consider - huge beads made of agate (?)

Let's get started...
These are the 2 necklaces made from broken jewelry. The necklace on the left is made from carved bone beads. I used some gunmetal bracelet clasps as "links" in between the bone beads. I glued a small bone bead on the clasp in the back and then glued a black rhinestone in the hole of that bead. The clasps are from CJS (see older post about the suitcase of stuff I got!!). I got a baggie full of mixed gun metal clasps.

The necklace on the right has an old earring as the focal and various agate beads with Chinese crystal links. The mixed stone necklaces Sheryl brings me have such irregular beads in them, and it can take a while to locate beads with holes big enough to go on 20 gauge wire. I managed to find pairs of similar beads, so the necklace has a symmetry about it.



note: I ran into Sheryl the day after I gave her these, and she was wearing the agate necklace!!

 After I gave her the 2 necklaces above, she pulled out a broken necklace, which, honestly, you'd need a back brace to wear!! LOL. It was made of the below 6 stones, the largest of which is about 2.75" long. These are big, heavy stones!!
The idea was to make simple necklaces. So I made some headpins out of wire, with a "knot" for a head and started making pendants. These first 3 have orangey colors, so 2 of them got a small orange bead at the top. The center one has a small gold tone bead. It was a stray bead that was in Sheryl's bag of beads, so I went with it. I put them on long chains - 30" or so.

 

 Two of the stones below had more yellow than the stones above. The center necklace has a yellow glass faceted bead and a Vintaj brass acorn bead cap. The glass has swirls in it, like the stone. The stone on the right had yellow and orange and I thought it would look good with the brass beads (to pull out the yellow in the stone). I don't do a lot of bead stringing these days, so that was a nice change. The stone on the left was drilled off center, and begged to be used horizontally. I found some jasper beads with some grey veining, to complement the main stone. These are all a bit shorter -  22" to 24".

 

All in all, I'm happy with them. Let's hope Sheryl is too.
Thanks for stopping by!

2017 CCA Trunk Show

I've been busy making jewelry, but my blog reader's wouldn't know it! I'm sorry about that. I need to slow down and take photos of everything!
I had my annual Mother's Day trunk show at The Cheltenham Center for the Arts Shop in Elkins Park, Pa. I made lots of stuff for it, but failed to photograph anything. But I did take photos of the trunk show set up...

That's picture frames in the back ground, there's an adjacent frame shop there too!

Next up will be some honest-to-goodness jewelry photos!!
Thanks for stopping by!