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!