Mermaid's Garden

Sorry, got a bit carried away with the pictures. I just felt it needed to be seen from all possible angles. :-) This is my favourite lariat yet. Oh, and just so you know, it's MINE. Going to wear this tonight too. Nope, I am not going to look like a Christmas tree, it's all going to be stylish and elegant. ;-)

Here's the whole lariat.

It includes: mostly sterling silver findings, although there are some (vintage) findings that are more silver coloured, but they worked so I didn't care. :-) You will also find a lovely vintage stamping of a seahorse, sea glass, lots and lots of glass beads (shells, nuggets, dimes, rounds, art glass, faceted and plain), lovely silvery grey fresh water pearls, palest green jade cubes, chalcedony chips, and sterling silver sequins, and various connectors, from wavy to twisted. The large leaf shape was made by yours truly, my very first attempt at hammering the life out of a piece of metal....



Here you can see the chain and beads in a bit more detail.



More detail with seahorse:

Same detail, different angle (look, I did warn you in the first sentence!). :-)

Finally, the sea glass and the seahorse's head in detail:


The sea glass when I'd wrapped it up with those lovely vintage beadcaps and the little leaf bezels, reminded me of flowers and leaves, hence the garden. The sea glass is in three different shades of turquoise blue, starting with palest icy blue to almost teal blue.

Wire Experiments

I love playing with wire, it's so sculptural (sorry, if that's obvious, I only just discovered it for myself) and there's so much you can do with it: from knitting it to bending it, to hammering and bashing it, to dipping it in liver of sulphur (to oxidise it) to hanging it round my arm. :-)

Here are some of my recent projects, including (ta-da!) my first ever real, made-from-scratch ring!

It's been made with thicker square wire that I bashed and hammered into shape with - obviously - a hammer, a mandrel, a steel block and the use of a pair of pliers. I then added a teeny aventurine bead at the top with the help of a ball ended head pin wrapped around the loop at the top. The ring is a standard UK size 'M' but is adjustable. It should be available in my Etsy.shop soon. All the wire is Sterling Silver.




Here's my beautiful dragonfly bangle. Again it's been made with thicker square wire, bashed and squeezed and hammered into shape (took quite a bashing, believe me!) and then I added a sea glass nugget to the loop with the help of two tiny vintage dragonfly stampings. A generous spiral at the other end finishes it off. The wire is bare copper wire. Available in my Etsy shop soon!


Here's the dragonfly/sea glass in detail:


This is the sea glass/dragonfly from the inside:

A close-up of the spiral with the texture (all that bashing....)


And this one is MINE. It's my amoeba bangle. It started off as the snowflake bangle, but when I looked at it, it just didn't look like a snowflake... Never mind, I love it anyway! :-)

I've used a thick gauge of square sterling silver wire, bent, hammered and bashed into submission with various acoutrements, a sea glass nugget (go, say hello to Alison who braved the waves to collect it for me), and a lovely vintage beadcap/stamping in the shape of a snowflake. This will NOT be available in my Etsy shop, because I am going to wear it tonight. :-) However, feel free to commission one similar to this.




Detail of the amoeba from the front:


Detail of the amoeba from the back or inside:

Sun catchers

My latest fad is playing with lots of types of wire and art silver clay. Some of the things I made with wire (using up lots of mixed up beads from previous projects plus new ones) were two sun catchers.

Number one - made with copper and sea glass - is now hanging in front of my living room window:


I hope you can see the copper tape and the bits of pre-knitted copper wire and all the crochet! I've also used sea glass, which shimmers beautifully in the sun light.



Number two is a present for a friend, which still needs wrapping!!! It's been made with hammered, silverplated copper wire, cream coloured craft wire and silver plated very, very thin wire. I've used millions of red beads, a bit of bending and wrapping and some crochet.