Chainmaille Fire

I loathe being ill. It's the biggest cause of brain atrophy that I know, and one whole week of being unwell has sapped my energy beyond belief. However, I'm getting back there and trying to track down an errant Muse - which is probably on vacation in a lovelier climate than the one I'm ensconced in at present, but that's beside the point.

My shipment of chainmaille rings from Blue Buddha Boutique FINALLY came through, thank GOD - it did about a month ago but the hassle of trying to get it out of the post office customs department should be a plot for some slapstick theatrical production. -Why- in the world wouldn't an official letter put an official address on it, thereby cutting down on the necessity of running to and fro between TWO customs departments (the one in the post office and the Customs Department proper)?

Anyway, this is one of the projects I completed while on vacation - Rebeca, your rings are marvellous! I love the colours!


Polyhedron earrings: Fire


Japanese Cross earrings: Fire

Old Love Haunts Me In The Morning...

She's alive! She's survived those 260+ teenagers!

Well, 'survived' is one thing, 'sanity' is another, but the kids managed to sing the (much shortened) entirety of Handel's Coronation Anthems from memory in 3 days. Was soooooooo proud of them at the night concert when they performed - the alto section that I was coaching stepped up to the plate and did marvellously too, was even prouder of them!

After that, a vacation was absolutely necessary, and I've just come back from a wonderful week's visit with my family and my brother who's just flown back to NYC. A MUCH needed rest, I might add - for the last few days I've been slowly recharging my creative batteries and even creating a couple of new things which will eventually get posted when I photograph them (in one case, it's 'recreate', as the originals were gifts that I didn't get a chance to take proper pictures of before they went to their thrilled new owners.)

However, I have finally managed to finish my 'Buried Treasures' necklace - the one that was going to incorporate all those beautiful antique beads and chaton montees! She's called 'Old Love Haunts Me In The Morning', after a song by Marissa Nadler, and here she is:


Old Love Haunts Me In The Morning: Vintage lucite and glass seed beads, vintage chaton montees, vintage faux pearls, Czech glass seed beads, brown glass foil twist beads, Siam Swarovski crystals, brass findings, purple shell pendant, 14ga sterling silver handmade clasp.




Tried to get a closeup of some of those beautiful beads - the chatons are even more beautiful in person than when photographed. The sparkle has to be seen to be believed, and to think they're at least 40-50 years old! And the vintage gold beads are just as lovely; they've developed their own patina over the years apparently.



This is one of the vintage floral lucite beads. I've never seen a finish like that on any of the more recent lucite beads I've looked at. It's absolutely amazing, just like the colours of a rainbow through a soap bubble.




There's a story to those coppery rings - they were originally clasps, but the connector rings broke! Rather than waste them, I sanded them down and put them to good use in the necklace. I think they fit the look and feel pretty well.

Marissa Nadler's beautiful ballad, 'Old Love Haunts Me In The Morning', kept going round and round in my head till I figured it had to be translated into a necklace somehow. I've always imagined that old love fondly remembered is like a golden memory, and in the morning sunshine, it's even more vivid - hence the various tones of gold and burnished copper-bronze speckled through with scarlet to represent 'love'. I tried to incorporate a sense of 'haunting' into the gradual colour gradation from golden to deeper browns and purples, since old love, while beautiful, can sometimes bring with it a darker tone of regret and sadness. The Swarovski crystals and bright chaton montees are the 'sparkle' that accompanies the other half of such memories - the good times, and those that we would never exchange for anything else.

The occasional flash of pale green in the vintage lucite floral bead and chaton montee is reminiscent of the evergreen nature of fond memories.

Old love haunts me in the morning
La da da da da da da da di
Old love haunts in the evening
When the remnants of pictures come alive

I told you that I loved you
I laid the summer down
Come all your careless wanderers
By the lake with the days of ruin

When I first saw you in the sunshine
With the speckles and flaxen in your eyes
When I first saw you in the moonlight
It is true that I thought that I might die

I told you that I loved you
By the lake with the summer gone
Come all your careless wanderers
By the lake with the days of ruin

Buried Treasures

In a day's time, there are going to be some 300-400 children and youth milling around me and I'm going to wonder where my sanity is. In short, I'm festival staff in the upcoming Malaysian Choral Eistedfodd and 7th Young Singers Choral Festival which starts on Saturday. The competition involves the secondary school choir I've been tutoring for the last few months - that's one worry there already! - but in the Festival, I'm going to be sectional leader for the altos and that's even more of a worry. Why? Because this year we're attempting to sing a few selections out of Handel's Coronation Anthems.

If unexplained, screechy thundery sounds drift through in the next few days, it's probably me trying to get the young 'uns to sing properly. Apologies in advance, especially if it leads to thunderstorms.

However, today I finally found time to go through a stash of vintage beads I inherited a few years back - and I discovered buried treasure. Literally!





Vintage crystal chaton montees - in their original packaging! And more than one, I might add. There are several different colours, some are in plastic bags and those I suspect are probably glass since they don't have the sparkle of the crystal ones, but they have patina'd so beautifully, all it took was a polish of the stones and they still look good.


Some of the other treasure finds: vintage lucite beads, more chatons and some other beads which could be glass or crystal. I don't know. They just look gorgeous though!

I got all of these from a family member - a very elegant lady who used to have her clothes tailored in Hong Kong back in her heyday. I know the beads were bought in Hong Kong; I've got some of her dresses and every single one of them is embroidered with a selection of all these different chatons and beads. They're top-quality, that I know - she wasn't one who would settle for second-rate stuff. And that's not counting the bags and bags of seed beads, faux pearls, and other silver-lined bugle beads and things that are in those 15lbs of inheritance!

I can't -wait- to do something with these lovely shinies. Deryn Mentock's beautiful jewellery has given me some ideas, but they may have to percolate over the course of the competition and the festival. Ahh well - it'll distract me so I don't murder anyone in the course of the week from sheer frustration...

Venice in Spring Time

...or at least, that's how I felt yesterday after my exams! The inherent need to see something fresh and springish eventually led to these:


Spring Greens: 20ga sterling silver hand-crafted earwires, cloisonne green beads, Czech glass bellflowers, Czech glass green beads. RM25




This pair of earrings actually required a creative work-around - I don't have 20ga silver wires, and I wanted to make a pair of ear wires to finish off the dangles. Then it occurred to me that I actually had purchased some long sterling silver headpins in the past which were definitely thinner than 19ga wire and thicker than the 22ga I had, so they were definitely 20ga for sure (at least, the last I checked, wires don't come in half-sizes.) So I cut the headpins up, made the dangles with one half and the earwires with the other. No wastage and the ear wires turned out great! They measure just over 1.5 inches, from the top of the ear wire to the bottom of the dangle.

And, specially for Swati, here are closeups of the Venetian Necklace and how it turned out. I was trying out the wonderful Old-Fashioned Chain tutorial by Bobbi and the Small Chains tutorial by Diny of Natural Jewels over at JewelryLessons.com. I think it didn't turn out too badly!


Venetian Necklace: 18ga and 24ga silver-plated copper wire, 20ga hand-crafted chain links, 0.4cm rhodium-plated copper jump rings, antique faux pearls, glass pearls, China fire-polish glass rondelles, 2mm pewter beads, silver-plated butterfly toggle clasp.








And this is another of Mei's Sparkly Rings which I made to match the necklace, though I accidentally got the wires crossed due to it being 3am in the morning when I was attempting it. Lesson: Don't try to make rings at 3am if you're not wide awake. However, I was also trying out a wonderful finishing tip by Perri - and let me tell you it -works- beautifully. The wire wraps came out so neatly I was floored. Bravo to Perri for sharing such a wonderful tip!


Venetian Pink: 22ga Argentium silver wire, 4mm Argentium silver beads, Czech fire-polish glass bead, swarovski crystals.

And now before I get any more weird wire ideas, I better go to bed as I have to write up a quiz for my sight-singing students tomorrow. It's far too easy to get sidetracked by shiny things --oooh, is that another ring tutorial I see --err, bed! bed! Now!

Breather, Dive In

I've been somewhat scarce for the past 2 weeks or so, mainly because of the reason behind this:



This is my Venetian Necklace, a test piece I threw together to use up a test piece focal and to try out some chain techniques. The reason I've been busy with finishing that is because my Trinity Guild vocal exam was on Friday! Not only that, I just got done with a concert with the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra Chamber Choir so between rehearsals and exam prep, I've had very little time to play with jewellery and wires!

I'll photograph the necklace properly very soon; I made a Sparkly Ring to go with it too (Mei, let me tell you, that Sparkly Ring is soooo popular it's amazing. Go you for such a lovely tutorial!) I made the entire set to go with this outfit for the exam. Yes, I look dreadful, because I wasn't feeling well that day! But the corset is beautiful, courtesy of Joanna of Paperdoll. Love it!


Dead to the world, ma cherie! Sooo dead...

The Unexpected Evolution of Hammered Hoops

Some days, the planned gets hijacked by the bizarre and the unexpected. This time, it was the unexpected.

I'd gotten my hands on some 20ga copper wire so I could hammer out some hoop earrings. Being the smart woman I thought I was, I decided to make them roughly fish- or tear-drop shaped for ease of hammering them out evenly. After some brainwork about how to secure the wires, everything proceeded fairly uneventfully - the hoops weren't exactly ENTIRELY even, because I really suck at getting them perfect, but they worked.

Then I put them on. And they were just 'enh'. They needed something more. Maybe just a touch of colour, a little wire-wrap to accent.

Wire-wrapping led to more wire-wrapping, one thing led to another thing and suddenly instead of hammered hoop earrings, I had these on my hands:


Wine Country: 20ga and 24ga copper wire, 4mm garnets, 4mm amethysts, olive glass seed beads. RM40.





They reminded me so much of grapes on the trellis, naming them Wine Country was only natural. I didn't think the little amethyst dangle would look nice, but amazingly it does, and it gives just that needed bit of weight for them to hang properly. They measure just shy of 4cm, one side's -slightly- uneven because of the hand-hammered hoops - I really need to get better at this hammering thing. The bead placements aren't exactly symmetrical either on both earrings, but that's deliberate for a touch of nature-inspired random.

Rockin' Chicks

I don't know about other girls, but I loved Susie Derkins. She was Calvin's arch-nemesis - well, at least HE called her an arch nemesis, she always had a witty retort ready and she always creamed him but -good- whenever he hit her with snowballs. What isn't there to like?

This is one of the many, many reasons I love Susie. This + colour scheme in strip + weird brain = the Susie Derkins Earrings:


Susie Derkins: 22ga copper wire, pink-dyed mother-of-pearl beads, Czech glass beads, Patton's 'Willow' yarn, dyed shell discs, hand-hammered 22ga earwires.




Here's to rockin' chicks with attitude!