Christmas in August & Work in Progress...

Remember that last post where I was doing my little happy dance? No, no, no, I didn't have to go to the bathroom! At least not quite then. Sigh........ old age ain't pretty. But who's old? Not me. I forgot to grow up. No, not throw up... clean out your hearing aid. GROW UP! Who? Me? 

But I digress... talking to all my imaginary friends here...

Anyway... Am I done? Yes? Thank you. Finally! Okay, here we go. Goodies from Utah and Arizon-i-aaaaaaaaaaaaayyyy!

Mmmmmmmm...

...TWO bags..........

Purty rocks from the Free Store, Utah...

Moany groany time -- the plumpest and juiciest and bluest Kingman turquoise chips... (the blue in the picture below is a little more accurate)

Clockwise from top left, 6mm phosposiderite rounds, Kingman chips, Kingman boulder "bamboo", phosphosiderite "bamboo", phosphosiderite heishi, apple coral heishi, that amazing pretty pale apple green Kingman turquoise heishi, and 6mm Kingman boulder turquoise...

Meanwhile, just for funzies here are a few things I've been working on in between typing like a mad fiend, which I'm supposed to be doing right now, but shhhh... puhleeeease don't rat me out. My work tables are piled high with notes to myself written in wire and beads. Paper just gets lost. Actually, to be truthful, it gets buried under more paper.

Regardless, and unfortunately, most of my notes, paper or otherwise, never get past this stage -- or acted upon -- because I've forgotten the great idea I had, or whatever I started doen't look so hot once I've got this far. Who knows if anything will ever get done with these bits and pieces, but at least I've been doing something.

The eternal question, lost in variations on a theme, did I totally overwork the feather motif in the partial necklace? The plan was that there may be another much larger silver-plated feather dangling from the centre ring, along with the wrapped dangles and maybe a wrapped crystal. This was made using tinned copper wire and of course, I didn't attach each little bit together with jump rings, meaning if I change my mind about the feathers then everything has to be cut apart.

The pearls were wrapped with Argentium sterling (fyi, +/- 1 metre of 22 gauge for each 10" string). Note my fluent bilinguality in inches and millimetres.

Trying again the bead soup technique on a 10" string, wrapped with 20 gauge tinned copper, ditto tinned copper wrapping the base metal/silvertone/Tibetan style beads.

Closeup of the silver and pearl string...

Closeup of the silvertone/silver-plated/base metal/Tibetan style bead dangle with tinned copper wrapping... Oh, yeah, and the cool roundish bead in the middle? I very, very cleverly bought only ONE PACKAGE of the suckers. Eight beads. What was I thinking? I love them.

Silver-plated base metal shield beads & feathers with tinned copper wrapping waiting for me to get around to making more heavy beaded (or not) Argentium sterling earwires. I find a lot of people prefer the plain-silver-skip-the-colour look.

As always, everything has a price and I can often remake a piece to your specifications if it's the wrong length or it's already been sold. Please email me for information, cost. Note that shipping prices will vary, but figure around $8 to $9 to almost anywhere in North America with insurance, $4 for flat items, no insurance.

Thanks for looking!

Nothing new this week, however... some old hammered stuff for funzies

This has been another brutal week for typing. I was supposed to have gone to Toronto on Monday to have my computer upgraded (some of my video files -- just one of the suckers (and I can easily get 5 or 10 or 20 files in one job to transcribe) -- are 1.25 gigs or 1.5 gigs each and my entire hard drive is only 4 gigs with 1.8 gigs of RAM) but another one of those huge jobs came in that I couldn't say no to. But yeah, long past the time to get a bigger better 'puter. NOTE: All I really want to do is up stakes and get outta Dodge...

Long story short, I haven't done anything remotely resembling making jewellery all week. But this coming week, after I drop the computer off on Monday -- and then go shopping at the wholesalers! -- I will have two whole days in which to make stuff, mostly cake jewellery for Rene, rings, necklaces, bracelets, earrings and especially a whole lot of feather earrings, before I have to go back to Toronto to pick up my computer (and do yet more bead shopping... if nothing else to pick up the stuff I forget to get on Monday... at least that's the plan.

In the meantime, here are some things I made a long, long time ago in a land far away... well, 2009-ish.

Base metal dangles, red horn, hammered tinned copper clasp, black leather, sterling earwires

This lady bought the necklace before I'd even half-finished it working at my booth at the Norwich fair: brass dangles, turquoise, brass chain.

Alas... in the old days when bead stores were still (they still are!) selling howlite as turquoise and I hadn't realised the difference. I keep meaning to remake this necklace as I really like it.

Cobra bead choker, so-called because locked in the glass, created entirely by accident, a cobra can clearly be seen. Glass bead, vintage brass beads, brass chain maille. SOLD

A particularly fine chrysocolla bead, hammered brass dangles and clasps, vintage brass chain maille, leather choker.

Chrysocolla bead, hammered tinned copper dangles and clasps, plated chain, leather choker

Bornite chunks (aka peacock stone which is oxidised copper), wrapped in silver, silver-plated base metal feather, hammered tinned copper clasps, black leather.



Facetted pyrite stones, tinned copper pendants and clasps, sterling earwires, black leather choker


Some of these I've sold, some developed little legs over the years... and one or two I may actually still have on my table.

I know these are old pictures because most of them were scanned, not photographed. But it's interesting, the hammered stuff still intrigues me greatly. I am working on doing more of that and refining my techniques, but you know, I still like the rougher, more crude stuff like the last piece, the pyrite and hammered tinned copper. Love the look of the hammered brass, but it is so very difficult to hammer. Not only do I wreck my wrists, it makes great gouges in my hammer and bench block.

Well, this evening it's feeling not quite as hot as it's been the past few weeks, "only" about 30C/90F and with plenty of humidity, but they're calling for thunderstorms, and that would be such a relief. Sure hope they hit. It's brown and crunchy everywhere you go now in this part of southern Ontario.

For now, though, I'm at a good place to leave off typing, the truck is loaded up and here it is 7:10. I am going to have a light supper and head to bed. 3:30 a.m. comes awfully, awfully quickly.

Thanks for looking.

Bwahahahaha V, I think...

I've lost track. These are rawther cute, I think. These are the same skull beads -- well, not exactly the same ones, but you know what I mean... don't you? I hope you do -- that my dog ate at 4:30 a.m. last Saturday morning while I was sitting here checking my email just before loading up the truck with my market bags and boxes. I could hear this strange crunching coming from the kitchen but most of the sound was drowned out by the two fans humming away inside the hard drive beside me here. I thought at first he was drinking water very loudly... then I thought is he eating ICE? From where? Crunching on a stick??? But... oh nooooooooooooooooo.......... I rushed in and he was scarfing down the skulls that I had tied into threes with fishing line and indestructable sharkskin price tags for the market. (Those price tags really ARE completely indestructable, btw.)

What do you say to a dog doing his doggy job eating bones??? It was my fault for putting them at nose level, sitting on the top of a bag of market stuff.

Here are a couple of the ones he didn't eat.

In case you're wondering, they all came out in the end largely intact (including fishing line -- I was terrified I was looking at a huge vet bill) during our walk last Sunday morning.

The earrings are for sale, $25 plus shipping. I can upgrade the silver-plated earwires to argentium sterling for $3 more.

Thanks for looking!

PEE ESS: From the Too Good Not To Share Department, a sign I saw today at a local greenhouse, Walter's, out on Highway 5 near 24: "We're so excited it's spring, we almost wet our plants".

Plus-size jewellery...

This week I've begun producing a dedicated collection of good quality, medium-priced plus-size jewellery to suit all ages for Imogene's, 426 Dundas Street, Woodstock, Ontario. You can check 'em out online, too: http://www.imogenes.ca/

I will be taking the initial pieces in this Friday afternoon if anyone is interested in viewing them over the weekend. The Santa Claus parade is this Saturday: good time to check out all the stores downtown, too. I'd sure appreciate any feedback, positive or negative, and to hear about your wish lists.

Materials will include base metal (pure copper, jeweller's brass, zinc and plated silver) and/or pewter to keep costs down, Argentium sterling silver for the good stuff (weddings, special occasion gifts), Greek leather to make adjustable pendant necklaces, genuine turquoise and A-grade semi-precious stones, as well as interesting pendants in all types of materials. A specific request was feather earrings, so there will be lots of those.

My feather earrings are made with maximum movement and dangle in mind. Each feather is attached separately, so that if one feather becomes damaged it can be replaced; the whole thing doesn't have to be tossed. Yes, it takes a little longer to make and costs a little more, but you'll get a lot more wear out of the piece.

Necklace in progress. I've decided to restring this so that the three ceramic dolphins will be strung in a line on the left (rather than as a pendant) with the other dolphin all by himself on the other side. Earrings to match.

In general, I would also be profoundly grateful to hear from you about what bugs you about jewellery currently available, things like the size of clasps, the weight of chains, how things sit/fit in general, as well as the overall scale of jewellery. What kind of materials do you like? What kind of materials do you hate? If my jewellery style isn't to your taste, I know lots of artisans working in all media I can recommend.

I've developed a list of standard plus-size measurements for bracelets, anklets and necklaces, but pretty much any jewellery would benefit from a little tweaking to fit properly because, quite frankly, everyone has problems with the way jewellery fits.

My favourite wail is: "Don't jewellery designers ever try on their jewellery before they sell it to see if it's actually physically possible to wear it?" Answer? Nope. Except me. The truth is, jewellery irritates me to no end which is why I almost never wear it. My long hair gets caught in chains at the back of my neck (an endless complaint from so many people), or I feel like I'm choking (a length problem), and bracelets drive me nuts. Essentially, I wear what I make and tweak it until it finally doesn't bug me, fall off or fall apart. Then I give them to people who do wear jewellery all the time to test-wear.
 
One of my customers brought in gorgeous chunky multi-strand stone and glass bracelets and necklaces that she'd bought at a craft show, but which all had grotesquely teensy tiny, itty-bitty cheap-cheap-cheap lobster clasps and equally spindly, flimsy extender chains which made the jewellery look just plain stupid on. Of course nothing fit, the itty-bitty being the problem. I ditched the chintzy findings and substituted chunky, inexpensive but good quality pewter toggle clasps and the wearability problem was resolved. The jewellery finally fit well and it all looked fantastic on.

For people who live in southern Ontario, I am at the Woodstock Farmer's Market every Saturday morning with most of my jewellery on display. I can do simple repairs while you shop at the market.

If you're looking for jewellery during the week, in addition to Imogene's, you will find a range of pure silver, Swarovski and semi-precious jewellery available at Rekindled in Woodstock, pure silver leaf and turquoise jewellery at the Woodstock Art Gallery, and pure silver leaf pendants and earrings at Studio Works in downtown Paris, Ontario.

And I'm always lurking around somewhere online:
bemacdougall@gmail.com
http://www.barbaramacdougall.com/
http://www.artefaccio.deviantart.com/
http://www.artefaccio.blogspot.com/
www.etsy.com/shop/artefaccio

Talk to you soon!

It's Friday and Bwahaha III is baaaaack

I was pretty busy all week. Got a lot of turquoise and chrysocolla leather-wrapped bracelets made in single, double and triple wrap combinations. Pretty much all of them will have to be taken apart: I didn't have any nylon thread so I figured I'd see how bad it could be using polyester. Bad. Really bad. The thread was fraying like crazy before I'd even finished making the bracelets. Here are some pictures for now, but I will be redoing all of them this week. They look fantastic on, if I do say so myself.


Kingman turquoise (4mm boulder & 6mm) triple-wrapped bracelet, natural Greek leather; double-wrapped chrysocolla; single-wrap 4mm Kingman boulder turquoise bracelet

The turquoise is from The Turquoise Chick, Albuquerque. The natural Greek leather is from Bamiyan, Toronto. I cannot get over how great this stuff is to work with compared to the el cheapo stuff I've been buying from India. Orders of magnitude difference.

Got through a ton of earrings today. Nose to the grindstone day. I'm whupped. Finished off my typing at 9:30 this morning and basically chugged along all day. Got a lot of inexpensive feather earrings done finally, and made a pile of Swarovski earrings to replace the ones I've sold in the past few weeks.

I made fairly simple earrings that I can sell for around $5 or $6 a pair depending on how many feathers are on them. I want to talk to people to see what they're looking for.

Then I kind of went nuts and made Bwahaha III. Not sure how the feathers are going to hang when there are two on one side and one on the other side of the skulls. Might have to add another feather to each. Pewter skulls are from Happy Mango Beads and, yes, I'm getting lots more.