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!