Since it has now arrived at its destination, I can show you the necklace that Nancy made back in December for her dear friend Nathalie in Mississippi. Nancy spent hours and hours contemplating beads in the current incarnation of my "studio"... aka hopelessly chaotic front room.
Tourmaline is an extremely important stone to Nathalie and Nancy picked some nice colours and shapes and echoed and complemented them beautifully with several spiral silver-plated, pewter and horn Dzi bead elements. After Nancy put the beads into pleasing order, I did the wire-stringing and crimping. At the moment, I'm teaching Nancy to wire-wrap beads.
It's been a long, unspeakably lonely and sad six weeks since Max died. He was with me one quarter of my life. Yes, time and life tick on... but. The hardest part to get through are all the firsts -- first time to make something to eat and no one to trip over, then no one to clean the plate off later; first time to wake up to no fuzzy face beside you on his pillow; first time to do the market and no one to come home to. He died at the crap end of winter when we're all sick and tired of the snow, the dark and the cold... and the cold... and the cold.
Spring appears to finally have arrived this week: it's above freezing for at least a few hours every day even if it doesn't feel like it, but the front room is filled with light longer and longer into the evenings. Nancy and Lynn (of Fashion Your Space) are helping me turn this room into a workable and working design studio instead of a hodge-podge of tables piled high with who-knows-what-'cause-I-sure-can't-find-what-I'm-looking-for. Most Monday mornings will find the three of us working away: 2 hours x 3 people = 6 hours per week worth of endless boxes and bags of stuff hauled around for years finally opened, examined and purged. That lawn sale I was always planning to have? Phht. Ain't gonna happen. Week after week those things are off to the consignment store, the Goodwill, to a new and appreciative home or out into the garbage. Each week I feel lighter and lighter walking into the back room and seeing
empty space and feeling no desire whatsoever to fill it up again. It's very true: once you start getting rid of no longer useful stuff, the catharsis -- and high -- is unbelievable.
Great inspiration for cleaning up and creating a functional working space can be found here:
http://jewelrymakingjournal.com/category/jewelry-making/jewelry-studio/ and of course there's always Pinterest. The studios that some people create!
Last week at the market I made this choker and a handful of rings for a client:
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| Pewter side-drilled skulls, copper wire spiral tubes, 2mm black Greek leather |
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| "Mystery stones", possibly dyed quartz(?), wrapped rings using 16 gauge tinned copper |
Thanks for looking!
