A bit of a spruce up for 2008

I guess the title of this post says it all. Had a bit of time over the last week to make a few changes and investigate the "Settings" of this site a little more closely. Something I've been wanting to do since I started writing this Blog.

Decided I needed more colour for a start, so I've tried to stick with my most fave tones, Greens, Blues, Violets - all jewels of the sea.

The title pic on my blog is one of the Froggy pendants I designed in 2007. Boy, was it interesting playing around with the pic. Not sure that I'm entirely happy with it yet, but I shall persevere. The Lampwork once again by my lovely friend Sabine E Wilkins of Sydney and of course the quote is mine and best sums up my feelings about Wire.

The frog pic featured on this post is another of Sabine's Lampwork Beads.

My Fun Froggy Pendant Project

Pick yourself up a copy of the latest(Dec 07) Australian Beading Magazine and have a go at my fun Froggy Pendant project. You'll be twisting wire in no time and probably get as addicted as I am. You can adapt this technique to any type of large focal bead. This is another of Sabine E Wilkins Beads... Have fun!!

A recent commission

A little while back my friend Simone, the theatre director, asked me to put together a piece of jewellery for Harmony, the musical director, of a play she was working on.

The brief was for something "Purple". Now I love customers who give me one worded briefs, it does tend to make the design process relatively easy. I thought about it for a while, all sorts of musical ideas had popped into my head, but I decided that a necklace wasn't where I wanted to go and that a bracelet would be better.

I contacted my Lampworker friend Sabine in Sydney and asked if she would make some purple beads for me. I didn't give her a brief, just told her my ideas for the bracelet and left it at that.

Here's a pic of the beads Sabine sent me.

The musical Simone and Harmony were working on was "Cats" plus the gift was to be for Harmony's 30th birthday. My idea was for a charm bracelet incorporating the above beads, sterling silver musical charms, the letter H - for Harmony, a crown for the Queen of music, a comedy and tragedy mask, a cat, and bunches of swarovski crystals in matching tones. Each bead was individually wrapped with sterling daisy spacers and joined with Snapeez, my fav jump rings, a girl can do with a never ending supply of those.

Here's the finished bracelet. Harmony loved it.

On the subject of Frogs

Know anyone who has an obsession with Frogs? Well me for one. A lovely lampworker friend of mine by the name of Sabine E Wilkins of Sydney, Australia, made these froggie beads for me.

A whirl or two of wire, a couple of glitzening Swarovski Bicones and ta da....this is what I came up with.

The Green one is mine, the Teal and Blue one was grabbed by my friend Simone who is a musical theatre director and loves unusal jewellery.

Check out more of Sabine's Lampwork at http://www.freewebs.com/sabinewilkins/