Morning fragments after rain

 

We have had a few days of light rain, drizzle cloud cover and mist. This morning's walk was taken in sunshine after an overnight shower. I love the freshness of these mornings; and love the droplets and the way things are highlighted like the spider's web above.

Some sunshine washed; and more droplet and dew encrusted fragments follow.

A rain refreshed morning of beauty is a cause for hope.

More Found and Formed jewellery

 

I have almost completed making my stash of pearl and gold-plate pendants and earrings. I have also added into the mix some slate pendants as you can see from the opening photo. The pendants above are 45mm in diameter.

The pearl and slate start out pretty rough as you can see from the photo below.

But after some fiddly grinding and polishing the beauty shows as you can see in the pearl stud earrings below.

Photos of other pieces completed over the last couple of days follow.

I think there will be enough for the Saturday Sale we are planning for 9 November.

Accidental art and other matters

 

Some folk will be aware that recently I have been playing with melting metal that supposedly is pure silver or has a high silver content.  I had reported that a melt I did produced a bronze hard metal (see below) - probably silver over brass; and another produced a very hard silver coloured metal but not really able to be rolled into wire. 

So I put the metal from the two melts together and added a bit of pewter to see if it would result in a softer metal; but no - it resulted in the wild beautiful rainbow metal in the opening photo and below.

This metal is very crystalline, almost glass like, as you can see in the before and after photo of the wire straws I poured in the photos below.  The straws broke when I tested a simple bend!!!

So instead of using this metal for jewellery I have made some gorgeous rainbow hull forms such as in the opening photo and below. You can also see that the metal had run out of rainbow puff by the time I poured the third hull in the middle.

I tried to create a circular form with the original bronze wire; but as you can see from the photos below this just did not work - again too crystalline.

The lesson? If you want pure metals start with known pure metals; but if you are happy to accept accidental art then have a play.

Seeing red & enjoying it

 

There is a Coral Tree on the roadside on our way into town; and it is providing a brilliant display of red - both in the tree (below) and on the ground (see above). The fallen blossoms are such a dense carpet spilling out in all directions - covering the path, road, driveway and yard - beautiful.

This sheer beauty encouraged me to look for red on my walk this morning. Even though it was a bit misty-mizzly the colour shone through as you can see below.

And whilst I'm on the red theme - how about the red marking on this slug on the road - seen by Fiona and I as we walked a few days ago.

Not all red is about danger - some is about joy.

Preserving and sharing memories; and a different take on pearl pendants

 

I get asked reasonably often if I can use old wares - I can't always make use of things in my own work. However, I do ask folk if they want me to make something so they can preserve and share memories.

Recently I was asked if I wanted some vintage silver-plated cutlery. Often I can use a small amount of cutlery; but only if I can make earrings or melt some of it down. After assessing the bag of cutlery above  I contacted the owner to say whilst the set had some vintage retail value I could not use it as it was silver-plated stainless steel - just too hard; very hard to drill and grind; and not able to be melted as you can see from the photos below.

I did say I could make some memory pieces; and this is what I have done - pendants for younger and older grandchildren and the owner of the cutlery - and a couple of spares as you can see in the opening photo. The pendants will look grand with silver chains as you can see in the photo below.

I am pleased I have the skill and tools to enable folk to carry some small pieces and memories into the future. The rest of the cutlery will most likely go to an opshop.

I did get to progress some more of the pearl pieces. I concentrated on riveting gold plate to the pearl pieces - see below. I used brass rivets to tone in with the gold-plate. I think they will look grand with jump rings and chains etc.

I'm thinking I will probably have an open day in the next couple of weeks so people can pick up some pearl and gold-plate for Christmas.