Week - 21

Well I think I’ve finally and definitely found a place in jewelry making, which is exactly where I want to be. This is perfect for me. Some of you will remember I left jewelry making a while back to persue watercolours again. This shift occurred because of my sheer frustration when working with wire after previously working with watercolours and coloured pencils. My belief back then was that wire had serious limitations that would not allow me to manipulate it like I could with watercolours and pencils to get freeform flowing shapes and blends of colours that I craved doing so much. Wire still has it’s limitations (well it’s not a liquid for one ;] ) however I can already see the greatest limitations are my lack of skills and not so much the wire itself. It’s hard to explain, but I feel like the doors have just opened for me after years of floundering around and not knowing where I’m going with jewelry making and I look ahead through the door and see this perfect new place to play and explore.
This piece is 2.25″ x 1.25″ and has a white opal(hard to see in photo but has green and red flashes), a faceted quartz briolette, a large faceted amethyst bead, a faceted amethyst rondell, three swarovkski bicones (grey, need to look up name), one large and ten peacock pearls and eleven SS beads. I hate to think how much wire went into this piece, but I am running out fast. It’s quite weighty and very solid as was the previous piece.

This piece took a guesstimate of about 12 solid hours to make, mostly sitting and figuring out design through the whole process. I expect this figuring will drop greatly as I become better skilled and will just be left with labour time,.. which is significant in itself.

I’ve already begun the next one with nervous excitement. I go into these with not a clue how the finished piece will turn out and just make it up as I go, which is quite fun, but a bit scary because of the wire invested in it. However, I also look forward to a time when I can know this style well enough to actually plan out a piece on paper when I want to,.. and follow it through to the finish.

I think I really do need get myself a light diffuser thingy and set up a photo shoot area, because these pics are not showing them very true to actual piece at all.