Fibre and jewellery - good combo!

I seem to be shying away from the hard work of making metal jewellery and my attention has been taken up by bright colours and fibres! It could be the effects of Summer ... Whatever is going on I can't seem to get enough of neon bright colours and textures.

It all started quite innocently when I made some of these ...

Who doesn't love tassles right? I made a whole bunch of them - without any clear idea of what I might do with them. Then came the pom-poms ...

Today I was in the hardware store picking up some stuff for the ManBeast when I stumbled across neon-pink brickies line ... WHAT??? Well I just had to have me some of that ...

And then of course I had a fish through the cupboards for other kinds of cord and found this cool vintage stuff ...

I don't know what it is exactly - it is kinda plasticky - but you know, it was there, I was there ... This has been some seriously good fun and if I hadn't run out of chain, I think I would still be going! Now I just need to finish them off ....

          

Yellow

Just lately it seems that my life is being consumed by all things yellow. I think it began when I saw a woman wearing AMAZING yellow sandals - oh how I coveted them! I am not really given to buying expensive shoes so I had to quench my desire for yellow in other ways!  First up I revamped a candlestick that I picked up ages ago at a thrift store. It has a nice rusty base and other metal bits so I thought a spruce up of the wooden part was in order. Here is a before pic ...

and the beauty shot ...

Then while I was out thrifting with my daughter I bought two bunches of yellow flowers - they had been marked right down because it was the end of the day! Lucky me!

I also made a very big yellow candleholder. It is one of a set and I will write about the "how" of it's making in another post ...

I used up all sorts of horrid paints left over from the kids high school art classes and created custom colours and mixed them into smaller amounts of heavier pigment paints. It worked really well but I ran out of the yellow and the candlestick could have done with one more coat ... So, I distressed it and I am dead pleased with the result!

The op shop offered up some gorgeous yellow Pyrex pots - just the right size for us!

Our local garden centre is having a sale and I couldn't resist buying some marigolds. They remind me of Mexico. 

And after a productive time at my trusty grinder, I now have a bunch of buttery yellow ceramic pieces to turn into jewellery!

And when I packed away the paints and scrubbed the table I decided to put my new marigolds into some newly painted tins along with a tea light holder I made today. With the addition of a couple of skully mates I almost felt like I was back in Oaxaca!

Hope all this yellow brings a little sunshine into your day - especially for those of you in the other hemisphere where it is freezing at the moment. Stay warm!

Getting underway ...

It seems that the Christmas lull has been a bit protracted this year. Or maybe I am just lazy ...? Anyway, there is a show coming up in February that I am very happy to have been accepted into so I thought I should get started on some work. The theme of the exhibition is "Wear a Piece of Adelaide" and it runs throughout the Fringe Festival (South Australia is the Festival state after all!). The premise is that you can create jewellery that is literally made of a piece of the city or something representative of the city/surrounds. I am planning some pieces made from wine bottle glass, specifically wine bottles from South Australia, most probably from the Barossa Valley because that is where I live!

Working with glass can be pretty exciting and as always when you work with recycled materials, you have to be prepared for outcomes you might not have envisaged. 

This is part one of a multi-part process ...

These pieces will most likely become earrings. Eventually. There are plenty of steps to follow!

Oh and glass can be. teeny bit dangerous ... Band-Aids are a necessary part of this whole process I have found!

Despite the little nicks (wow fingers bleed a lot even from teensy cuts!), I am super happy to be feeling productive once again. Now if I could just summon up the courage to clean up the studio ....