Necklace and bracelets for Friday

Another longish necklace. The Agate slice at the end is quite an end piece for the tigereye and blue enamel beads along the chain. The little orange accents are carnelians. I had a loose kurta top in mind when making this one.


Here are a couple of hippy inspired bracelets for a casual Friday. The tiny turquoise beads on the left are a bit bigger than seed beads - I've graduated the colours so the blue softly works its way into brown.
The coral bracelet uses beads from an old necklace and a bright blue turquoise nugget I bought in Kathmandu.
Just right for the beach.

necklaces

Dark green freshwater pearls and a long butterfly pendant in lighter shades of green, mauve and pink. For a shorter necklace you could wrap the pearls around your neck twice.




This one made up of carnelian and turquoise beads and silver wire. I like the colour combinations: orange and blue and the orange gradient thing going on with the surprise of pink and purple at the end.

I'm thinking these two would be most effective against a simple black top...

stacked canvases

These are stacked in my cupboard... I thought the edges and colours looked good so I took a photo.

It's Monday....

not a lot today

A hot Sydney day and no time to make anything... plus after yesterday I'm a bit tired.

Here are some flowers instead.

the party

Today's party went well. My jewellery parties are mostly about girls getting together and having a bit of a laugh and a chat with gorgeous food and jewellery to look at and try on.

Thought you might like to look at cupcakes and gingerbread I made - the food takes as long as the jewellery to make but everyone likes it and I hope some of the cakes and cookies make their way to kiddies later on.

more party favours

Here's how the party gift bags will look for Saturday's jewellery party - tiny noodle boxes. Inside will be a charm on a ribbon.



Following the cupcake charm attempt I thought I'd try lollipops. Making the stripey candy-looking 'sweet' is very satisfying though I'm still perfecting the oven temperature - the back of these got a little burnt and stuck to the tray. The next batch will be better. The sticks are cut down bamboo skewers.

more cards: christmas

Christmas is creeping up and I've started making cards. Here are some non-seasonal ones and some Chrimbo ones...

I've used watercolour and collage. Painting the colour stripes on paper is always fun. I incorporate a little bit of wax resist with white crayon though the flower image was made using that liquid rubber blockout stuff.

frooty pendants

A selection of pendants on leather thonging - except for the brown indian 'tassel' second from left which is hanging from a string of brown tigereye.
Something a bit flirty for summer.

monday blues

I don't like Mondays. Here's a blue and frosted quartz nugget pendant for calm. The pebble reminds me of sea glass and holidays on the beach.

sunday is for seafood and moonlight

and prawns... don't forget the prawns.
I call this picture: "don't come the raw prawn...". I took a bit of artistic license with the feelers. Of course most cooked prawns' feelers have broken off by the time they reach the table.

This one is called: 'Ginger in the night garden'. Reality check - the ginger plant is growing in a pot in my courtyard. But who knows what happens after dark.

I have been painting moons for about 20 odd years. There is something about a full moon in a garden which really fires up my imagination. Some time ago I started painting faces on my moons but some people didn't like that so I stopped. I always add silver paint splashes - like stardust or something. Hopeless romantic that I am.

more pink pictures: strawberries and ginger

Strawberries. If you look closely you can see I haven't finished painting the seeds yet. The pinky fuzzy interiors took a bit of time to paint which was a little odd.


Pink ginger. Actually the flowers were yellow and orange and the leaves a dark glossy green, not the turquoise hue they are here. Call it artistic license...

watercolour silk scarves

I've made some silk scarves along the lines of the little pink and blue artworks. I like using those silk paints - the ones that you iron to set the colours. Oh yes, they have little splashes of silver as well. I know I should have ironed the scarf before taking a photo but I didn't think you'd mind too much.

I'm trying to achieve a watercolour effect on fabric. Fabric makes it a bit more interesting - as the paint bleeds into the weave, tiny lines of colour appear.

cupcake charms

I'm having a jewellery party next Saturday and am putting together little gift bags. I made these cupcake charms out of Fimo after I saw some images on flickr.com.

I should be doing other stuff but it's Friday ... and the sun is out....

mango frooty is born

So where is all this leading? You may be wondering.

I'm working up to a new label. I've been making jewellery for 8 years and paintings etc for the last 25 and thought it's about time to try and do it properly. I'm still working on how to do it. I mean, how do you show things that you might only ever see once?

Of course it's not going to happen over night. Gently does it.

Here is a sample of the jewellery packaging and label. I use saris and sarongs lined with silk to make the bags. I painted the label image using the Indian mango motif - you may have seen it in paisley fabrics and saris. And of course there's a lot of pink.

bracelets with dangles

Here are a couple of beaded bracelets with dangles. Beads look good when they have those silver bead caps on them. They are a mix of beads: the purples are amethyst, the pink is rose quartz, the green is peridot, the gray/brown is smoky quartz or labradorite. There's clear and blue quartz beads as well.

work in progress

The buttons on cards came from the Mercat Del Encants market in Barcelona - they followed me to Oxford, then to London and finally to Sydney after waiting many months in boxes. Slowly, slowly they're finding their way onto artworks.



I wished I worked in a dedicated studio environment but I don't. My studio is the kitchen table or the sofa. All my bits and pieces get tidied away into plastic bags at the end of each session.

But don't the colours in this mix of paper look good together? I found the Latin handwriting as wrapping paper in Rome, made photocopies and coloured it. And 10 years later I found the same paper in a shop in Sydney!

cards

these are made from a mix of japanese papers, Chinese joss paper and watercolour. I also bought this little stamp thingy which cuts out paper flowers - it's plum blossom.

and little girls' jewellery

Here is a little charm necklace made with cloisonne, garnet, blue chalcedony and sterling silver dangling from a white leather thong. Maybe for a summer tea party. I think it goes with the cupcakes.

cupcakes

Today is cupcake day.
and yes, they're pink.

pink hibiscus

I try and make something every day. In a year that's a lot of stuff so I'm going to post some of it here.....

The hibiscus are starting to flower in Sydney. This one was actually from the end of summer last year around April. It's water colour on paper.