ABS March challenge.. Sacred Spring

Nave Nave Moe (Sacred Spring, Sweet Dreams) by Paul Gaugin 1894, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

This month our inspiration for the ABS Challenge  was  Sacred Spring, Sweet Dreams.  The artist Gauguin was inspired to paint this by the bright colourful primitive cultures that he encountered after moving to Tahiti in 1891. 



I loved the bright red's and yellows in this paining.. I made a red and yellow murini to decorate my lampwork beads with and used bright copper beads and wire as accents!  I love spring  my first crocus was in bloom yesterday!

With my floral focal I tried to pick up some of the other colours in this months palette.. I had fun cutting and hammering copper sheet and wire to make the 'links' & beads.  There are also a couple of copper and sterling beads , some chain maille and some coppper plated Mykanos clay beads, and my lampworked beads and spacers.

The Big Reveal!

Remember my Strips of glass from a
Sapphire Gin Bottle ...









Then there was the beads....



And now we have the finished necklace & earrings.. They were a Christmas present for my sister, the chain is made from sterling rings,mobius knots and two coil Celtic Knots..


I'm looking for interesting coloured bottles to add to my bottle bead repertoire! If you have any suggestionson pretty coloured bottles leave them in the comment section!

From scrap to...

I ran out of 20 gauge wire making earwires for an order last week... when I went on line to order more $17 / oz US caused me to rethink my order....

Like most artists working with silver I have little bags and boxes of scrap all over the place.. at >$17 / oz now was the time to haul out the Christmas present I got last year (this only took 10 months to use remember the gin bottle that took 3 years to cut up and turn into beads?) So my ingot mold and my crucible got hauled into the bead studio ... I tried melting the silver with my Smith little torch... that took way too long! My minor was much more gratifying... soon I had a puddle of molten silver I carefully lined up on the ingot mold and got this lumpy bumpy mess... (some of it was even in the ingot mold!) Back into the crucible for the silver... after about 4 tries I got something that I deemed usable and actually fit into my Rolling Mill ...(Oh I forgot the 4 hours I spent changing the rollers on my easy change roller mill... before I even got started! There wasn't one part that wasn't taken off of that thing to change the rollers!)

Now to change the ingot into wire... 4 hours later I have a small coil of square wire... Out comes the draw plate... Got it down to 20 gauge but it's still somewhat square... then I coiled it cut it and soldered it back together... Pretty crappy job if I do say so myself but anytime I think I want to save some money by making my own wire... I will take out that chain and look at it!

However if I need some wire now and square wire will work.... I have the technology!

Once a Chicken Always A Chicken

These are the three chickens that don't get to become part of a "farmtime" charm bracelet! Instead they get to go to Saskatchewan and be part of a show at the Handwave Gallery in Meacham... The show is called
'The Beast in Me'.