Memories of Places I've Never Been

I've thought so hard, so many times, about how cool it would be to go to Italy that I can damn near remember being there. And I sigh nostalgically for all those lovely mental trips. Tuscany was my favorite. The necklace below sort of morphed itself into a Tuscan palette (or what I think of as such) when I was forcing myself a couple weeks ago to NOT do a monochromatic piece. I had just gotten a pile of little gemstone rounds from the crazy people at BeadBabe.com who can't stop having these 50% off sales (seriously, check them out, they're having some sort of August sizzler sale, even their sterling silver is 50% off), and sort of threw them on the table with some of my other stuff and picked some out. For one frightening moment I thought they looked like Mardi Gras (which scares me, also Carmen Miranda scares me, but I do like fruit) but then I was able to talk myself into the Tuscany thing and all was well. (I'm traumatized by bright colors--too many early encounters with clowns). I used brass wire that I had left steeping in the ammonia fumes until it had turned a rich sable brown. The photo below doesn't show it very well, but the wire retained its luster. The stones are golden agate, olive ice flake quartz, plum jade, honey jade, lemon agate (the lime green ones), and freshwater pearls in olive green, gold and coppery plum.




And in conformance with my personal philosophy of conservation of mental energy, I went ahead and made two bracelets from the same design (if something is working for you, milk it until it's trite and irritating; unrelenting originality is exhausting).



This last bracelet is more in a charm style--I dangled the stones from some chain I had made from brass wire (again oxidized to a sable brown--you can see the nice sheen on it a little better in this picture) based on some industrial chain I saw at the hardware store. Sort of twisted S-links. For more information, or to purchase, click HERE.



I'm pretty proud of myself because the necklace and the first bracelet are already spoken for by a good customer in Ohio who just bought a bunch of stuff. Thanks Ruchi! I hope she has lots of friends who like jewelry too.

Okay, enough of that. Today is the last day of my Staycation (I'm exhausted) and I still have loads of stuff to do. Take more pictures of new stuff, retake pictures of old stuff, make more stuff, do another blog post, work up some interesting backgrounds with tissue paper and Mod Podge (not really working out yet, looks like elephant skin without the hair), figure out unit cost for all the crap I didn't need that I bought yesterday because it was 25% off (BFD), take a shower (maybe), eat (maybe), etc. I need a vacation.