Experiments in Copper

Some things have been on my mind recently. Some copper things.

I've been admiring Kristi Bowman-Gruel's copper cone ends, and thinking I really needed to devise a cone end to use with ribbons. I was also intermittently remembering a tutorial I bought a long time ago on making a lily shaped earring from metal sheet, and thinking I should try that sometime. And then it was like chocolate and peanut butter coming together---KAPOW!!! And there was fusion. Why not make a lily-shaped cone end? So I made a bunch. Some are for earrings (the ones that have the little pointy thing on the end), the big one will be for a pendant, and the other small ones will be for finishing off multistrand necklaces, or necklaces with ribbon. I like hiding the nasty business end of things. Which is why I wear pants.

I recently ordered a whole bunch of sari silk ribbon, which I have never used before. The "deconstructed" look of it has been appealing to me lately. Mudhound Studio on Etsy had, in my opinion, the right prices and the color selection I was looking for so I went hog wild.

(This is just a small selection from my haul--I loved the subtle, vintage-y colors, like they had been washed a million times and hung in the sun...Or stolen from a beggar. So picturesque, in a Dickensian, City of Joy kind of way.)

Contemplating the arrival of these ribbons, and thinking of what I might do with them, made me realize I needed to start thinking about bails. I wanted to use my large lily above with the ribbons, and there just had to be a fabulous bail to go with it. So I put on my thinking cap. I thought and thought. Finally this morning it all congealed so I whipped out my cardboard scraps from the remains of my Mary's Gone Crackers box and made some patterns with my circle template. I was just thinking some ovals. With rivets. And rosettes. And funky foreign coin patterns.

I made three big ones, and three little ones. It's just a folded over oval, tacked shut at the bottom with a rivet and some rosettes. The rivet also holds the loop for a pendant. I think they would be especially nice with a mess of ribbons. (The ribbons above are hand-dyed rayon in "rhubarb" from JodyPoesy on Etsy.) You could also use these with heavy gauge wire through it with wrapped loops on the ends, and attach it to the rest of your necklace that way.

Here's the back:

And the side view--you can see it's basically a tube bail:

I also finished up a couple double-sided charms, one of which features the heart with the rosettes from a previous post:

I am thinking I will do a piece that will include a bail, the large lily, a pair of cones, maybe some cocoon beads, and maybe even a charm too! It will be loaded with handcrafted copper stuff.

And as a postscript, as I was looking for a link to Kristi's cone ends, I saw she has a foldover bail in her shop too! Great minds think alike.

Mad for Toggles

I'm rediscovering my lentil and tablet beads with this front-closure toggle design. It's sort of an easy bail to make! My bail making skills are very rudimentary, and the toggle bar adds interest to the focal.

Toast and Sagebrush Pendant

I made this one with one of my toasty textured tablets by Mary Ann Carroll--it's a very warm looking bead, with its warm toast colors, and its pebbled texture makes me feel warm (makes me think of ostrich hide, and ostriches come from Africa, and Africa is warm...) It also has some sage green mixed in--green like sagebrush, and sagebrush grows in desert climates, which are warm...(Yes, there is a theme here; we got new snow today on the ski hill, so I am thinking of warm places. I do that a lot. All year round in fact.)

Then I did another similar pendant. I really like to squeeze all I can out of a design.

After I finished the pendant below, I thought I should name it, and by golly if it didn't remind me a lot of Monet's "Water Lilies." It was the dollops of sky blue on the dark green background that made me think of lily pads. I went to look at the painting online, and the name seemed apt. I had even gotten some lilac in there too (there's a little spot of violet at the top of the focal).

Water Lilies

The large lentil focal and the bigger roundel are by Karen Hardy. Unfortunately her Etsy shop is empty. :-( The smaller roundel is by BeingBeads (I was thrilled how well they all went together!) The round beads include moss agate, teal-dyed quartz, and Czech glass in lilac. Copper plated pewter charm and freshwater pearls hang from the focal. Monet wasn't Irish, but it works for me. It's all "wet" colors, and Ireland is wet. So one dry pendant and one wet pendant. I try to be inclusive because I'm all about diversity.

Well, I suppose I should go to bed. There's nothing else to do.