A Difficult Delivery

Could I have possibly taken any longer to complete this pendant? Well, probably. I guess I could have tried it with jute twine and wild hogs' teeth after I got through the rest of my stash, but I would have likely circled back around anyway to my very first instinct which was to use these wonderful, other-worldly lavender tablets by Kelley Wenzel. In sunlight, they're very distinctly lavender, but in fluorescent light they're closer to periwinkle blue. They make me think of fluorite, which does something similar (although it tends to look more green in fluorescent light).

I'm amazed at how genteel it turned out looking, just because of the floral textures I think. Overall it's fairly rustic. I tried a gazillion different "fringes" at the bottom (and wasted a lot of headpins in the process), and finally (thanks to a post by Mary Jane Dodd where she showed some tubing she had etched), it occurred to me to cut up some of the copper tubing I had (which I had purchased thinking to make tube rivets with it but I think the walls are too thick) to make tube beads. I textured them gently with my Fretz hammer. I tried a bunch of different kinds of chain on there too, and this rollo chain seemed the best match. It sort of reminds me of a long, hippie shoulder bag, of the herb-gathering (lavender, perhaps?) variety, made out of an old quilt. But posher.

Lavender Hippie Talisman

I think I rather like it long, although it would be striking worn shorter:

Well, all this discussion has given me an idea. I have to go find my wild hogs' teeth now. I know I probably have some somewhere.

More Fun Than a Bag Full of Hammers

And that's saying something, because hammers are F.U.N.! You know what I'm talking about. I would pay money for a chance to win a bag of hammers.

I used this hammer

with these brass texture sheets

to make these floral-patterned rings. (Shh, they're copper washers from Harbor Freight).

Peridot and Copper

These below I did with my metal stamps from SparklingShamrock (with glass tile beads in sort of a gray-violet):

Periwinkle and Copper

The key is a BIG ASS hammer (the handle on this is like three feet long--I can barely see what I'm hammering it's so far away). And some reverse engineering! I've seen umpteen photos on Flickr and Etsy of these wrapped beads, like little bird's nests. I've been intending to try something similar, and yesterday I was in the mood to try to figure it out. Took a few stabs at it, with some false starts, but I think I approximated it enough to make it work. (I'm sure there's a "right" way to do it, and that's probably not what I'm doing...but they seem to stay put.) I have piles of small gemstone beads like this that I've never really found a way to use, but these small oval shapes seem to work well for this. I get really excited when I use up part of my stash! It was such a lovely day I repaired to my Auxiliary Driveway Studio and made these outside. I love summer! I photographed them at 9:00 p.m. on the porch and there was still plenty of light.

I also made this:

Speckled Stone Lampwork with Brass

I had wanted the brass to be even mellower than this--it looked almost silvery when I took it out of the patina bath (some toxic stuff by Midas), but then when it came out of the tumbler it had regained some of its golden color. Ah well. I have four of these beads left! Going to use copper next time. From Bebesglassbeads. I bought some gun black way back that is supposed to turn copper and brass silvery, but it didn't work. Probably operator error.