Jewelry, Writing, and other items of maybe interest...
Christmas has come and wandered off, and I've managed to finish my gifts... pix will come soon, but not until everyone gets theirs, since I don't want to spoil anyone :)
New Years sort of wandered in and said, "Hi, it's been most of a decade and you haven't done crap with your writing." So I kind of looked into my head and said, "Hmm, that's a lot of cobwebs, maybe I'd better clean up."
Yeah, anyway... I'm trying to keep a resolution to write for one hour a day, every day. So far, so good, but... unless I get to tack "fin" on the end of a file, it means nothing, so we'll see. Wish me luck :D.
My mother, bless her, bought me a lovely gift card for Xmas... with which I have gone nutters at amazon.com in the music section. In no particular order, I will toss my 2 bits behind the rah-rah over these cds so far: Dilana "Inside Out" - OMG, I love this woman and her voice and her attitude and yeah, so glad she's finally got an album. Spiral Dance "The Quickening" - my favorite pagan band. Cool tunes. Heather Alexander "Festival Wind" - my first full album purchase of hers since I bought the Shadow Stalker tape back when Mercedes Lackey was signing autographs in Berkeley some 10+ years back. Love it. She's a storyteller through and through, and HopnFrog of Cambreadth might be the funniest.song.ever. Now, amazon was having this lovely little dealie where if you bought so much, you'd get some freebies. and boy did I get the freebies. I got a Zombies cd... I love me some obscurish 60's stuff. Jumped on the Lady GaGa bandwagon and picked up the Fame (it was free, right?) and you know, I don't hate it. Then came the Indigo Girls "Poseidon and the Bitter Bug" very good stuff. It's not the supro extendo version with the acoustic stuff, but I can get that later. Queensryche's "Empire", the follow up to the fabulous, "Operation: Mindcrime" which was one of my favorite albums in high school. KT Tunstall's "Eye to the Telescope" is good so far, and I've several more to listen to yet, including A Fine Frenzy's "One Cell in the Sea" (someone used "Almost Lover" in a Criminal Minds Emily/JJ video and the song stuck with me.) Don McLean's "American Pie" - total classic, and "Vincent" is one of my mom's favorite songs. Pat Benetar's "Greatest Hits" - can't love female singers and not know this woman's contribution to the form. And for the amusement factor, I got Dr. Demento's "Hits from Outer Space" which includes "Star Trekkin'" and "Do the Picard" and "Banned from Argo" ... some of my favorite filk tunes.
So anyway... Amazon.com, you have officially redeemed yourself from the book debacle from earlier in the year.
Now, for the pretties... :) If you're still with me, enjoy! :)
I'm experimenting with hammered metal... I need better tools, but for messing around with scrap wire, these didn't turn out too badly.
so, would you pay somewhere between 5 and 10 bucks each for these, if they came with cords or chains?
This post is kinda huge, so I'll try to keep the technical stuff to a minimum, but yeah? This piece is mostly glass, and the centerpiece is like the green one from the last post... an earring from Claire's that I repurposed.
Actually, there's an amusing story associated with that centerpiece. Yeah, here we go, humorous anecdote time. The bail (that's the metal bit that is glued to the glass) wasn't sitting just right, so I pulled it apart to reglue... well, as I was gently applying superglue to the metal, an air bubble forced out a HUGE splash of glue, spreading onto my thumb, forefinger and middle finger, gluing them all into a a mass of fingers... It took my mom to pull them apart. Not fun at the time, horribly amusing now. The bits of stuck on glue were particularly nasty. Just glad I was wearing my glasses at the time. I'd hate to think what would have happened if the stuff had splashed upward.
Glass and metal, this was one of the necklaces that got broken in a bad way... I only had a few things left from it, so I used bits and pieces from other broken necklaces to remake it.
the graduated venetian glass "millefiore" beads on this piece were originally on a wired monstrosity that came in a batch of broken jewelry i bought. it was actually painful to look at before, now, it is beautiful.
a piece of kyanite my mom picked up at the last rock n gem show. tension wrapped - no glue holding the wire in place.
i'm pretty sure that this is jasper... could be tiffany stone but i doubt it. found at the last rock n gem show - also tension wrapped but there's a slight angle to the stone, so i have more than friction on my side.
the "fingers" of this piece are mahogany obsidian. frustrating stuff... two of the beads broke before i even got it strung... one, i could replace, but the other, i had to glue... and the freaking thing just would NOT stay together... i fought and fought and eventually, ended up patching it up with superglue and clear nail polish... if you look closely, you can see the repaired bead.
the "fingers" on this one were far less of a headache to work with... i think it's serpentine, but i'm not sure. both were purchased as a "hmm, these are interesting" from the bargain bin at a local bead store.
i won't be buying the mahogany stuff again. i'll stick to rounds or cabs.
the snuff bottle pendant on this piece came from a thrift store... it was on this horrid thing that was, truthfully, probably made by someone high on some kind of intoxicant. anyway, i matched the colors in the tiny cabs set around the neck... the blues are things like dyed howlite, dyed shell, and turquoise, while the oranges are carnelian, orange aventurine, and fire agate. my mom snagged this piece the minute i showed it to her.
in this shot, you can't really see the pendant, which used to be a pin. this is just to show the color progression. and yes, i know it's very similar to the one above, with the Claire's earring. Have I mentioned that this is one of my favorite shades of blue??
a closeup of the pendant. this came from Big Lots one post Xmas... i think i paid all of fifty cents for it. if you look very, very closely, you might be able to see the wirework bail i built to hang it from the string. anyway, the cameo is of two women.
you can look at in four ways: mother/daughter. sisters. lesbian lovers. best friends. i like to think it represents two of those three, for me. my mother and i (well, three, actually, since she's one of my best friends) and my sister and i (also one of my best friends). anyway... i think this piece will end up being close to my heart as i grow used to wearing it. i'm so glad i finally got to put it together. i've had the pendant for years now.
this is something i made with one of mom's random pendants. she hasn't seen it yet. i just wanted to get one more done. (we have a box full of "stuff to make for us" that i usually pull out four times a year... xmas, birthdays, & mother's day)
this final piece is a bit of an oddity. the pendant came from a yard sale. i think it's a jasper, but it could be tiffany stone (it doesn't really feel like it, but i haven't examined it that closely for hardness etc) anyway, matching the light lilac, pinkish orange colors in it was a challenge. i've got some carnelian, some rose quartz, sugilite (pretty, pretty stuff, but hellishly expensive for the good quality), and some kind of ceramic or stone amalagam bead... (those are the pinkish ones) and believe it or not, the really dark red beads are a kind of seed. HELL to string. omg. the holes squeeze on the string because they are a spongy mass inside the hard shell. but pretty, oh so pretty.
anyway... my adventures in beads for the past week or so.
and to go back to the writing for a minute - i am working on an original novel. what that means is that fanfiction and fanart are likely to be few and far bewteen from me... aside from the stuff i do for the otaliavs I don't see myself plunking down 20K words this year for epic proportions. HOWEVER, if i get the first draft of my novel done, i may (MAY that is) submit it, instead. we'll see. Still have to get over that "fin" hurdle, and right now, my characters are playing along.
but you know, one good stress out, and it all goes out the window.
so anyway, i always look forward to hearing what people think.
New Years sort of wandered in and said, "Hi, it's been most of a decade and you haven't done crap with your writing." So I kind of looked into my head and said, "Hmm, that's a lot of cobwebs, maybe I'd better clean up."
Yeah, anyway... I'm trying to keep a resolution to write for one hour a day, every day. So far, so good, but... unless I get to tack "fin" on the end of a file, it means nothing, so we'll see. Wish me luck :D.
My mother, bless her, bought me a lovely gift card for Xmas... with which I have gone nutters at amazon.com in the music section. In no particular order, I will toss my 2 bits behind the rah-rah over these cds so far: Dilana "Inside Out" - OMG, I love this woman and her voice and her attitude and yeah, so glad she's finally got an album. Spiral Dance "The Quickening" - my favorite pagan band. Cool tunes. Heather Alexander "Festival Wind" - my first full album purchase of hers since I bought the Shadow Stalker tape back when Mercedes Lackey was signing autographs in Berkeley some 10+ years back. Love it. She's a storyteller through and through, and HopnFrog of Cambreadth might be the funniest.song.ever. Now, amazon was having this lovely little dealie where if you bought so much, you'd get some freebies. and boy did I get the freebies. I got a Zombies cd... I love me some obscurish 60's stuff. Jumped on the Lady GaGa bandwagon and picked up the Fame (it was free, right?) and you know, I don't hate it. Then came the Indigo Girls "Poseidon and the Bitter Bug" very good stuff. It's not the supro extendo version with the acoustic stuff, but I can get that later. Queensryche's "Empire", the follow up to the fabulous, "Operation: Mindcrime" which was one of my favorite albums in high school. KT Tunstall's "Eye to the Telescope" is good so far, and I've several more to listen to yet, including A Fine Frenzy's "One Cell in the Sea" (someone used "Almost Lover" in a Criminal Minds Emily/JJ video and the song stuck with me.) Don McLean's "American Pie" - total classic, and "Vincent" is one of my mom's favorite songs. Pat Benetar's "Greatest Hits" - can't love female singers and not know this woman's contribution to the form. And for the amusement factor, I got Dr. Demento's "Hits from Outer Space" which includes "Star Trekkin'" and "Do the Picard" and "Banned from Argo" ... some of my favorite filk tunes.
So anyway... Amazon.com, you have officially redeemed yourself from the book debacle from earlier in the year.
Now, for the pretties... :) If you're still with me, enjoy! :)
I'm experimenting with hammered metal... I need better tools, but for messing around with scrap wire, these didn't turn out too badly.
so, would you pay somewhere between 5 and 10 bucks each for these, if they came with cords or chains?
This post is kinda huge, so I'll try to keep the technical stuff to a minimum, but yeah? This piece is mostly glass, and the centerpiece is like the green one from the last post... an earring from Claire's that I repurposed.
Actually, there's an amusing story associated with that centerpiece. Yeah, here we go, humorous anecdote time. The bail (that's the metal bit that is glued to the glass) wasn't sitting just right, so I pulled it apart to reglue... well, as I was gently applying superglue to the metal, an air bubble forced out a HUGE splash of glue, spreading onto my thumb, forefinger and middle finger, gluing them all into a a mass of fingers... It took my mom to pull them apart. Not fun at the time, horribly amusing now. The bits of stuck on glue were particularly nasty. Just glad I was wearing my glasses at the time. I'd hate to think what would have happened if the stuff had splashed upward.
Glass and metal, this was one of the necklaces that got broken in a bad way... I only had a few things left from it, so I used bits and pieces from other broken necklaces to remake it.
the graduated venetian glass "millefiore" beads on this piece were originally on a wired monstrosity that came in a batch of broken jewelry i bought. it was actually painful to look at before, now, it is beautiful.
a piece of kyanite my mom picked up at the last rock n gem show. tension wrapped - no glue holding the wire in place.
i'm pretty sure that this is jasper... could be tiffany stone but i doubt it. found at the last rock n gem show - also tension wrapped but there's a slight angle to the stone, so i have more than friction on my side.
the "fingers" of this piece are mahogany obsidian. frustrating stuff... two of the beads broke before i even got it strung... one, i could replace, but the other, i had to glue... and the freaking thing just would NOT stay together... i fought and fought and eventually, ended up patching it up with superglue and clear nail polish... if you look closely, you can see the repaired bead.
the "fingers" on this one were far less of a headache to work with... i think it's serpentine, but i'm not sure. both were purchased as a "hmm, these are interesting" from the bargain bin at a local bead store.
i won't be buying the mahogany stuff again. i'll stick to rounds or cabs.
the snuff bottle pendant on this piece came from a thrift store... it was on this horrid thing that was, truthfully, probably made by someone high on some kind of intoxicant. anyway, i matched the colors in the tiny cabs set around the neck... the blues are things like dyed howlite, dyed shell, and turquoise, while the oranges are carnelian, orange aventurine, and fire agate. my mom snagged this piece the minute i showed it to her.
in this shot, you can't really see the pendant, which used to be a pin. this is just to show the color progression. and yes, i know it's very similar to the one above, with the Claire's earring. Have I mentioned that this is one of my favorite shades of blue??
a closeup of the pendant. this came from Big Lots one post Xmas... i think i paid all of fifty cents for it. if you look very, very closely, you might be able to see the wirework bail i built to hang it from the string. anyway, the cameo is of two women.
you can look at in four ways: mother/daughter. sisters. lesbian lovers. best friends. i like to think it represents two of those three, for me. my mother and i (well, three, actually, since she's one of my best friends) and my sister and i (also one of my best friends). anyway... i think this piece will end up being close to my heart as i grow used to wearing it. i'm so glad i finally got to put it together. i've had the pendant for years now.
this is something i made with one of mom's random pendants. she hasn't seen it yet. i just wanted to get one more done. (we have a box full of "stuff to make for us" that i usually pull out four times a year... xmas, birthdays, & mother's day)
this final piece is a bit of an oddity. the pendant came from a yard sale. i think it's a jasper, but it could be tiffany stone (it doesn't really feel like it, but i haven't examined it that closely for hardness etc) anyway, matching the light lilac, pinkish orange colors in it was a challenge. i've got some carnelian, some rose quartz, sugilite (pretty, pretty stuff, but hellishly expensive for the good quality), and some kind of ceramic or stone amalagam bead... (those are the pinkish ones) and believe it or not, the really dark red beads are a kind of seed. HELL to string. omg. the holes squeeze on the string because they are a spongy mass inside the hard shell. but pretty, oh so pretty.
anyway... my adventures in beads for the past week or so.
and to go back to the writing for a minute - i am working on an original novel. what that means is that fanfiction and fanart are likely to be few and far bewteen from me... aside from the stuff i do for the otaliavs I don't see myself plunking down 20K words this year for epic proportions. HOWEVER, if i get the first draft of my novel done, i may (MAY that is) submit it, instead. we'll see. Still have to get over that "fin" hurdle, and right now, my characters are playing along.
but you know, one good stress out, and it all goes out the window.
so anyway, i always look forward to hearing what people think.