Saturday 28 January 2012

Finished heart earrings, very first Tree of Life & for the guys, resin grizzly claw & stone spear point pendants

It was very slow at the market today. Driving in at 5:30 a.m., it wasn't bad out, certainly not cold here when I packed the truck, no snow and no wind, but just as I got to Woodstock there was snow spitting on the windshield. As the morning progressed, the weather rapidly turned nasty -- not so much that there was a lot of snow falling, but with the wind blowing snow horizontally and slushy roads it was definitely a day to stay home. However, it meant I had lots of time to get things finished and photographed.


Most of the hammered hearts from yesterday matched up and turned into earrings
with sterling earwires and jump rings.


Closeup of one of the pairs of earrings


Leftovers make great pendants.
Just about everyone I showed this to at the market thought this would make great earrings, that they wouldn't be too long.

I made this a couple of days ago. My first Tree of Life pendant, in copper, and which I guess is interesting. All I can see is what's wrong with it. I've never seen anyone colour outside the lines making one of these, so of course, that's the first thing I had to do.
I kind of had the idea of a driftwoody, Caspar David Friedrich tree here, windswept and wind-scoured, and in that I think this piece succeeds: being able to see strange things emerging from the driftwood. With the trunk of the tree so skinny and those overlong roots, I ended up seeing a dragon, then someone at the market today saw a Kokopelli figure -- and of course that's all I see now!

For the guys, a Mexican-made flintknapped stone spear point, which I wrapped in hemp cord since there wasn't much to grab onto if I used wire -- and I prefer a minimalist wrap. I'm interested also in doing more weaving of the hemp. I've been getting some pretty cool patterns emerging from the overlaps on others I've wrapped, but of course, I sold them without taking pictures first so you'll have to take my word for it. I've left the hemp ends long in case whoever buys this wants to add some beads.


Resin/reproduction grizzly bear claw pendant. Again, almost nothing to grab onto so I came up with the idea of using a jump ring in the middle. I'm working also to try and make the designs two-sided as much as possible, and again left the hemp cord long in order to add beads.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey i really like the way you wrapped the bear claw instead of drilling a hole through it. I am trying to do something similar, may i ask how you did this?

Barbara said...

Hi. It's been so long since I did these, I'd forgotten. I used waxed hemp string and vintage copper jump rings on these. The jump rings keep the overlapped strings in place and the jump rings tied in at the top take the stress, rather than the claw/tooth themselves. I did a lot of odd-shaped claws, sharks' teeth and fossils this way at the time. These all have fairly fragile surfaces that the hemp won't damage the way wire will. Each shape is very different, so you need to play around to figure out how to get the hemp tight enough and do it so that the item is securely trapped. I also didn't want to use glue because that could damage the pendants. There's nothing worse in the world than trying to clean glue off off something like this.