The Gypsy Dancer

Made this necklace last week for the "Year of Jewellery Challenge" of the Australian Beading Forum. A theme is announced every Friday, and the participants have up to Sunday the following week to submit a piece. I started by drawing a gypsy girl with colour pencils. Then took a picture of it, reduced it in size, made some coloured and black and white copies, and turned some into cabochons with polymer clay and resin. For this pendant I used a cab without resin, and made a bezel and decorated it with polymer clay, brass stampings and Swarovski crystals. Assembled the whole piece with more beads and chains. When I have time, I would like to do a different and maybe more elaborate version using one of the coloured cabs and seed beads.

Ying Ying the little owl

Made this wire wrapped pendant a little while ago using a charoit cabochon, Swarovski crystal beads and stone, and steling silver wire and beads. In Chinese, owls are called "Mao Tao Ying", and as I didn't like "Mao Mao" or "Tao Tao", I decided to call him "Ying Ying". Because of the shape of the cab, he became a rather chubby little owl.

Vintage poster pendant

Here is another necklace I finished using one of the resin paper cabochons I made a few weeks ago. The picture in the cab was from a reprint of a Chinese vintage poster. Beaded a bezel around the cab, made a few little polymer clay roses, and added metal stampings, Swarovski rivolis and stones, and different beads. It's difficult to photograph the cab well because of its glossy surface. I just love anything from the 1920's-40's era from China, especially memorabilia from Shanghai. (If you would like a larger view, just click on the picture.)

Emergence of a Fairy

I made this piece for a competition a while back. The story behind this was a little creepy. For a couple of months prior to the closing date of the competition, I kept having an image in my mind of a young girl looking out of a window with an emotionless face and with her hands pressed on the window. The image was so strong that I felt I just had to translate it into something. Anyhow, made the pendant with silver clay, polymer clay and wire, and assembled it into a necklace. A couple of months later, I heard on the news on TV that a young girl was abused by her parents, locked up in a room and eventually starved to death. When the reporter interviewed the neighbours, one neighbour said that she had on occasions seen the girl looking out of the locked window, with her hands pressed on the glass. I know this probably was just a coincidence, but it did give me goosebumps when I saw the news. I named this piece "Emergence of a Fairy", to symbolise the fact that the girl's spirit had been set free and she flew away and lived happily ever after in a fairyland. This piece came second in the metal clay category of the 2008 Australian Jewellery Designer of the Year Awards organised by Beads etc... magazine.