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.

Lately, I've been playing with paper. Made these cabochons using Japanese washi paper, prints of Chinese vintage posters, polymer clay and resin. Beaded around some of them, glued bails on a few, gave some away to friends, and have a few left to play with. I think the resin actually accentuates the colours of the paper and makes them more vibrant. I think I'm addicted to making these at the moment.

The Tale of Davy Jones Locker

I made this piece originally for a challenge on the Australian Beading Forum, the theme of which was "Davy Jones Locker". I took the theme quite literally, and tried to imagine what a lost soul would see as it sank towards the bottom of the deep sea. It would drift through different layers of the sea with water in different shades of cold blue and green. There would be worldly treasures - diamond, sapphire, emerald, peridot, citrine, pearls, silver and gold, but there would also be signs of death, despair, darkness, and passage of time. It would be a choice between good and evil, a fine line between attraction and repulsion. If the soul was overcome by desire and lingered on, before it realized, it would be chained to Davy Jones Locker, forever condemned to the bottom of the sea.

This piece was designed around a dichroic glass cabochon which I bought a few years ago from an American artist Donna Cason. Because of its colours, I'd always wanted to make it into something dark and eerie. When I saw the challenge theme, I immediately thought of it. Made all the skulls, seahorse and the man's face with silver clay. Also made two smaller cabochons using enamel and silver leaf on copper to try to match the dichroic cab. Added shell beads, pearls, Swarovski crystals and silver beads. The different components were wrapped with sterling silver wire, patinaed with liver of sulphur, polished then assembled using a combination of sterling silver and base metal chains, and beads. Despite the deep patina, it's actually quite sparkly in real life because of the crystals. This piece was awarded first prize in the wire work category of the 2008 Beading Extravaganza Competition in the Sydney Bead & Gem Show. It was also a finalist in the 2009 Bead Dreams Competition.

Lydia's possum

This is an enamel pendant which I made for our lapidary club, to be included in the club showcase for an upcoming statewide lapidary competition. The actual enamel piece is quite small (see the photo with the coin). The enamel was applied on a piece of copper using various techniques including cloisonne and overglaze painting enamels. Then added a silver clay leaf and 2 opal cabochons, and wrapped with sterling silver wire and patinaed. The picture was painted from a photo of a baby possum my friend Lydia had. Lydia was an amazing lady whom I used to work with. She was a volunteer animal rescuer. One time she was asked to look after a tiny baby possum whose mother was killed by a car. She kept the possum for several months, feeding it around the clock (she used to bring it to work stuffed in a sock in a basket). Eventually she had to release it back into the wild, and she was quite sad to see it go. She took many pictures and gave me a couple, from which I did two oil paintings, one for her and one I kept myself. Lydia was diagnosed with breast cancer and went through operations and chemo- and radiotherapy, but the cancer kept coming back. I had never heard her complained, and she would always try to come to work. Even when she was having radiotherapy, she would go and have the treatment in the morning, then came back to work in the afternoon. She was strong and inspirational. Lydia passed away a few years ago, aged 50. This is in memory of her.