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Welcome to my blog, random stuff about me and where I live, plus some bits about my jewellery.

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Wednesday 1 July 2015

Revisiting a piece of jewellery started ages ago

I believe I may have written about my plans for a blue and white ceramic piece quite some time ago. I've recently started working on it again and have got to the stage of attaching some vintage lace to one side of it.
This is the stage it got to before being put aside for months, I've taken it much further now, it's not been planned on paper, as most of my stuff isn't, but there's a definite image in my head of what I want it to be.

Here it is with all the beading finished, the problem with these 'plate' pieces is the amount of time it takes to attach the beads so that none of the backing shows anywhere. You can tell that it's been sitting around for a while in the first picture, as something has stained the backing! Not sure what but luckily it gets totally hidden in the finished piece.


In this picture you can see the edge row, this hides the join between the original backing and the leather which covers it and hides the tangled spiders web of stitches that hold all those beads in place. The lace behind it was my first idea for what to use I've sinced added another layer of different lace to go under it.





the underlayer of lace is attached to one edge of the piece, the other piece of lace will go on top and the two will be gathered and ruched and beaded within an inch of their lives. I want an effect of surf, or at least a suggestion of that, the ceramic pieces and the beads are the waves you see. I know what I mean anyway.


Here is where it is at now. Totally ungramatical sentence I know but I'm tired and it says what I mean sort of. Hopefully you can see the beginnings of the ruching. The two pieces are joined along the long edges of the top piece, both are attached to the ceramic 'plate'. Eventually there will be bead weaving extending from the end of the lower lace piece to form one side of a necklace. The other side will be all beading, but I expect I'll throw some wierdness in there, holes and twists, that sort of thing.

Watch this space. 

As an after thought I recently altered a piece I made a few years ago, which I was never happy with, I realised that it didn't hang right because it was too long. Now any one who does bead weaving will know how hard it is to take it apart, especially if you only want to take a little bit apart and leave the rest intact, well I finally got the time and the nerve to tackle it and I'm much happier with it now.


 The bottom picture show my much younger neighbour modelling the original, the other two are me showing it shortened, it looks much better on Caz but I still think it looks better shorter.

another 'plate' piece, I call it River.







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