Monday, June 9, 2014

Jazz up your hands - with nail ornaments

Recently I ran a fun contest by uploading a picture
Blue opaque enamel being crushed
Nail ornament with crystal beads
of enamel colours being crushed and asked if anyone wanted to guess as to what it was, one of my friends and former painting student guessed it correctly. Now this girl is also soon to be leaving the country for further studies. For her prize for guessing correctly I wanted to create something fun and more her style which could also double up as her going away present, so I came up with this nail ornament.
So why a nail ornament or nail ring you ask? for one she is very fond of nail art and is forever experimenting with various nail colours and designs, and also I thought it was time to come up with some fun designs that would also prove to be a little challenging for me in terms of design and technique.

Friday, June 6, 2014

Blue Sea creatures

The Gorgeous but trying Agates !
     Finding inspiration for new designs is always a challenge and it is even more challenging when well meaning friends and clients start suggesting subjects for you to work on. The problem is sustaining an idea enough to work it out. Recently I was going through my gemstone collection and noticed these flat Agates I have had forever. So I came up with an idea to create a piece in blue patina to overlay on the stones. Now these stones have the weirdest holes pierced off to the ends of the agate piece. The holes are really tiny and by the time I was done piercing out the design in copper ( I made a copper sea horse ) I realized there was no way I was going to be able to rivet or attach the sea horse in any way to the agate :(
So I put away the little seahorse and decided to think about it at some later date.
Octopus being sawed
Then recently going through my scrap pile I found the little copper seahorse and decided to complete the piece and add more sea creatures to the range so taking some really sweet ideas from my Facebook friends I came up with the following creatures, in addition to the seahorse; crab, mermaid, fish, dolphin, octopus, squid, three kinds of shells, jelly fish and starfish .
Also this time I decided to make this into a three part project , part 1 : pierced designs and finished with blue patina
part 2 : repousse` with an antiqued finish and last but not least
part 3 :  cloisonné enamelled
Some of the pieces freshly cut and cleaned

Recently I completed the first of the series, that is pierced and finished with blue patina . This lot consists of an Octopus, a Seahorse, a Starfish, a Fish, a Squid, a Dolphin, a Mermaid, a Jelly fish and three different shells
All done complete with blue patina