Acushla-a tribute to my Mother

Acushla is a remarkable woman. Equal Dux at school, she went on to train as a teacher. Following teacher training she studied at a Bible College and became a missionary. As a missionary in the Middle East, Acushla taught English in schools in Lebanon and Syria. She recalls teaching in class- rooms while bombs were flying. She recalls night-time blackouts and sheltering from possible bombing. Whilst overseas, she travelled, visiting Gibraltar, the U.S and England where she fell in love with Dorset, and was fascinated by historical London.

After returning home, Acushla continued teaching. She met and married Graham and they had five children. Acushla was not only an enterprising, adventurous woman for her time, she was an artistic, creative woman. I remember her in the school playground, supervising lunchtimes with a knitting bag on her arm, knitting sweaters for her children to wear in the snowy chill of the New Zealand winter.

That life is behind Acushla now. In the late 1970s the family migrated to Australia. At the age of eighty, Acushla continues to be remarkable. She has learned to use a computer and keeps in touch with friends all over the globe. She travels both inside Australia and overseas to visit friends and relatives. Her children grown, she has time to develop new artistic skills, making beautiful quilts and glorious tapestries. She teaches her grand-daughters how to sew. She body builds (and in fact reversed bone density loss, to the surprise and interest of her doctors.) She delights in her grand-children and great-grandchildren.

Not too long ago, Acushla, cleaning her study, offered me a set of books, the Stitch by Stitch Illustrated Encyclopedia of Sewing, Knitting and Crochet. With the help of these books I have learned to design hand knits and to crochet edgings. My three daughters, having learned various techniques relating to arts and crafts they admire and enjoy (for an example go to Pink Lizzy Sews ... Pink Lizzy is Acushla's granddaughter. Also see Paperino on Etsy.) I can't express more highly my respect and gratitude to this amazing woman, my mother, for imparting her attitude to life and her gift to create, to her children, to me.

Thank you, Acushla.

Beethoven or Mozart

How many jewelery artisans are like Beethoven? Throughout my childhood and much of my adulthood too, I studied music. I learned that Beethoven was an artist who agonised over each note. Like a writer who experiences anguish over every word, planning it with care to make a piece say exactly what the writer wants to say. I am by no means like Beethoven!

When I make jewelery, I ruminate (a lot!) and then finally begin and put the piece together quite quickly. The components just fit, as if they are meant to be. I can hear the logician sniff at that, but that's the way Mozart wrote music. He heard it in his head, it just was. The way it was meant to be. That's why Mozart seems predictable, easy to listen to.

I wonder how other artisans make jewelery? Like Beethoven? Calculating and planning each part? Or like Mozart ... staring at it for ages and then getting it down. Either way, there are some amazing, wonderful jewelery artists on the internet. If you check through my list of Australian Etsy sellers, you'll find some of them there. Although I have particular favourites they all inspire me.

New shop on the Bayside, Brisbane

Beadoire at www.beadoire.com recently opened in Bay Terrace in Wynnum (Brisbane, Queensland). I found it thanks to a newspaper article, but waited to visit whilst savouring the experience of anticipation! Temptation and a need for a few supplies sent me there last week, and what a delight Beadoire is, to see, to walk inside and shop in. It's a delightfully pretty place, specialising in Czech beads and other delights (like vintage lucite). It's themed to all things French and beautiful, walking inside made me want to immediately re-vamp my shop and update my stock to 'pretty'. The owner, Maureen Nugent, is a glass artist and jewelry maker, her work reflects her passion. I treated myself to one of her lovely beads and have yet to set it, I'm busy savouring looking forward to using it! The necklace above was made with a strand of gorgeous, topaz picasso crystal rondelles from Beadoire. Well worth a look!

The wire wrap I coveted Most

This is the wire wrapping I most longed to do. The wrapping of a length of wire, on either side of a bead, so as to make bead units with wrapped loops. I found a tutorial by Eni Oken, in which she teaches the way to make a wrapped bail for a briolette. I used the techniques she presents in that tutorial, to learn how to wrap the loops for this Tiger Eye and Jasper bracelet.

I love the way these wrapped loops (and the wrapped bails) look. The addition of the wrap adds a texture I find very pleasing, particularly as it repeats the silky lines you can see on the tiger eye beads. I can see this technique would be useful for wrapping wire for pearls, so as to strengthen the wire (only quite fine wire will thread through pearls generally.)

This piece also used a knotted head pin (Donna Spadafore). The bracelet is available at the Candy Store

Wire makes an amazing medium for fitting gems and beads to a pendant or necklace. I've been inspired by that lately so I'm making necklaces. These are two of my most recent designs. I've had a long term weakness for large amethyst beads, so I repeat their use fairly often. The brown tourmaline briolette is a beautiful thing I've been waiting to use. Here is it as a pendant on copper. I wanted to avoid over-embellishing this bead ... I hope I succeeded!

How are we inspired?

Where do our ideas come from? Some people are deliberate in seeking inspiration. I admire those people who take a quiet space, and fill it with things they find inspiring. Music, art, books, fabrics, natural artifacts. I know several people who keep a file in their computers, of pictures of things that are inspiring, from the internet (I do that too).

But when I'm planning to use a set of beads, often I sit them with my work things and just wait. I've been waiting to do something with the Czech glass melons in this bracelet ... wondering what they might be. They're a lovely bead, a mix of greens, some with a bluish haze, some lean toward a pink. Some of the green moves toward yellow. Since they arrived I've wanted to blend them with silver. Today, for some reason, I turned some of them into this bracelet. The focal setting is an aventurine nugget, hugged between Balinese style caps. I also used a couple of large, rhyolite beads (rainforest jasper). I think these Czech beads would be wonderful with greys and blues also but today I simply put them together. As if the inspiration had been in the back of my head lurking, waiting to take action once I stopped wondering what to do with the beads. Like a small thunderclap.

I wonder how it goes with other jewelery makers?

Balance, rush, crafting and business

Is it perfectionism? I think it's perfectionism with a splash of eager rush. These earrings appeared in my Etsy store with the small cloisonne beads hanging beneath the large, Czech cathedral beads. They're all beautiful beads. However, generally beads balance best if the larger beads are at the bottom. After days of looking at the original earrings, I decided that the beads deserve to be balanced, and balance will do them justice. I wish (yet again) that I'd balanced them this way around at the first manufacturing! Oh well, here they are. Skyflower earrings, the way they need to be. :) I hope this will be the last major edit of a listed item in my shop!

Autumn leaves in the garden of Ithilien

These earrings are the first in a series of pieces inspired by Peter Jackson's amazing Lord of the Rings movie series. The garden of Ithilen, lying along the border of Mordor, is a place in which the natural beauties of the gardens of Gondor and the old Elvish kingdoms, are left in dim reflection. Like the final leaves sifting from trees before winter frost, the garden of Ithilien is depicted in a kind of grieved, autumnal state, waiting for the evil that blights Middle Earth to be vanquished.

These earrings can be found at the Candy Store.