pearls - The Seventh Sphinx

August 29, 2013August 29, 2013

crafted: multi-strand necklace ft. pearls, coral, lapis lazuli

I recently made a multi-strand necklace, inspired by a challenge on the pearl-guide beader’s forum to put something together with three strands or more. [If you’re here from PG, you may have seen this already.]

Provided it’s feasible*, I love to make stuff. Maybe even more than the making, I enjoy thinking up stuff to make. Or rather thinking up stuff I want and, when I can’t find it, concluding that I’ll have to make it. If I have or can acquire the know-how, there is that undeniable appeal of being able to make myself precisely what I want (and such good gifts they make, too), with no compromise. Well, unless I muck it up.

*at least roughly within my abilities, i.e. the project won’t be abandoned, or a disaster, or impossible, or an ‘educational experience’ with no tangible results…(there have been a lot of those)

I used lapis lazuli chips, coral branches, and 5-5.5mm button pearls (all from JP Stachura). I knotted the pearl strand (on Power Pro, if you’re interested) and simply strung the others.

[Possibly you remember how much I like pearls. How very much.]

I love, love these colors together. Separately, too, but especially together. From the beginning I was set on weaving the strands together (rather than making a torsade), to emphasize the jagged quality of the elements, and break up the chunks of color.

Part of the challenge was naming the piece. With the coral and the pearls together it seems like the necklace of a sea nymph to me, so: The Nereid.

I like naming things.

August 15, 2013

the straw fedora

Style ain’t nothing but keeping the same idea from beginning to end. Everybody got it.

–August Wilson, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

I got a new hat, a snazzy little blunt-brimmed straw fedora in bright ivory. Arguably out of place anywhere but summer.

You gotta get. that. dirt off your shoulder…

Some light, easy fare for the last days of summer. Old Navy top, Hollister cut-offs (thrifted, cut off myself, as is invariably best – don’t want them to look too neat or precise), Victoria’s Secret python bikini top, Superga sneakers, Goorin Bros. Marin fedora, Fossil watch, antique scarab pendant, Pearls of Joy 6-7mm studs. On the lips: OCC lip tar in Banjee.

This is my rather dull balcony. There’s a fair amount of hat holding because there was a real danger of having it blown off. Plus, it looks saucy.

If you can’t do gangster poses with a fedora, when can you?

Resolved to play more with black and white. Got the excellent advice to include some pure black or white (or both) in the composition to maximize the range of contrast. Have a bit of a thing for sepia, too.

This lip color is a straight, marigold orange (swatched here in my ode to orange). I was skeptical to use it alone–thought it would look too editorial/bizarre–but after messing around a bit, adding a little gold powder to the center, I really liked it. Not as distracting/weird as you would think bright orange creamsicle lips would be, right? [Or maybe I got desensitized over time…] Fruits of experimentation.