First a false start…
She wants to be a butterfly, but we had words over what her wings would look like and I stripped them back off. So she will languish in the vicinity of the work table for the perfect inspiration another day.
I switched to working with the blue ones. I made a joke about not showing you bugs on fire when I was talking about my initial inspiration – I guess I couldn’t get that idea out of my head since I bring you a bug made of bugs or, well, bug products.
I used brass wire to create a bunch of teardrop shapes that I hammered. Two of these I turned into integral parts of polymer components. The large blue circles you see are the ends of a silk worm cocoon that I created a polymer bezel for, so they are hollow. The center portion of the cocoon I cut and twisted to become the “tail” of my bug focal. The body is a polymer base with a natural gold silk overlay (this is a cocoon that has been eaten through).
This picture gives a better sense of the height of the silk and polymer element. Below you can see the the silk I included on the bottom side and have a better idea the size of the holes. Isn’t it amazing that that gold is natural?
This necklace clasps on the side and I created it by twisting one teardrop and covering the other in polymer.
Just a glimpse of the chain which I had hanging around the studio salvaged from a thrift store find once upon a time. Literally the only goldy tone chain I had on hand but I like how the circle links echo the resin baubles. I wasn’t going to include this last photo since it is so washed out but it lets you see where that clasp sits on the upper right.
Many thanks to Lorelei for tossing the challenge out there, I would have never found these on my own and they did present a very interesting design challenge. Lorelei’s blog will have the full list of participants and I will update here too. Can’t wait to see what everyone came up with!
Lola
Denise McCabe
Mustard Bead
A Polymer Penchant
Pearl and Pebble
Peacock Fairy
Beads for Busy Gals
Dawn Williams
Shirley Moore
B Street Studios
Sally Russick
Pamela770
Erin Prais-Hintz
Heather Powers
MirandAck
Lily
Karen Firnberg
Tanya
Mary
Rosebud101
Ann
Toltec Jewels
Micha
Terri
