The Curse is Broken

Okay... so that whole "at least one post each month" thing I declared I was trying to do back in May? 

Clearly that didn't work.

In August, all I managed was a post about how wretched August was. Then in September, I whinged about how much worse September was, and tacked on a picture of a great many ties.  October?  There was no October.  I'm simply not going to acknowledge that October even existed.  That isn't to say I didn't finish any projects... because actually, I did.  I meant to post one of them in November (because there was no such thing as October, even though that's when I finished this thing) but every time I thought about it I had too many other things to do to stop and prattle about a necklace on my blog.

So yeah...  my belated post for October November that didn't actually make it onto this blog until early December is a necklace.  There's going to be a LOT of those on here... just a warning.

I thought it up way back in April of 2010, and then started on it that summer, after collecting all the materials  needed.  For some reason though, I didn't finish it until October of this year, even though I knew how and had all the pieces.  I guess it was just taking a long time and I got a little tired of it and needed a break... and then forgot about it.  Which is almost fitting in a way, because of the story that inspired it.  "Stronger Than Time" by Patricia C. Wrede (found in The Book of Enchantments) approaches the Sleeping Beauty fairytale from a different angle than any other I've seen.  What if the prince failed?  What if she really did have to stay in an enchanted death-like sleep for 100 years?  I loved the story, and the author's description (in the back of the book) of a castle ruin that sparked the idea... so when I found some grey marble block beads on one of my supply sites, and discovered some lovely hand-dyed silk ribbon that came in a color called "Briar Rose", this necklace design started coming together in my head.  Pity it took so many years to come to life.

 

The roses are sculpted out of the silk ribbon, which also makes up part of one side of the necklace, mixed in with some chain, and the vines are twisted satin cording.  With tiny folded ribbon thorns.  Er... those were one of the things that made me abandon it for so long, they were not a fun bit to tackle.  Getting the vine to appear to be climbing up the stones was not much fun either.  However I love how it all came together in the end.

 

The random watch bits and jewels are mostly vintage stuff, with a few shiny new Swarovski crystals thrown in.  The bit of Dragon's Breath glass on the gear is my favorite of the jewels.  I love that stuff, it's so... glowy.  I also seem to be developing a fondness for asymmetry in my necklaces.

It's late, and I'm starting to describe things in a less than coherent manner (...glowy?) so I'll post this and get some sleep.  Hopefully not 100 years of it though, I have WAY too much stuff to do to sleep in that long.

 

Gifts and Curses

First off, we have the gifts, both for friends' birthdays.

One is a Christmas ornament, featuring needle felted miniatures of Rufus and Marlene, the two cute little dogs a friend of mine adopted from a shelter rescue group this year.  It's kinda like those "Baby's First Christmas" ornaments, only... for a birthday.  In July. With doggies.  The dogs are attached to the base with magnets, so they can be removed and placed elsewhere if desired, and because it seemed less messy than gluing them on.  This is my first attempt at needle felting, and believe me, I was not expecting it to go as well as it did.  The base gave me more trouble than the dogs, but we'll get into that later.

The other birthday gift I finished this month is for a friend who loves dinosaurs, and also enjoys Doctor Who, so the obvious thing to do was to make her a snowglobe.  Only, with orange glitter and an erupting volcano... so it's really more of a fireglobe.  It's really hard to photograph a group of miniature things surrounded by stuff that magnifies, distorts, and reflects.  Who would have thought? It was nearly impossible to capture the post-shaking drifting glitter in a picture, so the photos below are unshaken. 

 

Now for the curses.

When I was working on the base for the felted ornament, I was in a hurry and was not being very careful... so I got a big glob of hot glue on my thumb.  A number of rather angry words crossed my mind, but all I actually said was "OW! Ow, ow, ow, owwww!!!!!" Not the most eloquent way to express my feelings, but it was not so much what I said... it was how I said it.  Loudly.  And with vigor.

I hate hot glue.  It's horrible stuff.  When you touch a hot pan or something, you can jerk your hand away and that's the end of it, but you can't escape hot glue.  It clings to you, searing its way into your very soul as you tear across the kitchen toward the sink, yelling and flailing.  Cold water does little to ease the pain as you peel the evil rubbery substance away from your blistered skin, and you may find yourself carrying an ice pack with you for the next couple hours because it's the only way to make it tolerable.  This is particularly annoying if you happen to be meeting someone for dinner at a restaurant.  "Oh, don't mind me, I just like having one hand shrouded in a kitchen towel when I go out. Can I get the chicken wrap?"

The fireglobe was not without its issues either, because it involved resin.  I utterly loathe resin.  Sure, you can do nifty things with it, and I actually have used it on a considerable number of projects, but it almost always goes wrong.  Mostly because I use it for weird things instead of just pouring a bit in a pendant tray or mold like  most people do.  It gets very sticky as it sets up, and then it gets everywhere.  I've had to frantically try to clean up numerous oozes, globs, and overflows, unstick things that weren't supposed to be conjoined, wipe down things that weren't supposed to have resin on them at all, and in the end, try in vain to get it completely off my hands.  Usually I give up and dust my hands with baby powder to get rid of the stickiness. It has often kept me up late fighting with it.  Then the next morning I find it has oozed or stuck some more after I left it, and then hardened that way, or simply not hardened at all.  Yet, I continue to use the stupid stuff...