Hey Y'all! I've been gone for the past two weeks. I spent one week at the Holland School in Young Harris, Ga., taking Wire II. It was great. Then, the next week, DD was at Performing Arts Camp, so hubby and I snuck off to the beach (Tybee Island, Ga.) for a few days. It was our first trip alone in 9 1/2 years! The weather wasn't great, but it was just wonderful being at the ocean. We took our bikes, and between rain showers, rode all over the island.
More stories to come later, but I wanted to share some of the stuff I did in my class with you all.
Here's a cabochon bracelet with Rain Forest Jasper. It's my favorite bracelet now because I bought the stone from a man who was making cabochons. He and his wife were there with their grandaughter, who was Emma's age, and they became good buddies. They were really sweet people and we enjoyed talking to them all week. The wife, Betsy, was taking Silver II, and made this really neat dragon pin.
Here's the same style bracelet that I made in class:
This was a dichro pendant I did, and we learned how to do this kind of pendant. Silver is harder to work with than gold, so it was really hard turning the wire up from the bottom:
This was a double cabochon pendant. It was our very first project:
These were some fairly easy earrings that our teacher taught us when she decided to be nicer to us. I really like these a lot:
This was my daughter's malachite pendant from her class. This very sweet man that was there made cabochons for all the kids in the kids class. Later on, he made them each an arrowhead-shaped cabochon for them to wire wrap, and the Wire I teacher spent part of an afternoon showing them how to wire. DD wanted me to wrap this for her, and it had a little hole in it, so I ran a wire from the back, through the hole, and put the pearl on it.
This was the hardest thing we learned, the dreaded PRONGS. I really like the two outer pendants though. Our teacher called them "baskets". I think they're just so pretty and feminine looking:
Here's a hematite bracelet. This one took some heavy wire, so I made it in silver, in case I messed up, so I wouldn't be wasting so much gold. Our teacher had one done in gold, and it was gorgeous:
And lastly, this is my weave bracelet. I'm HOPING I can do another one and it turn out ok. I tried another one, and it messed up when I was shaping it on the bracelet mandrel, so I'm not very happy about it at the moment. This one is made with gold and silver wire. I like this one a LOT too.
My favorite line of the whole week was from the hubby of this woman who sat next to me. They were a sweet couple (60s) from Topeka, KS. He came in our classroom, and I showed him my hematite bracelet, and he said, "Wow! That almost looks store bought!" I just laughed, and his wife said, "WHAT?"