fanciful devices

Have y'all noticed my laziness with listing narratives of late? I looked up "arcane words," that is, words no longer in use, and found this page full of them. Then it was just a question of finding ones I liked that more or less matched the feel of the piece I was listing. However, a couple snippets of actual poetry have worked their way into the listings this time, such as in these earrings:

He Hath Drunk the Milk of Paradise.
These glass squares and rosary centers were from Uruguay.
I'm liking how the big glass donut things flop around.




Poliadic.
These wooden rosary centers are also from Uruguay. The tiny hearts came in a bag of teeny things in Sparrow's first ever box of goodies she sent me. I lurv them. Even the long white bugle beads are from Opulent Oddities! I love using tiny bits from disparate sources.



Slimikin.
Here's this crazy carved bone button from Uruguay. The lampwork bead was from my latest unexpected mail bounty and the long headpins were made by Numinosity Beads.


Lugent.
I had a lot of fun making the scallops out of wire which also reduced the links down so that it could be connected to the bird's wing tips. And that dark bead there is Gaia.


Theomeny.
Here's a mismatched balance of circles, materials and holes. That is, the coin and the larger button have the exact size holes in the middles. How awesome. SacredCake gave me the coin- oh and the bird in the bracelet, too! But what I'm most proud of is that I sanded both buttons (from same latest mail haul) to get the shine off. It still has the inner luminosity of MOP, without that sharp surface gleam which y'all know I'm not a fan of.


A Savage Place- Holy and Enchanted.

OK, here's a little story. This glass photo was originally from a box Sparrow sent me. You can only see glimpses in this post from over a year ago (which is at least a decade in interwebs time):



 I cut it down with one of these:

 and then made a bezel for it.  I oxidized the tin, especially since when you bend the walls up and over, the pliers scratch a lot of paint off the tin... and only after did I realize the chemical was taking the actual black whatever of the photo right off. So all along the edge where I was brushing the Jax oxidizing potion on, the photo came off. I promptly freaked and boiled off the liquid that had gotten under the glass with my heat gun, then shmeared wax all over... and yeah it's kinda ruined but it also looks even older and maybe cooler? So I'll tell myself.


In any case, it pleases me to no end to report several convoes from  folks taking my "homework assignment" quite seriously. And from what my "students" have reported, it's been fruitful. If it is difficult to put what you do or don't like about something into words, this is when it helps to have several pieces to look at. What the pieces have in common, good or bad, becomes clearer to see and therefore to express. And once you can express it, you can more easily identify it in your own work- be it what you want  to fix or what you want to focus on.
Sparrow brought up an important issue- the size of the elements. For myself, I like the elements to be pretty consistent- tiny beads with tiny medals, chunky beads with chunky pendants, etc. So that's another thing to notice in your image piles.
As for readbetween's comment- you get into your studio by taking big steps from one bare patch of floor to another. Then you pick out all the sharp bits that have embedded themselves into the bottoms of your feet.