Wild Things

   I fell into a time in my creative life where inspiration and motivation eluded me for a while. You know how it happens … Day to day life requires too much time and attention and the creative life suffers.

   I have dabbled lightly in my jewelry for the past year … however, I haven’t even kept a good record of the jewelry that I have made. I am a little disappointed in myself in this respect because I know the value of keeping a jewelry journal/blog. I often check back in on this blog only to feel like there’s such a huge gap it seems like an overwhelming task to get the blog going again. I struggle with the idea of trying to go back and fill in the ‘gaps’ before proceeding, but it seems impossible. Eventually I came to the realization getting it moving forward again is the priority and I knew that I had to just ‘jump back in’ and worry about back tracking as time allows. So, here we go … picking up in the present and moving forward.

Gifts for Green Corn 2009

   Greencorn just passed recently (for those of you who aren’t familiar with Greencorn see my post from June of last year). Mark (my unofficial brotherinlaw) comissioned me to make some special pendants for his family to be given as gifts at Green Corn. He sent the focal elements of the pendants to me in the mail. When the package arrived it was a mess of claws, fur, tendon and teeth. No joke. I had to strip each claw of any fur and remove the hard leathery tendon with my trusty dremel tool. Once they were clean (which it took me some time to motivate myself to do … ewww) I was able to begin the creative work.

   The items I was leastthrilled about having to wrap were the teeth. I just could not even begin to envision a way to wrap them so that they had balance. Interestingly enough, the teeth were my two favorite pendants out of the whole lot of 11 pendants. My number one favorite was for Mark’s wife, Rosialia. While I had a sense that Mark really wanted all the pendants to have a ‘tribal’ look, it just wasn’t right for Rosie. Rosie is a city girl, more comfortable in the bronx than in the middle of the woods. Something more refined suited Rosie and so i took to the task of making a simple tooth look refined, and this was the result:

Tooth pendants were once worn to ward off Evil Spirits and to protect children.

I instantly fell in love with this pendant, as did Rosalia! In fact, many people expressed a serious attraction to this pendant. Rosie was the envy of many women on the rez. 🙂 Three rubies (her birthstone) adorn the front of the pendant … lovely!

   The other tooth was for the patriarch of the family- Marks father, Jim. Though I *really* wanted to net the second tooth too I knew that it would not be manly enough to make a suitable gift for his dad, so I had to figure out a more masculine wrap and still keep it interesting. I used a new stitch and this was the result.  

The Emerald Tooth: Green Corn gift for Jim, the Patriarch of the Kaccv Clan.

The Emerald Tooth: for the Patriarch of the Clan

     Another smashing sucess! I really liked this one as well. The wrap was simplistic with a complex look and it certainly had a masculine feel. I was concerned that the required embellishment (an emerald for his birthstone) might strip it of it’s masculine edge, but fortunately it did not. I was very pleased with the finished product.

    Emboldened with my success I set off to work on the other pendants.

The Ruby Claw: Mark's Pendant

Black Moonstone Claw: Kristen's Pendant

       I do not have photos of all of the pendants comissioned by Mark, but I hope to get pictures of the rest to include in my blog at some point.  There were eleven pendants in all.  

     Because Mark’s mother loved Rosalia’s netted tooth pendant I also made her one for her birthday.  She had commented on how much she liked the black moonstone on Kristen’s pendant, so I created hers tooth pendant with black moonstone embellishments.  I put the pendant on a nice chain that was accented with matching beads (not shown here).   It was so lovely I wanted to keep it for myself!  Toni was very pleased with her new necklace.

I also made other pendants inspired by working with my custom orders.  I made another  pendant in the man’s knit style in sterling silver with a blue sapphire embellishment.  In addition I netted a nice polished quartz pendant in gold with three ruby embellishments.

MORE PICTURES TO COME!