April ABS Challenge Piece and Completed Works

Finches and Bamboo, Northern Song dynasty (960-1127)


This months challenge piece was based on the painting called "Finches and Bamboo".  You can learn more about the painting on the Art Bead Scene site.

Mom and I worked on the design for the pendant and then today we ran over to Von's, our favorite store, and bought the rest of the materials to finish off the piece.  Both mom and I liked the idea of the finches and bamboo so we combined them both into a pendant.  Mom sawed out the pendant from 20 gauge copper and then I enameled the copper today.  The colors I used were transparent woodrow red/sunset orange, transparent otter/chestnut brown, black, transparent peacock green, and transparent soft/flax/wax yellow.

Because the painting is from China mom and I wanted to use silk ribbon in the piece.  We also wanted to show bamboo too, so we found bone beads that sort of looks like bamboo (though mom said it looks like corn to her now) and we finished it off with a silver looking toggle clasp.

So, here is our piece for the April ABS Challenge:

Mom and I also worked on finishing up several other projects that we have been working on.  I enameled the April ABS pendant, a horse pendant (called Day Is Done), and two bowls that I needed to fix from the last enameling session.

Day Is Done - horse pendant

This is a pendant I was going to use for a Stringing Challenge piece but I never got around to completing the project.  I finally broke down and enameled it today.  I wasn't looking forward to enameling the piece because of all the small holes and intricate detail mom sawed in the piece.  I wasn't swearing too much at her today.


Next weeks enameling project


Now, on the other hand, next week I will probably be swearing at her a lot.  Mom sawed out all these tiny leaf pendants to be enameled.  These suckers are not fun to try and keep on the trivets during enameling.  I will try and keep the swearing to a minimum.

Mom is also working on two necklaces.  She is using flower pendants from BeeTree by m.e., our lampwork beads and accent beads to assembly the necklaces. These are what she has done so far.

Now, here are the completed necklaces, that I have finally taken photographs of.  Again, the pendants are from BeeTree by m.e., ribbon is from Jamn Glass, lampwork beads by us.

First necklace is the Happy Gecko Necklace:

The second necklace is the Pod necklace:

The last necklace is the Flower necklace (sorry no name yet).  This is the necklace mom and I were having problems with the flowers flipping over, so we ripped the bottom portion apart and tried something new with the flowers and it seems to lay fine now.  Thanks for the recommendations from Copper Diem and Janet Bocciardi.

That is it for both mom and I today.  We feel good becasue we actually got a lot accomplished plus mom isn't in too much pain, so YEAH!

I hope you all have a wonderful Easter weekend!  We will be pigging out at my aunt's house tomorrow.  I will post my I Heart Macro in the morning.  I hope you all participate because it is a lot of fun!