Little Jumbo

This little jumbo was born on my PC work table :).  For me elephants are a facinating magnificient animals, huge but has a cute kind face.  The little ones are such a delight to watch.  They are so naughty. I took a long time to finish this. I think I started it some 6 months ago, could not think of how to finish it.  I was initally thinking of the water color technique and then I did it with my favorite filigree design.

I always tend to relate elephant to kerala which is my native place and also relate it to manjadikuru(called circassian seeds).  I quite cannot pinpoint why.  May be some story I have read or heard when I was young or may be they both are related to Lord Krishna's temple.  

The pendant and beads are made of polymer clay.  The pendant is about 4 inches long.  The adjustable necklace itself is 16 inches long.  The cluster of 3 beads midway is adjustable.  You can bring it all the way down towards the pendant or anywhere you want to.  It is strung on burgandy colored leather cord.  

The red seeds in the photo are the ones I was talking about - circassian seeds.  

Ceramic-Like

With the Sun Lord playing hide and seek, no he is missing in action.  It has been around 10 days without him.  Missing him :/ it is raining day in and day out.  I cannot do any new photo session of my jewellry.  These are some old photos which I had made long back when I was just new to claying around an year ago.

I tried out some ceramic effect with clay and chalk pastel.  The blue earring in the left bottom end of the collage came out well.   But the red one did not turn out to be as expected and I decided to keep it to myself.  I had not come out with any beads to accompany it and it lay there for a long time waiting.  Now I have strung it to the blue organza and cotton thread to match it up with my indigo dye dress.  It goes very well with it :)

Perfecting Jhumka making

Somehow I find the jhumka making process a bit difficult.  I keep thinking of how to get the piece out of the mould in a perfect cup shape.  ok finally get it out perfect, but how will I make designs on it, there goes the shape when I try to get texture on it.
This is the first ever jhumki I made.

Other pictures of the jhumki of the "peacock inspiration set"

The second one I made was blue one but with a clay which was of not a good quality, I use that for experiment usually.

I did not complete this piece.  It cracked when I tried to take it off the mould. As a mould, I used a glass bead of this size to hold the shape while it baked.  It works well. Remember to put a thin wire through the eye of the bead and lock it before puttin the raw jhumka on it. so when it is baked carefully run the wire around to take it out of the bead.  oh, I did not take the picture of it.

With is unsuccessful jhumki, i tried carving after baking.  It looks good and it is easy to do.  Use any tool which is not too very sharp or too blunt to do this.  I used my pinvise with 0.5 drill pin in it.

The third attempt was with a jhumka with beads around the edges.  Now I was facing a new requirement.  Some kind of gum to stick the beads to the jhuka ends.  All these while I did not use any adhesive to stick PC pieces.  I found "Bake and Bond" from sculpey.  I resist the use of this otherwise.  I use it only when it is needed badly. take a look at the piece

Next one was a made-to-order teeny-weeny jhumka for my niece for her school function.

And I do not see any improvement I have made from the first one.  I think the first one is the best.

The Swan

Ummm, is it goose, whatever.  The idea was originally from my painting “black and white”, it has 2 swans.  I had drawn out 2 swans, and cut out the card. One would be golden and the other black, but 2 of them looked too bulky for a pendent.  Then it was cut short to one.  I wanted the texture to be feathery, and it turned out to be looking embroidered, anyway I like it.

This pendent was sold, I would say, as quickly as it was out of the oven.  My parents were visiting, so I had brought the piece down from my workshop for them to see.  My dad is a good critic.  He loved it.  He told me it looks like a painting, I was elated.  Someone who was visiting happened to see this lying on the table, she instantly loved it.  She picked it up for her daughter as and how it was, just the pendent.  The beads for this are all done but yet to be baked. 

So I put it on to a readymade jewellery cord, finished the piece with some semiprecious gem stones and had to photograph it in a hurry.  Finding a bright sunny spot during the rainy season is a tough job. I have a favourite spot where I can take a snap with bright sunlight, but I should catch him (sun lord) at around 9:00 to 9:30 am.   I like the glitz of the beads when exposed to the sunlight.  But I had to make do with whatever was available today.  Photographed it outside, that is it. 

The pendent is about 3 inches long and wide.  The beads are blue onyx, and magenta red agate bead. Instruction for care:  Please handle her gently, because the designs are from my soul. It will not break otherwise.

No earrings for this set.