one last post before leaving

Tomorrow morning we leave for Des Moines to attend my brother Brad's wedding. He and his fiancee, Lisa, asked me to make their wedding guest book, and I finished it last night. I may add beads and/or lovers' knots to the ribbons, but otherwise it's finished. The cover is my own painted and stamped paper, covered with sheer purple chiffon and the edges are finished with the same ribbon I used to bind in the pages. The scripture verse is printed on paper and stitched to a padded rectangle covered with hand-dyed (by me) silk habotai. I used little purple paper fasteners to ornament the rectangle. Inside are two signatures of five hand-torn pages each, folded in half to make twenty pages. It's really a simple pamphlet binding but looks nice.


Here is a new pendant I'm rather proud of. It's 1.5" square and is backed with a similar silver square. The squares are set together with balls of silver in each corner, smooshed together like a sandwich. I should have taken a photo of it from the side so you can see what I mean. The stone is a pale blue cz, and the whole thing was patinated in liver of sulphur. The texture was achieved using a rubber stamp in a paisley pattern, one of my favorites.

And here is the long-awaited silver shell pendant for my "mermaid's treasure" necklace I plan to enter into the Kansas state fair. I ended up firing it on my little flowerpot kiln instead of using my friend's electric one and it worked out just fine. I did fire it three times because the pendant is rather substantial--I used nearly 50 grams of silver in it. It has a nice heft and will sit well in the necklace, I think.

I will be out of the loop until we get back from Iowa, I will take photos of the trip, and I hope you all have a great weekend.