Some Brooches and Fire Chakra Colours

Fire Colours Chakra Bracelet with silver trim

So here is the bracelet that Blogger and my images file was playing games with yesterday!

We all need a little fire on these cold winter days, something to warm us up and create a spark.

These beads are all made on a transparent base which brings light to the colours.  Red, orange and yellow represent the first three chakras - the base chakra is red - low and slow, reflecting our base security - home comforts.  The sacral chakra is orange - big and pulsing - that represents our passion and creativity and the the solar plexus (surprise!) is yellow - shining like a shield at our mid section.  This represents our strength of will, our self protection - our adrenal system.

To if you've been feeling a bit lack-lustre and need a shot of energy this may give you a lift!

Oh, and $180 becomes $136 in the website sale!

Large Transparent & Dove Grey & Red Lace Brooch

For something completely different, this transparent gray based bead is overlaid with soft dove gray, then highlighted with bright red in a lace pattern.   

Perfect for your winter coat or jacket. $75 becomes just $60 using the 20% discount via the Website Sale!

 

Medium Black and White Lace Bead Brooch

Black and white is always good in winter - pop this on your favourite cardi and you're dressed!  

$65 becomes $52 this month.

 

Large Dark Ivory & Turquoise Round Dotty Brooch

Add a "pop" of ivory and turquoise to your teal with this organic looking brooch. 

$75 becomes $60!

 

Small Round Light & Dark Pink Flow Brooch

I love a bit of pink - it's so girly and feminine and soft. 

This little brooch reduces from $55 to $44 in the sale!

Small Round True Red Raku Brooch

And finally a shot of Red Raku - just a little one, though!

This style goes on almost anything with its lovely organic colour - there's a little bit of blue, beige, brown, black...and $55 becomes only $44 in the sale.

And let me know if you need any help choosing - perhaps you would like to see another photo or talk it over - I'm happy to help - email me or give me a call.

This Week 23rd June 2012

Manutukutuku - the birdman kite is traditionally flown at Matariki

It's been a lovely week - I've had the best time, even though it's mid winter.

We have begun a tradition in the past few years of celebrating Matariki, or Maori New Year in our house.  It's a quiet time of year for us, so we are able to take some time out to celebrate this time of great fertility and possibility.

It's a time to celebrate new beginnings, sometime around the shortest day, and marked by the rising of Pleiadies - a constellation of which we can see seven stars, called the Seven Sisters, in the dawn sky to the east.

In the northern hemisphere midwinter is usually celebrated marked as Christmas and there's feasting and breaking out of precious stored food to celebrate, while we are roasting in our midsummer heat!

It feels so much more appropriate for us to celebrate our midwinter as the Maori did and we love their traditions that go with that.  I found this little montage made up by a group of schoolchildren which  explains simply and clearly what I mean...

We've had a week of small celebrations at home - good food and wine, flowers and time with friends.
* * * * * * * * * * * *

The lovely new batch of brooches I made have hit the website - treat yourself to a shot of colour to brighten up your winter wardrobe - call it a Matariki gift!

Here are just a few...

And to top off our week we're going out to the gorgeous Ratanui Lodge for dinner with friends this evening to celebrate mid-winter Christmas (though the Toy Boy and I will call it Matariki, thanks).

And here's a warm fuzzy sent to me via Facebook today - it's lovely to get the GOOD news!

21 Pictures That Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity

This is the first in a series of 20 images to restore your faith in human nature - please take a look - it will lighten your day!

Pinking up...

 I've been making lots of brooch beads and they're almost ready for mounting onto boards and having their portraits done - I've tried for lots of colour in this batch.

They're great to wear on jackets and coats - my problem is that I always have to rat through my wardrobe every time I want to wear one - I tend to leave them on my coats - it's one way of storing them I guess.

                                                                                                              

I love lemons.  I love the taste of them in almost anything - someone called themselves a lemophile a while ago, and that really resonated with me!

                                                                                                                

I've tried to grow lemon trees at every house we've ever lived in and I'm sure I've left some amazing future specimens scattered around the country. 

Something eats all the new growth on our trees here and we think we may have tracked down the culprits - WETAS!!!  The largest insect in the world apparently!

I'm trying to discourage them my putting crushed eggshells around the trees - that's a lot of eggs!
Does anybody have any better ideas?  We never see them - I think they come and feed at night - they take the most enormous bites.

In the meantime I went and bought a lovely lot of lemons at the market last week and have tried preserving them for the first time.  I want to use them in tagines - they're apparently only slightly lemony in flavour - salty/sweet.

They're sliced almost through in quarters then packed with rock salt and into a jar then covered in lemon juice.  This took around 20 lemons!!

I used a recipe from Made in Morocco by Julie Le Clerc

A sumptuous recipe book full of the most amazing photography

I think this is my favourite photo - "Petits Taxis"

After I had begun this method I found another recipe by Annabel Langbein's Free Range Cook which I wished I had used - it used only a few lemons and seemed much less messy...

She slices 2 lemons into 6ths completely then freezes the slices on a tray, then packs the frozen segments into a clean jar, adds 2 heaped teaspoons of salt, the juice of a lemon (to cover the segments), adds a bay leaf and covers it all with oil.
Ready in a week, but will improve over several months, and once opened, keep them in the fridge.
How easy is that?

Maybe next time?
                                                                                                               

What do you think of the new pink background?

I've been looking for something a bit more colourful for ages, and pink seems a nice colour - feminine, heart chakra energy and all that.

                                                                                                          
Speaking of heart chakra colours, I've been wearing quite a lot of green lately and thought I'd show you these beads I made years and years ago that I still wear and love...I call them Cherry Blossoms these days.

Luscious Ladies Love Lipstick!

I was going to call this post "Boring Lesley Buys Lipstick", but then I referred to all my positivity prompts...you know the mantra..."Accentuate the Positive"!

Counting beads...!

I've been bogged down in end of year financial stuff and was feeling totally over it all before we went over to Nelson for the day on Saturday - the Toy Boy worked at his stall at the market while I went off shopping and having a girlie morning out.

I went make-up shopping - just mooching around looking at all of the gorgeousness and remembered that galadarling had recommended the new Revlon Lip Butters.  I bought "Berry Smoothie"  and I love it!

 

Revlon Lip Butter - Berry Smoothie

It's lovely stuff - really moisturising and a nice shot of transparent colour - subtle but not too subtle, if you know what I mean.

There's a nice range of colours and I have "Pink Truffle" in my sights for my next purchase.

It's a good price too - $27.95, I think?

It was a freezing cold day so we met up with my big sister and went to Cafe Olive where we sat in front of their fire and ate a yummy tasty (and again, really well priced) lamb kebab for lunch.  

This is a spot I really recommend - it's cosy, comfortable, friendly and the food's great!  The place has had many incarnations since it was built as "Faces" long ago and far away...I can remember going there when the Wearable Arts still had their shows in Nelson :).  

Cafe Olive - full of sumptuous couches, carpets and kilims.  They get an A+ for atmosphere!

From there we went on to be wined, dined and spoilt by our long time friends who live at Marybank with a fabulous view over the coast.  They have a beautiful home and D has an  amazing design "eye" for design - she can put a montage of lovely things together just "because".  I love that!  She inspires me!

The little heart is made up of tiny bells

So, filled up with inspiration, I have come home to finish off the boring stuff and get my teeth into something more fun - I have a selection of brooch beads under way.

I've Been Making Brooches

This week I've been making brooches.













They're terrible things to photograph as they want to lie sideways when they're just hung from a ribbon, but they actually sit really nicely when worn.
I'm really quite pleased with this lot - the Red Raku Hearts are so easy to wear - I pinned one on a favourite jacket some time ago, and there it has remained - I can wear it with any scarf or outfit - it just seems to fit in with all the clothes I wear. These ones are
Medium True Red Raku Heart Brooch and Small True Red Raku Heart Brooch



The Flow Beads are a nice mix of transparent and opaque glass - the little pink one has a lovely big swirl of transparent amethyst across it and the blue one is a nice mix of Sapphire and Periwinkle Blues.



And these ones are Small Pink Amethyst Round Flow Brooch and Large Sapphire Blue Flow Heart Brooch

Working with Silver

One of the things that I've been playing with over the past couple of weeks is a silverworking course here in Takaka with Duncan MacKay.

Our breif was to design and make a piece of jewellery of our choice, and Duncan would teach us the rudiments of metal smithing techniques practiced through the ages, including cutting, shaping, fusing, embossing, setting and cold fixing silver and or copper.

We could make our own ring, pendant, brooch or pair of earrings.


We were really lucky in that there were only four students, and Elvira, Mary Ann Nadia and I spent four mornings playing with Duncan's toys. And he has some pretty exciting toys to share...
My favourite...no surprises here...was the soldering torch! There's just something about playing with fire that I find irresistible!

But it's not easy - the way that solder jumps around in the flame is very disconcerting! And it runs everywhere!

I've discovered that metals also behave really uniquely in the flame - the copper in sterling silver comes to the surface, that metal anneals quite differently from glass and saw that the brass, copper and silver that Elvira used in her fabulous pendant reacted with one another to give unexpected results - rather like glass, but different.

I worked mostly in pure silver, which before it was worked was beautifully soft and "buttery", and has come up almost white in the finished piece.

One of the most amazing aspects of the course was that four of us, who chatted and looked through numerous books together, came up with such distinctly different designs.

Here is Elvira's pendant. She worked brass, copper and silver into this design and then bezel set an amber cabuchon in the centre. The designing and polishing of this piece was a joy to watch!









And this is Mary Ann's piece - she made a brooch in the letter "U" for her mother, Una. This was also an amazing piece to watch develop from stencils to finished. I just love the copper and silver Forget-Me-Nots.









Now here's Nadia's piece. She intends for this to be a wrist band, mounted on a leather strap, and the photos I took don't really do this lovely piece justice. I just love the way she framed this piece of paua (which she cut from the shell), in it's beautiful wavy frame.









And here's my piece. Its a brooch made in pure silver, and I've mounted glass (surprise, surprise!) droplets in the throat of the flower - with lots of help from Duncan!


So, thank you Duncan - that was such fun!