Where have all the flower gone...? (AE COM challenge)

Okay, next to all the other reasons why I am happy and honoured to be at the Art Elements team (formerly known as Art Jewerly Elements.... so AE and not AJE anymore! ^^)... is a big one... a quite big one... or one could say one of my most favorite ones....

...[please imagine drum rolls here]...

...I'll now participate regularly on the COM challenge!

The component of the month challenge! I actually love challenges due to several reasons. The most important ones are:
- Gorgeous component
- Already chosen component
- Deadline

The last one combined with the fact that I got an artisan bead send to me, makes sure that I take the challenge seriously and work with a time schedule and not... weeks... months.... years.... later...

While I actually do finish my work-in-progress pieces, there have been several of them that took me months to years. Just to be clear, most of this time was a break in between not working on the piece ;)

This time we got a lampwork bead day of the dead skull (quite a long title) made by Jennifer Cameron from glass addictions (have a look at her side here). The picture below I "stole" from her since I forgot to take a picture of the skull she send me before I started wrapping things around it ;)

I was allowed to chose mine and I wanted the one with the asymmetric dots around just one eye. If you are already a long-time reader of my blog you may also notice something else. Something quite shocking... I chose the one with yellow dots around the eye! Yellow, the colour that is my all-time-still-not-conquered difficult to use colour. I like yellow in certain ways, especially subdued and in combination with other colours but it is so hard to create jewelery with it. Other challenging colours I conquered over time but with yellow I may win single battles but the war still rages on!

I noticed that I lose my story line around the COM quite a bit and am rambling. Please bear with me, this happens if I am tired and over worked. Deadlines for grants are around the corner and don't care about free times and/or weekends, our pop-up store will open in a few days (you will get a full documentation!) and there were/are also some social calls you can't (and don't want to) ignore. All in all: I am tired and angry about the fact that someone shut down the heater and the lights outside (he may be called winter and I don't like him!).

Being in this strange mood the idea and the title for the little skull came up in my mind. As a reminder for the good times, for the summer with all its brightness, colours and warmth, and maybe in the end as a reminiscence of hope. The song "Where have all the flowers gone" is a political one and seeing what goes on in the world and how people who should and could know better react, I definitely was in need of this :)

By the way: I used bronze, copper, silver, aluminium and iron wire. Yes, a record for me! I added mostly czech glass beads as well as a dangle made from polymer clay by me. I love how it all turned out, the movement of the necklace but I also have to admit: Never ever look at the back side!

Thank you again for the great day-of-the-dead-skull-lampwork-bead Jennifer! :)

PS: I am still not sure whether I want to change from a necklace to a decoration piece... and whether I want to keep this "random" wire colour look. I tried it to get the impression of a grown piece that someone started to attach random pieces over time... let's see!

And have a look at Art Elements as well as at the blogs of all the other participants!

Guest Designers
Staci Louise Smith
Karin Grosset Grange
Solange Collin

Art Elements Team
Caroline Dewison
Susan Kennedy
Laney Mead
Claire Fabian (you are here right now)
Diana Ptaszynski
Jenny Davies-Reazor
Cathy Spivey Mendola
Lindsay Starr
Niky Sayers
Lesley Watt
Cooky Schock
Jen Cameron

Every Story Needs an Introduction... (at Art Jewelry Elements)

Growing, we are always growing if we allow ourselves to do so. If you want to get to know me even a little bit more than you got from my blog here, have a look at my introduction post over at Art Jewelry Elements as one of the new contributors. As times goes by I am not only learning to handle the more painful memories but also to talk about them and sometimes even smile (since the most painful memories are more than not also linked to our loved ones). 

"Every Story Needs an Introduction..."

Art Jewelry Elements - I am one of the new contributors!

Okay, here are some exciting news (yes, you may already have got that with the blog title alone ;) )! I will join Art Jewelry Elements as a contributor!

I may or may not have had a big smile over my face and may or may have not jumped up and down a little bit. I will leave this to your own imagination!

But I really feel honoured! AJE is one of the blogs I am following myself for years now and they always had one of my favorite challenges ever: Component of the month (all contributors get the same component by one of the members and some components will also be given away to readers as a giveaway... everyone will use this component to create something and show it roughly a month later).

My first introduction post will be soon and I am playing with some ideas in my head what to show / do / write for my first impression (don't hesitate to make suggestions!).

After some break I am also planning to join some markets again this year, hoping to get some new displays done with Rumpel (or rather get him an idea so he can create them for me! Including some LED lights...!) and last but not least: Rumpel and I will get married in October!

I you wonder, of course I'll create some special jewelry for this date (for me and maybe some loved ones).