Cappuccino or chocolate ?

Hi Everyone
I'm feeling as if I'm 'on track' after quite a poor start to the week. For some reason, I had a 'eureka' moment about 11am (yesterday) and felt (suddenly) as if I knew what I needed to do ! I'm hopeful I can build on my new 'state' and keep developing my skills and ideas. I'm basing this positive situation on participating with an online Do What You Love Project which will last the whole year. It's an exciting project and very practical with lots of inspiring prompts as well as quite a large community of folk involved. The whole thing is described well by the project title and is quite literally that. Ive been involved for about a month or so but somehow today, things just came together. My 'revelation' involved understanding my need to create with 'integrity'. I'm defining that as producing quality, beautiful, true and unique (I'm sure there will be other words involved over time) things. At the moment, my focus is jewellery but I see this as part of my greater mixed media thing. I guess it's a state of mind.

Getting back to the moment and practical matters. I was trying to get a name together for the new jewellery collection and the name I keep coming back to is 'cappuccino'. I will stick with it ? (for now). Yesterday, it was chocolate ? Still not sure !

My other dilema ,yesterday, was deciding on how to link some flat beads. I took the plunge and drilled the holes ready to take jump rings. I'm happy with the decision and have abandoned any other plans - I did have 3 initially. I spent lots of time being very specific about the hole size, shape and position. I'm trying to appreciate the need to almost 'get lost'/ be totally absorbed in the creative process. I do this regularly when I paint and feel it's this that develops 'higher' skills and will give my creations this 'integrity' I'm looking for. I'm beginning to look and finally 'see' the specifics of the jewellery 'engineering'. Each element needs to be just right - no matter how long it takes. Allowing myself 'time' to do this is important. I also found myself very pleased about working at my new work bench. It's great.


I also spent lots of time arranging the beads in different places and then rearranging until I was happy. I drilled the holes in several (size) stages so that they all lined up. I liked the wavy nature of the bead position (above) which allows the inner lines, collectively, to have 'movement'. This reminds me of the swirly patterns on the surface of a cappuccino sprinkled with chocolate powder.



My initial jump ring development was a little too short. I did want to have a 'u' shaped link but each end needed to either have an extra something on it (to stop the link from coming off) or bent inwards. In the end, I had to redesign the jump ring. I will hang on to the original idea for another time, I like the simplicity of it.


This is my second approach. The jump ring has one end with a 'stopper' the other is bent square - ish. I need to make more jump rings to complete the bracelet as well as a hook/eye for the closure. One side of the bracelet connection is flat and the other has this 'stopper' characteristic. I like the latter, it gives the bracelet an interesting feature. I like the colour of the copper link, I did struggle with choosing the right material for the jump rings. I'm happy I took the time to experiment.


Looking in detail at the close up of the beads - it's clear they need lots of work to finish them. I want each bead to be polished and smooth.

That's it for this week. Have a great weekend.

Thanks for reading.