Flower Power necklace: Art Bead Scene January challenge

This year I’m really going to make an effort to participate in Art Bead Scene ‘s monthly challenge as often as I can. January‘s art inspiration is a lovely floral textile design by talented American artist Lois Mailou Jones. The colours are soft with the muted blues and greens balancing the brighter yellows, oranges, purples and reds.

Textile Design for Cretonne, 1928?
by Lois Mailou Jones
Tempera on Paper

The focal of the necklace I was inspired to make by this painting is a sweet floral pendant from Natalie Fletcher, aka Peruzi. The soft purple-pink of the flower is close to Radiant Orchid, the 2014 Pantone Colour of the Year, and the pendant is rimmed in a soft aqua blue. I paired it with a variety of Czech beads in blues and pinks, including a deep dark pink flower, as well as some beautiful faceted amazonite beads.

I’ll be linking this blog post up to ABS’s blog tour on 31 Jan, so pop over there to look at everyone’s designs. And I hope to get back to a more regular blogging schedule now that the kids have started school for the year. Stay tuned for more blog hops and some new designs. I might even throw a recipe or two in there!

Deep Forest necklace: Into the Forest Blog Hop

It’s been busy this week—school holidays, three kids at daily swimming lessons, fun stuff!—but I finally got some time to play with the beads (Mum I’m hungry, Mum I’m bored!!!). And in the nick of time too, as today is the reveal date for Lisa Lodge‘s Into the Forest blog hop.

As with all of Lisa’s blog hops, she puts together kits for a small price, and the challenge is to make something with the kit contents. My kit contained a lovely spiral polymer clay pendant by Staci Louise Smith, who makes fabulous beads from a variety of mediums, as well as coordinating yellow turquoise beads, green Czech fire-polished beads and green seed beads, both in yummy shades of green. Sadly, I didn’t manage to take a picture of the kit before I started playing with it, my bad! But, here is a (slightly blurry) picture of the focal pendant, with lovely greens ranging from olive to deep green tones as well as a rich bronzey brown.

Anyway. With the deep green colours in the pendant I thought about the dense green rainforests found in Australia’s far north. I dug through my stash to find some Czech glass rondelles in deep green with a picasso finish, some Czech squares in green and brown and some appropriately named rainforest jasper (rhyolite), and strung them together with some of the kit’s yellow turquoise and Czech beads, using the seed beads as spacers. I wire-wrapped the pendant with one of the turquoise beads and added a couple of brass birds to represent the life hiding within the forest.

I have a few beads left from Lisa’s kit, which no doubt will make their way into earrings and other pieces over the next few months. Thank you again for a great kit and a fun challenge Lisa, I always enjoy your blog hops! Stay tuned, the next one is in about a month!

And of course, I wasn’t the only participant! To see the rest of the creations, just follow the links below!

Your hostess:  Lisa Lodge, A Grateful Artist

Melissa Trudinger, Bead Recipes <– YOU ARE HERE

Kathy Zeigler Lindemer, Bay Moon Design

Eleanor Burian Moore, The Charmed Life

Jo-Ann Woolverton, It’s a Beadiful Creation

Chris Eisenberg, Wanderware

Christine Stonefield, Sweet Girl Design

Carolyn Lawson, Carolyn’s Creations

Janine Lucas, Esfera Travel Blog

Jasvanti Patel, Jewelry by Jasvanti

Shaiha Williams,   Shaiha’s Ramblings

Kay Thomerson, Kayz Kreationz

Karla Morgan, Texas Pepper Jams

Veralynne Malone, Designed by Vera

Toltec  Jewels, Jewel School Friends

Christie Searle Murrow, Charis Designs Jewelry

Molly Alexander, Beautifully Broken Me

Monique Urquhart, A Half-Baked Notion

Janet Bocciardi, Honey from the Bee

Dini Bruinsma, Angaza by Changes

Heather Richter, Desert Jewelry Designs

Christina Miles, Wings n Scales

Elizabeth Engriser, Bead Contagion

Alice Peterson, Alice Dreaming

Alicia Marinache, All the Pretty Things

Catherine Yvonne King, Catherine’s Musings

Alice Craddick, Alice’s Beads and Baubles

Ema Kilroy, Ema K Designs

Waterhole Dreaming necklace: AJE Component of the Month

Art Jewelry Elements is one of my favourite beady blogs, with a focus on beautiful handmade beads, pendants and other components. Last month, I was fortunate enough to be picked to receive one of Rebekah Payne‘s speckle beads for the AJE December Component of the Month giveaway. The beads immediately reminded me of the dot paintings created by the Aboriginal people of central Australia. Inspired by these paintings, I requested one of the beads in the brown/white/reddish-orange colourway, as these are the colours typically used. I forgot to take a photo of the bead prior to using it, but here is a (slightly blurry) closeup.

Dot paintings, like other Aboriginal art forms, generally tell a story about events in the Dreamtime—the mythical time of the ancestors and the events that shaped the landscape. The dots form symbols representing places or events, which together tell a story about a journey or an important event. I looked for some dot paintings that I could use in this blog post, but try as I might, I couldn’t find any suitable examples in the public domain. This site and this site both have some good examples of Aboriginal art as well as explanations of the iconography if you’d like to see some good examples and read more about it.

Anyway, a pattern of dots in concentric circles typically represents a meeting place, a campfire or a waterhole, which inspired the name of the necklace I designed using Rebekah’s speckle bead. After much contemplation of my bead stash, I dug into my small collection of Krobo beads from Ghana, which had both the colours and the patterns to complement the focal bead. I also found some small Indonesian recycled glass beads in reddish-orange and white, which my parents brought me back from a trip to Bali a couple of years ago. In keeping with the organic feel of the beads I knotted them on chocolate brown waxed linen, and finished with a small plain brass toggle clasp.

Thank you Rebekah for the opportunity to work with one of these lovely beads, it’s been a fun challenge! I’m looking forward to seeing what the other participants come up with. Take some time to visit the other blogs to see what they have made:

Guest Designers:

Stephanie – Confessions of a Bead Hoarder

Ann – Bead Love

Karin – Ginkgo et Coquelicot

Melissa – Bead Recipes <– you are here

AJE Team:

Karen – Starry Road Studio

Diana – Suburban Girl Studio

Kristen – My Bead Journey

Lesley – The Gossiping Goddess

Jenny – Jenny Davies-Reazor

Linda – Linda’s Bead Blog & Meanderings

Melissa – Melissa Meman… Art, Life, Love

Susan – Sue Beads

Rebekah – Tree Wings Studio

Caroline – BlueberriBeads

Looking forward and looking back

I cannot believe 2013 is over and 2014 has begun! What a whirlwind 2013 was—between my family, a very part-time job and the beads (oh the beads!)—I feel like I barely stopped for breath!

Some of the jewellery-making highlights of 2013 include

• the multitude of blog hops I took part in—they stretched my wings and challenged my muse
• selling my jewellery at The Handmade Show, a lovely, and local to me, show with a real focus on handmade products
• starting a Facebook page, which has introduced me to many new people, and of course
• getting my Etsy shop up and running!

Here are a few of my favourite designs from the last 12 months:

I’m going to spend the next few weeks entertaining my kids during our summer holidays, so I don’t think too much jewellery-making is going to happen. But I have a few things to get photographed and uploaded on Etsy, and I want to take some time to play. This is one of my Christmas presents …

… a set of uppercase, lowercase and numerical stamps, some fun design stamps, a stamping hammer and small metal block! I also got a handful of stamping blanks in brass and copper to play with.

Another project for 2014 is bead making. Mum and I are going to work together on some ceramic beads and pendants. She’s got a new (old) smaller kiln which will allow us to play a bit more easily. I’d also like to play with polymer clay a little bit more, maybe take another class or two. And I’ve taken a few metalwork classes over the last year or so, so I’m looking forward to combining the techniques I’ve learnt, and perhaps add some new ones.

On the business end, I need to work out what markets I would like to do in 2014. It’s probably not going to be as many as I did in the last few months as I am not finding them to be particularly profitable for me. I’ll be doing my best to keep my Etsy shop well stocked too. I’ll make sure to keep everyone up to date with my activities via my Facebook page.

Finally, I’ve got a few blog hops lined up already, starting with the December Art Jewelry Elements Component of the Month, which I will be posting tomorrow. I’m also signed up for several of Lisa Lodge‘s blog hops, starting with the Into the Forest blog hop on 11 January. It’s more than likely that I’ll take part in more than one of Erin Prais-Hintz‘s blog hops as well as Lori Anderson‘s Bead Soup Blog Party. I’ll do as many of the Art Bead Scene monthly challenges as I can. And I’ll keep taking part in swaps over at Bead Swap-USA. So there’ll be plenty to blog about!

Foodwise, I’ll keep posting recipes I come across that I think are worth a mention. It might be once or twice a month, it may be less often. But I did get a lovely stack of cookbooks for Christmas so I’m hoping to find a few keepers!

I’m looking forward to sharing my adventures with you in 2014! In the mean time, Happy New Year!

The ham and the jam

One of the first recipes I posted on this blog almost two years ago was a spicy plum jam, redolent with cinnamon, cloves and anise. At the time I made it I mentioned that it would probably make a great addition to a glaze for the baked Christmas ham. Well I can report back that indeed it does! In fact, I used it on both last year’s and this year’s hams to great effect.

My starting point for the glaze was a recipe I had in an old copy of Australian Gourmet Traveller magazine. The original recipe was for a Burnt Honey, Orange and Clove Ham, but in the magazine article, a number of alternative glaze ideas were provided including the apricot and cardamom version I chose to base my spicy plum glaze on. It’s a quick and easy glaze to prepare and the cooking of the ham itself is a doddle. I prefer to cook it earlier in the day, or even the day before Christmas as it’s not necessary to have a warm ham for Australia’s summer Christmas, but in any case it only takes an hour.

The resulting ham has a deliciously sweet and spicy glaze, and looks a treat as well, with caramelised edges.

Spicy plum glazed ham

Adapted from Australian Gourmet Traveller (December 2006, p 39)

Serves 10+

250ml jar of spicy plum jam

1 tbs lemon juice

1/2 tsp ground cardamom

1/4 c water

ham leg (on the bone)

 

Combine the glaze ingredients in a small saucepan and bring to the boil. Simmer for 5 minutes over medium heat. Strain through a sieve and cool.

Preheat oven to 180C. Remove skin from ham and discard. Score fat in a diamond pattern and place ham on a rack in a large roasting tray, half-filled with water .

Brush the glaze generously over the ham and bake in the oven for 1 hour. Baste frequently during the roasting process to get a good rich glaze.

Serve the ham hot or cold.

Notes:

1. Depending on how spicy your jam is, you may want to add more or less cardamom to taste.

2. The amount of glaze will be enough for a full ham leg, although I usually only cook a half leg.

3. The ham will keep refrigerated for quite a few days if you wrap it in a ham bag, tea towels or old pillowcases soaked in cold water and white vinegar. Change the wraps every couple of days. Alternative, freeze chunks of it to bring out as required.

4. If you like, you can stud the scored ham with cloves in the centre of each diamond before baking.

Christmas Eve Smoked Chicken and Mango Salad

This year, Christmas Eve in my house was a busy day of running around sandwiched between two family celebrations. Amid what seemed like countless trips to the supermarkets, an emergency dash to my folks’ house to rescue an esky (cooler) full of perishable food left behind by my sister, and of course, wrapping presents, I was relieved that dinner was already sorted.

About 15 years ago, my parents moved back to Australia after a stint living in the US. Along with all their other stuff, they brought a smoker with them, which gets dragged out at least once every year to smoke chickens, fish and sometimes other goods for Christmas feasts. My sister and I both requested a chicken this year and this is what I had in mind for Christmas Eve.

In addition to the chicken, I had a few ripe mangoes left over from a box I received a couple of weeks ago and some lovely fresh greens purchased at the South Melbourne Market on Monday morning. So I dug out a recipe for a smoked chicken salad that I first discovered a few years ago on the taste.com.au website (a great starting point for almost any kind of recipe you could imagine) and adapted it to suit the ingredients I had.

This is a recipe that is open to a lot of variation—you could add whatever greens you prefer (the original uses iceberg lettuce), choose different smoked meats (duck? salmon? trout?) or even swap out the smoked meat for fresh prawns. It looks great served on a platter, or divided among plates or bowls, and would be just as suitable as an entrée salad as a light main course.

As for this version? It made for a perfectly delicious family dinner on Christmas Eve.

Smoked Chicken and Mango Salad

Adapted from this recipe

Serves 4-6

1 smoked chicken

2 ripe mangoes

mixed greens

1/2 bunch of fresh mint, leaves torn

1 Lebanese cucumber, thinly sliced

1/2 red capsicum/pepper, thinly sliced

 

Dressing:

200ml natural pot set yoghurt

2-3 tbs chopped coriander

2 tbs lime juice

1 tbs sweet chili sauce

sea salt and freshly ground pepper

 

Shred the chicken from the carcass. Cut the cheeks off the mango and slice the flesh thinly. Toss salad ingredients together in a large bowl.

Finely chop coriander and mix with yoghurt, lime juice and sweet chili sauce. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Transfer salad to a platter and drizzle with some of the dressing. Serve the remaining dressing on the side.

Notes:

1. I’m not a huge fan of raw onions, but spring onions (green onions) or thinly sliced red onions would be a great addition to the salad.

2. Use a combination of different greens—I started with a mixture of lettuces, then added baby spinach, rocket/arugula, a little radicchio and snow pea shoots.

3. To make the dressing in a flash, chop the coriander in a mini-food processor, add the other ingredients and whiz until combined.

Snowflake Bird: the 3rd Annual Handcrafted Holiday Ornament Swap and Hop

Today is the reveal day for the Handcrafted Holiday Ornament Swap and Hop, hosted by Sally Russick of The Studio Sublime. In this swap and blog hop, we were paired up and asked to send our partner a handcrafted holiday ornament incorporating an art bead or handmade component. Lucky me—I was paired with Erin Prais-Hintz, who makes lovely polymer clay pendants and beads.

Without further ado, here is the beautiful ornament Erin sent me. It incorporates one of her limited edition Snowflake Birds and the leaves are frosted with gold.

Thank you so much Erin! I absolutely love it! I haven’t found exactly the right place for it yet, but it may just hang next to my desk so I can see it all the time. Our Christmas tree is a bit, umm, crowded (remind me to buy a taller one next year)!

To see what I sent Erin, you will have to visit her blog.

And follow the links to the rest of the swap-hoppers below:

Sally Russick and Beth and Evie McCord

Erin Prais-Hintz and Melissa Trudinger

Karen Williams and Shirley Moore

Lori Finney and Alicia Marinache

D Lynne Bowland and Paula Kramer

Kim Bender Hora and Jenny Davies Reazor

Becky Pancake and Lori Anderson

Veralynne Malone and Therese Frank

Tanya Goodwin and Sandi Volpe

Jeanette Ryan and Rochelle Brisson

Patti Vanderbloemen and Susan Kennedy

Last market for 2013 is tomorrow

Tomorrow’s table at The Handmade Show is my last one for the year, so if you live in Melbourne, come on down and finish off your Christmas shopping! I have loads of pairs of earrings, necklaces and bracelets, and even a few pairs of cufflinks for the sharply-dressed man in your life!

The market runs from 10:30am – 3:30pm and there are stallholders selling all sorts of handmade goodies including candles, cards, clothing, children’s toys, Christmas decorations and more. Activities for the kids include free face painting and a lolly-guessing competition. Cafe Handmade does a mean bacon and egg sandwich, among other delicious offerings. Musical entertainment will be provided by Marisa Rae Quigley. And there’ll be giveaways for market shoppers, including some for the kids.

Hope to see you there!

Saturday 14th December
10.30am – 3.30pm
St. Anthony’s Parish Hall
164 Neerim Rd (cnr Grange Rd), Glen Huntly

Birds of a Feather: Art Bead Scene Ornament Blog Hop

It comes as no surprise to those who know me that I love Christmas. And one of my favourite things about the holiday season are the decorations. I’ve amassed quite an eclectic collection of ornaments over the years, from shiny baubles to paper ornaments painstakingly made by my children at preschool and kindergarten. Our tree is lovingly decorated by my children and I, and bears no resemblance to the carefully coordinated trees I see in magazines and Christmas displays, and that’s just the way I like it.

This year I’m taking part in a couple of handmade ornament blog hops. The first of them is Art Bead Scene‘s 4th Annual Ornament Blog Hop. The rules of this bog hop are simple—to create a handmade ornament using an art bead or handmade component.

I decided this year to do something with polymer clay. It’s a medium I don’t have a lot of experience with, but it’s definitely fun to play with. For these two ornaments, I used a robin-shaped cookie cutter to cut out a bird shape from a textured slab of polymer clay. After baking I highlighted the texture with gilders paste. The top bead is Czech glass in a deep red and the bird’s legs are waxed linen. I used some funky wire with a glittery coating to put it all together.

But wait, that’s not all I made. I also made some ornaments using some chandelier crystals that I rescued from a broken chandelier that a friend of mine recently replaced. The larger crystal, a baroque shape that reminds me of a Christmas tree, is dangling from a sweet green and white swirled lampwork bead made by Bellissimo Jewels. I picked up the bead from a bowl of orphans at a recent bead show with the intent to use it in a Christmas ornament. The two smaller ornaments use tear-shaped chandelier drops, with some green lampwork glass beads (alas, these particular beads are more ordinary, mass-produced lampwork beads, rather than artisan-made, but they are still very Christmassy). I plan to gift these ornaments to the friend whose chandelier I stripped!

You’ll have to wait until 14th December to see the ornament I made for Sally Russick’s 3rd Annual Handcrafted Ornament Swap and Hop. My swap partner was Erin Prais-Hintz and I’ll be showing off the beautiful ornament she made me then too.

I’ll be linking this blog post up to the Art Bead Scene blog hop via an In Linkz tool. To see what the other participants have made, go to the main post on Art Bead Scene here.

I Love Clay blog hop

We are well and truly in the middle of what we call the silly season here in Australia: the school year finishes in two weeks, we have daycare, kinder and school events to go to, a ballet school concert of epic proportions, catch-ups with friends, birthday parties for TWO of my kids, and more. In the midst of all of that madness, I am trying to sneak off to do the Christmas shopping, make presents for teachers and family, and all the rest of it! As I said, we call it the silly season and for good reason!

So, I guess I’m trying to say I haven’t done as much as I’d like for this blog hop, the latest in a series organised and hosted by Lisa Lodge. As is usual in Lisa’s blog hops, a kit was purchased, with the idea of using as much of it as possible. Given the title of the blog hop, the kit consisted of clay beads, and in my case the beads came from Elaine Ray, a wonderful bead artist from North Carolina.

I forgot to take a photo of all the beads together, sigh. But here are most of them, and you’ll see the other ones if you keep reading. The beads are glazed with a deep dark navy blue glaze with a light biscuit brown clay background. The pendant is cute with its little victory salute, it makes me think of hippies.

I did a bit of thinking about what colour to put the navy beads with, and was inspired by the current Art Bead Scene painting by Wassily Kandinsky, which features a lot of navy blue and a deep rosy pink, among other colours. So I paired the diamond-shaped frame beads with tiny pink Czech glass rounds in raspberry pink to make a sweet little pair of earrings.

I’m still contemplating what to do with the remaining beads, and I hope that I can make something else with them all soon. In the mean time, thank you for a fun kit and hop, Lisa. And please check out the other participants in this blog hop:

Your hostess:  Lisa Lodge, A Grateful Artist

Melissa Trudinger, Bead Recipes <– YOU ARE HERE

Kathy Zeigler Lindemer, Bay Moon Design

Eleanor Burian Moore, The Charmed Life

Jo-Ann Woolverton, It’s a Beadiful Creation

Chris Eisenberg, Wanderware

Carolyn Lawson, Carolyns Creations

Bonnie Coursolle, Jasper’s Gems

Dolores Raml, Crafty D’s Creations

Therese Frank, Therese’s Treasures

Christine Stonefield, Sweet Girl Design

Carolyn Lawson, Carolyn’s Creations

Mowse Doyle, Mowse Made This

Janine Lucas, Esfera Travel Blog

 Karin Grosset Grange, Ginkgo et Coquelicot

Kelli Nelson, Zenith Jade Creations

Ann Schroeder, Bead Love

Jasvanti Patel, Jewelry by Jasvanti

Candida Castleberry, Sugar Spun Beadworks

Robin Reed, Artistry HCBD

Katrina Taylor, I Wanna Go Out