I have been making jewelry for almost 4 years now.  The beauty part of that is enough random beads laying around so that my necklaces don’t have to be just one string of the same beads.  That makes the necklace part more interesting, and while the idea can be copied, the exact design would be harder to duplicate. So you’re really getting a one-of-a-kind (just like you!) piece!

My foray into etching recycled copper pretty much completed the direction my creativity in jewelry is taking.  I love working in recycled copper!  You can use it with its current patina or scrub it clean, etch it and repatina it (as in this instance).  It’s Zentangle meets jewelry design.  Which is to say that all of my artjournaling over the past year has made its way into my jewelry.

That’s what periods of confusion are for.

Casting about for something to soothe frayed nerves (a very dark period in March and April which I couldn’t blame on SADD or anything else I could put my finger on), I found artjournaling, with its playful no end purpose, the perfect medicine.

As with anything dropped into a creative psyche, things really started mixing it up, like this copper covered, copper flashing paged art journal!  Oh, by the way, we’re all creative.  Some of us just haven’t found our medium yet.  In which case I suggest you hop over to Creative Every Day and check out all the folks posting lots of different kinds of creativity there.

Out came found  object and mixed media mosaics, mixed media on canvass and jewelry like the piece you see here.

I have a few other things I’m ready to try in jewelry…pictures saved up from over the year.  This week is pretty quiet after last week’s hectic schedule, and I think I’ll give myself some room to play as play is always an adventure in discovery for me.

Some of the other things that came out of play this year: angels (like the mixed media mosaic angel here).  While I don’t need messages that I have companions who watch over me (mostly because my Reiki master tells me they’re always hovering when she works with me), I’m not above taking it as a sign that I’m safe no matter what’s going on in my life.  And on the path (although I’ve come to think of “the” path more as “a” trailway I’m currently walking, since it seems that wherever you go you’re right where you belong!) 

What are you playing with these days?  And what is emerging?

Need some inspiration?  Check out these 8 ways to manifest your dreams!

Need a bit more than that?  How about this great little getaway!

Wylde Women’s Wisdom

The Angels/are not like the Saints.///They do not discriminate/but come to everyone./Their eyes burn green fire/but their kisses are icy.//They can play rough when we get caught/in the heavy crosswinds that swirl about their wings.//They are not above artifice/and sometimes appear in disguise://a mask of smeared lipstick, gypsey/bangles, or an old man’s coat.//Now and again they carelessly give us gifts;/an unexpected hobbyhorse, a day’s free babysitting,//a poke in the eye with a sticks,/or sudden slant of light on water.//And we are grateful, once we figure out how/to move within their state of complex blessings.//They work within great wheels and circles,/turning light to dark and back again.//They do not obey the laws of gravity/but laugh a lot and arise at will//to hover like vast hummingbirds/when we require attention.//What they want of us is the mysterious secret/ we unravel and reweave//down to dark and back again. Judith Roche