new stuff for Oxide

Warren is trying to rejuvenate the jewelry case at Oxide with some new “funky, fresh, and artsy pieces.” So I broke out the anodized aluminum scales I have had for a while and not done much with. The assorted pack of 100 had enough for one or two five-petaled flowers in several colors, and a whole mess of black ones. So I made a necklace with a whole row of pendant scales, including the two red ones I got as asymmetric accents. Mostly just assembling, not major artistic fabrication. But it came out really pretty, I thought, and Warren liked it too. If I had had more time, I might have made the back of the strand byzantine weave. But I was pulling as close to an all-nighter as I am capable of these days, as it was, so it got a quick 2-in-2 chain.

The pendant, that I hung on the helm chain that I already had, involved more fiddling. The pattern for the 5-merous flowers is all very well, but I wanted to put 5 green sepals behind the five blue petals. I managed it, after considerable fussing. When I have more scales I have some ideas to make it work better, notably a sort of flat washer behind the whole thing to keep the sepals from flopping backwards.

Then I had a couple of flowers done pretty closely as the original directions, if not with the clunky machine-cut bright aluminum rings that came with the kit. There were only enough pink scales and silver scales for one flower each. But I thought, after I used pink jump rings on the silver one, that they would make an acceptable pair of earrings.






Warren has, in the past, rejected the rubber o-ring stretchable bracelets, but I think he is missing a bet here. So I entered two of them, and we’ll see what his jury decides. (Whoever they are.)