Inspired by Reading: A Girl of the Limberlost

It's time for another installment of the Inspired by Reading Book Club!  This month we read Gene Stratton-Porter's novel A Girl of the Limberlost.  This book was recommended by book club member Terri Greenawalt, who happens to be a descendant of the author... how cool is that?

This novel was written in 1909 but I think it really holds up.  In a strange way, it almost felt like something more modern written to feel old fashioned... if that makes sense.  Occasionally the dialect tripped me up a little bit, but overall I found the whole thing quite charming.  Sometimes it's nice to revisit a kinder, simpler time.

The story centers around Elnora Comstock, a teenaged girl living with her spiteful mother along the edges of the Limberlost swamp and her journey into young adulthood.  As usual, I'm kind of terrible at summing up the story without giving too much away.  Suffice it to say, Elnora overcomes the financial obstacles to furthering her education when she discovers that she can sell butterflies and moths and other items from the natural world around her.  The first part of the book follows Elnora's early days in high school and then the story fast forwards to just before her graduation when money troubles once again rear their ugly heads.  The second half of the book picks up there and introduces a slightly star crossed romance into the mix.  You'll just have to read it to see how that all turns out!

While at times I was pretty annoyed at how nasty Elnora's mother could be, she eventually sees the error of her ways toward her daughter and mends their troubled relationship.  I appreciated how determined and plucky Elnora was throughout the book and how pragmatic and even keeled she tended to be.  I would have pitched a purple fit if I found myself in some of the situations she faced!  I loved one Amazon reviewer's description of the book: "Think of it as Midwestern Cinderella story, but with no glass slipper and plenty of moths."  That made me giggle.  But enough about the book... onto jewelry creations!

The ideas started churning around in my brain pretty early in my reading.  I knew I wanted to focus on the moths that were so integral to the story arc... that provided a way for Elnora to follow her dreams.  A couple of beads jumped immediately to mind, but as I started digging through my beads, I soon realized I have amassed a decent sized collection of butterfly and moth beads.

So much to choose from!  Beads from Humblebeads, Vintaj (painted by me), Round Rabbit, Kylie Parry, Green Girl, and Summer Wind Art

The first thing I created was a variation on a design I've made before.  In my last round of painting metal I worked up a couple of the butterfly in profile pieces from Vintaj... one in purple with a bronze-tinted glaze over the top.  I paired the pendant with various Czech glass beads as well as some ametrine rondelles.  I picked beads in shades of purple, amber, and palest yellow to represent the illusive Yellow Emperor moth from the story.  Who knows, maybe this necklace would have complemented Edith's ball gown from that ill-fated soiree!

For this challenge it seemed fitting to finally make something with the contents of one of the destash bundles that I bought from Andrew Thornton a while back.  I snatched this lot up for the wonderful Green Girl pewter moth pendant and the really unusual glass beads that reminded me of ampules, but there was plenty of other good stuff and I decided to keep it all together.  I'm happy that I was able to use so much of Andrew's carefully curated collection of beads together for this necklace and still have plenty of the ampules and the grey glass nugget beads left for future jewelry making!

Last but not least, I managed to pull together a third necklace this month with a cool luna moth pendant from Summer Wind Art that Eric bought me for Christmas.  (I think I'm overcompensating for only making earrings for the last few challenges!)  I love all the rich shades of green and brown in the pendant and tried to capture some of them with my bead choices.  I used a mix of gemstones (including a couple of shapes of bronzite beads... I'm not sure what the green ones are) and Czech glass.  I'm not 100% sure about the jump rings with seed beads on them... I'd love to get your opinion on that part!  

Lack of sun makes for a not so great picture... 

P.S.  While I didn't make it for this challenge, I did make a necklace with a wonderful luna moth bead set from swoonworthy lampwork artist Kerri Fuhr for the Art Bead Scene a while back.  If you missed it you can see it HERE.

Girl Reading: Inspired by Reading Book Club

The selection for this month's Inspired by Reading Book Club was Girl Reading by Katie Ward.  Generally speaking, I don't really look into what a book is about or even always read the book jacket before diving into a book club book.  In my "normal" reading this is not the case, but I figure I'm reading (or attempting to read) it anyway, so why bother.

This book had an interesting structure that left me wondering if it should really be considered a novel at all or if it was truly a series of vignettes.  After finishing the book, I'm still not 100% sure of my answer to that although the last chapter does sort of pull things together.  Basically each chapter focused on one woman each at a different point in history and how she ends up being portrayed in the act of reading in a piece of artwork.

I really enjoyed the scavenger hunt aspect of looking for the mention of the artwork from the previous chapter.  I'm assuming that happened for each one although I didn't pick up on it in each chapter so it could have only been occasional.  While I enjoyed most of the chapters, I think I really was hoping for more cohesion.  

Instead of picking one of the chapters to focus my creativity on, I went way more generic.  While some of the stories were very interesting to me, nothing really jumped out at me as an idea.  That's the way it goes sometimes.  Luckily, I had a couple of different book pendants to choose from to take a more literal approach (including a cutie from Mary Harding!).

This is terrible to admit, but I ended up just making something with the resin filled bezel that I had made with an old business card (reduce, reuse, recycle y'all!).  Why?  Because I suspect that the other two pretty book pendants are going to be for me... not for sale.  I've been under a crazy time crunch lately so I just couldn't justify the time to make something for me to keep.  :(

And as an added bonus I thought I would do what Laurel from book club suggested and write a haiku!  So here it goes:

Girl reading a book.

Artist captures the moment.

The act caught in time.

Make sure to check out what everyone else made this month.  Andrew will all the links over on his blog later today HERE.

Stiff: Inspired by Reading Book Club

Today is the reveal and blog hop for the Inspired by Reading Book Club.  Each month we read a book and create something... and it can be anything!  We're combining both the August and September installments this time.  For August we read a nonfiction book that I've been wanting to check out for a while, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach.

I've been listed as an organ donor ever since I got my first driver's license at 16, but I never really considered donating my entire body to science.  I'm not sure that reading this book has done anything to change my mind.  Even though I know that I personally will have no more use for the shell of my body after I've shuffled off this mortal coil, there's just something a little unsettling about many of the things for which it might get used.  I mean, I can totally get on board with the idea of donating your body to be used as an anatomy cadaver at a med school.  But other uses for cadavers, no matter how noble (or not) sort of creeped me out.  Especially disturbing for some reason was the chapter with the body used for car crash impact studies and the way they were dressed in blue tights and leotard with hands and head covered.  Go figure, a book about dead bodies gave me the willies!

As I was reading, I wasn't entirely sure what this book might inspire me to create.  After all, this isn't a book about death, but about the dead themselves... about what happens to the bodies we leave behind.  That being said, I think it's pretty difficult to separate the ideas of death and the dead... it is for me anyway.

So, for my creations I sort of flipped the whole thing on its head.  Life is short and we should embrace every moment of it before we find ourselves just another stiff on the table.  I kept thinking about what our tour guide in Ireland was fond of saying... "Live each day like it's your last...because one day it will be!"  With that in mind (and maybe the recent death of Robin Williams crept into my consciousness too) "Carpe Diem" ended up being my theme for this challenge.

I knew I had a Vintaj altered blank in the shape of a luggage tag and I thought it would double nicely as a toe tag like the one on the book cover.  I grabbed the Impress Art letter set that I won from Andrew's blog a while ago and stamped the phrase "carpe diem" onto the tag.  I originally thought I'd use the tag as part of a charm pendant, but its small size made me rethink that.  I ended up etching and painted an Vintaj Arte Metal bracelet blank and riveting the tag on top of that.  I wire wrapped some African Jade flat nuggets and finished it with a hook clasp.

While digging around in my art bead stash for another project, I realized that I actually had a polymer clay bean bead from Swoondimples that said "carpe diem."  I figured I might as well make a second piece!  I paired the bean with some charms including an angel wing that I had painted silver and a couple of Czech glass beads in coordinating colors.

So, I'll leave it up to you to decide if you feel like reading a book about dead bodies, but I do hope each and every one of you will heed my advice and seize the day!!

With all my preparations for the Art Wander, I didn't get around to reading our September selection but I hope you'll also check out what the other book club members created for both months.  Andrew will have the full list of participants over on his blog HERE.

An Object of Beauty: Inspired by Reading Book Club

The Inspired by Reading Book Club continues to be one of my favorite monthly challenges.  It's so nice to actually read some adult books and to go out of my comfort zone of genre fiction.  The May selection for the club was An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin.  To me, and I'm guessing many others, Steve Martin lives in my mind as a brilliant comedian... not a novelist.  Reading this book changed my perception... he's an accomplished novelist in his own right.  

I'll be the first to admit that I know almost nothing about the art world or the business of art galleries and collecting.  After reading this novel which chronicles the rise and fall of one ambitious young woman, Lacey Yeager, in the New York art world, I feel like I know a little more...and possibly more than I wanted to!

One of the things that I really appreciated about this novel was that he included full color prints of many pieces of artwork mentioned.  As someone without any real art history background, it was nice to actually get to see what was being talked about.

Naturally, it was one of the images that ended up giving me my inspiration for my creation this month.  Specifically it was Flowers by Andy Warhol.  I tried to find an image of the same one that was in the book (which had bright blue, red, yellow, and yellow orange flowers) but I was unsuccessful in finding a decent image of that one... so I just "borrowed" the version that Andrew pinned to our Pinterest board instead.  In looking for the "right" one, I did discover that Warhol had a whole rainbow of flower colors which opened up the doors for me to design with pretty much whatever colors I wanted!

Flowers, Andy Warhol

I chose this piece as a jumping off point not just because it was colorful and approachable (although that certainly was part of it!) but the picture played a pivotal role in Lacey's story.  It was one of the first major art purchases she made and a belonging she sold to finance her rise in the art world.  I felt badly for her that she sold it... but I suspect that I was more sentimental about it than Lacey ever could be!

Once again being pressed for time (May was supposed to be my "down" month and a chance to catch my breath... but not so much) I decided to go for something pretty simple and straightforward.  I know that many of my book club members will come up with much more amazing, complex, and thoughtful creations, but I'm just happy to have made something to be able to participate!

I decided on a simple long charm style necklace that featured some of my brightly colored Czech glass flowers.  I went with Vintaj Arte Metal to play of the dark background of Warhol's work and to give a nice contrast to the vibrant colors of the flowers.  I ended up just making a cluster of flowers and hanging them from a filigree piece on a long chain.  

I may yet play with how the cluster of flowers is put together or possibly add one more at the top.  I'll have to see how it moves when worn to decide.

This is a blog hop.  You'll find the full list of participants over on Andrew Thornton's blog HERE.

An Irish Country Doctor: Inspired by Reading Book Club

It's time once again for the Inspired by Reading Book Club reveal!  This month's book was An Irish Country Doctor by Patrick Taylor.  Lucky for me it was a super fast and enjoyable read since I left it until the last minute to read.  I pretty much read the whole thing on the Bead Cruise which didn't leave me much time to make something when I got back.

This is book is the first in a series (that I hope to eventually continue if I find the time!) that tells the story of young Dr. Barry Laverty coming to the small Northern Ireland village of Ballybucklebo to become the assistant to the current general practitioner there... Dr. Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly.  O'Reilly is quite the character and certainly has his own way of doing things!  So much so that Barry often wonders whether or not this is the life for him.  I loved all the humor in the book and the wily ways O'Reilly managed to get the upper hand with some of his more difficult patients.  O'Reilly has a soft heart under his cantankerous exterior which further endeared him to me.  I loved the way that many of the various patients (and their unique issues) got tied together and pretty much sorted out by the end of the novel.  Yet you are left wondering what is next for Laverty and his mentor O'Reilly and the residents of Ballybucklebo and want more of their stories.

If I had of given myself more time I may have made something more specific to the details of the story, but instead I made something that reminded me of the feeling and beauty of Ireland.  I had a great enameled copper pendant in my stash from a local artist, Becka Beads, that has a mix of shiny copper and swirly greens, white and black that sort of looks like a landscape.  I started by pulling a bunch of different green beads that would help accentuate the green notes in the pendant and speak to the lush Irish countryside as I remember it from my two trips there.  There is Czech glass, dyed agate, yellow "turquoise" (according to Fire Mountain Gems), shell pearl, and dragon's blood jasper.

This design is similar to, and inspired by a piece I did last year for the Vintaj Misty Morning challenge.  You can see that one HERE.  My husband was sad when I sold that one so I'd been meaning to do something similar for myself.  (I'm not sure if I'll keep this one or not yet though.)  ANYWAY, I thought that the idea of using the Vintaj copper ivy vine made sense... it made me think of ivy covered cottages nestled into the green, green countryside.  I wire wrapped a bail for it with a little dragon's blood jasper round like in my original design and then starting making my other wire links for the one side.

Inspired by my Bead Cruise class with Erin Siegel (and the purchase of the lovely book she did with Lorelei Eurto, Bohemian-Inspired Jewelry) I decided to do something new to me and do some knotting with Irish waxed linen.  I like the earthy, organic feel that it gives the piece.

This is a blog hop.  Please take some time to check out what everyone else created this month!

Karin Grosset Grange

Ann Schroeder

Jeanne Steck

Sarajo Wentling  (that's me!)

Judy Campbell

Rachel Stewart

Jenny Davies-Reazor

Andrew Thornton, Laurel Ross, Terri Greenawalt, and Alison Herrington

The Enchantress of Florence / Difficult Loves- Inspired by Reading Book Club

It's time once again for one of my favorite monthly design challenges... the Inspired by Reading Book Club!  This group was founded and organized by Andrew Thornton and you can read more about the group and see the rest of the 2013/2014 booklist HERE.  He recently announced the lineup for 2014/2015 and you check that out HERE.  Anyone can join... just read the month's book and create something, anything to share on the reveal date (usually the last Wednesday of the month although we sometimes switch things around like this month with two reveals together).

The January selection for the book club was The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie.  I was intrigued from the start by the idea of the Enchantress but, boy, does she take a long time to show up!

I will be the first to admit that this title ended up being a little bit outside my comfort zone.  While I agree with some of the conversation over on our group's Facebook page that there is a lot of rich imagery here, I just couldn't get the plot to really gel for me.  There were so many threads to the story and so many names that I just found myself glossing over things in many places.  By the end of the book I appreciated how all the threads came together, but this isn't a book that I'll be rushing to recommend to folks.

I was really struck by the idea of Argalia the Turk, the mighty warrior with his secret, more feminine side.  I loved the idea of this tough man who insisted that all his underthings be embroidered with tulips and had tattooed tulips all over his body.  I had an idea for doing something with the either the Vintaj Flourish petal or bead cap (maybe even both) since they look so much like tulip petals to me.  Unfortunately, I ran out of time to mess around with that idea but maybe I'll revisit it a a later date when I have more time to fiddle with it.

So, onto plan B.  Luckily, I had an embossed Vintaj copper blank that featured part of the design from the India Archway die sitting around from my last big round of playing with my BigKick.  I had used a mix of fuchsia and orange paints that fit with my idea of the colors of India.  Once I wrapped a piece of filigree around my painted square I had my pendant and my starting place for my design.  

Per my usual process, I pulled out a ton of possible bead choices that fit with the colors of the pendant.  Once I whittled things down, I had some fun and bright dyed howlite rondelles, some fushcia cyrstal rounds, and some bright orange Czech glass.  To keep things from being over the top bright and to bring out the copper tones from the pendant, I added in several sparkly goldstone rounds.  (FYI both the goldstone and the crystal came from some of Andrew's destash events.)

I didn't want to totally abandon the idea of flowers... I used a couple of different flower beads as well as a variety of bead caps that had a flowery feel to them.  Wire wrapping a little orange glass flower to the jump ring above the pendant gives it a little something different than what I've done before and I hope that the lucite flower dangle that I added to the clasp helps balance out the design.

February's selection is collection of short stories, Difficult Loves by Italio Calvino.  The stories were written in the 1940's and 50's and are translated from the Italian.  I don't know if this makes sense or not, but they felt translated to me... that there was something in the prose that just felt foreign to my American ears.

The cover of my copy was NOT this attractive.

I didn't even try to read them all (I'm never going to be a huge short story fan) but the ones that resonated the most with me all came from the "Riviera Stories" section of the book.  Many of them were tinged with just a touch of magical realism that hooked my imagination.

I chose to make something in response to "The Enchanted Garden."  In this story, two children sneak into a garden through a hole they find in the hedge.  Once inside the garden they pick flowers, swim in a pool, and eat tea and cake before sneaking back out.  Before they leave they also spy a pale boy inside the house in a beautiful room filled with collections of butterflies on the walls.  The children are unable to really enjoy the experience because of the shadows cast by their fear of being caught.

I ended up making two necklaces that are variations on a design that I call my "Secret Garden" necklaces.  For both of them I drew on the colors of the swimming pool and added flowers and in one case a leaf for the garden itself.  One of them features a butterfly charm for the pale (sickly?) boys collections and the other has a bird in flight for the sparrows that the children spook on their way into the garden.

I think it was the act of crawling through the hedge into the enchanted garden that really caught my attention.  As a child my friends and I had a whole world carved out in the space that ran between our backyards and the yards on the street behind us (We called it the T section, don't ask me why).  The neighbors directly behind my house had a thick boxwood hedge that did have a hole in it where we would crawl inside and could see their gardens and pool.  There was no hole in that fence for us to crawl through, but the idea just felt so familiar to me.

This is a blog hop.  Please take some time to see what everyone else created over the last two months!

Sarajo Wentling  (that's me!)

Jeanne Steck

Mary Harding

Ann Schroeder

Rachel Stewart

Andrew Thornton, Laurel Ross, Alison Smith, Terri Greenawalt

Bridge of Birds - Inspired by Reading Book Club

Even though the calendar says January 2014, this is the November 2013 installment of the Inspired by Reading Book Club.  With the way the holidays happened to fall, we shifted things around just a touch.  Life got too busy for me so I didn't get around to the December selection at all.

The November book was Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart.  True confession time:  I have actually owned this book since May of 1998 (I found the receipt in the book's pages!) and it has just been languishing on my book shelf.  I bought it when Eric and I lived in Chicago (or maybe even before I moved up there!) from the now defunct science fiction/fantasy bookstore called The Stars our Destination.  Eric and I (especially Eric!) were frequent customers and many of our "date" weekends in Chicago ended up with us browsing the shelves there.  Even though the store shuttered its doors after we moved to the Twin Cities, I still feel sadness that such a wonderful independent bookstore was forced to close.

Anyway, let me get back on track here.  Bridge of Birds was a book near and dear to Stars owner Alice Bentley's heart... so much so that she would scoop up a whole bunch of copies whenever it was going out of stock for a new edition.  She would hand sell this book to customers, just like she did with me, and actually had a guarantee of satisfaction for it.  (Ever heard of such a thing??  You wouldn't get that at a B&N, that's for sure!)

Alice loved this book so much that she decided to go into publishing to put out a hardcover edition of Bridge of Birds along with the other two Master Li books by Hughart that had long been out of print.  You can read a short article from Publisher's Weekly about that venture and her amazing devotion to this book HERE.

Sorry for such a long preamble, but I wanted to share my odd connection with this book and the bookstore where I bought it so long ago.  Since I've already gone on and one, I'm just going say that I'm glad that I finally read this one... it was a fun and enjoyable read for sure!  I think it was a great follow up to our last book since it has a sort of fairy tale quality about it.

Now for the creations the story inspired!  There were a few points in the story where the colors and imagery were intriguing or inspiring, but in the end I took a more literal approach based on the story of Jade Pearl.  Even though I finished reading the book very early, time has a way of getting away from you especially during the busy holiday season.

My first design ended up being some cute asymmetrical earrings.  I chose a bird charm for the bridge of birds itself for one side and a star charm to represent the Star Shepherd for the other.  To represent Jade Pearl herself, I added Palace Jade Swarovski crystals and pearl dangles to both sides.  I think that they turned out pretty cute but I had hoped to make something a little more elaborate since I finished the book so early.

Now that I had actually made something for the reveal (albeit a fairly small something) the pressure was off!  I found time to make a necklace to go with the earrings as a set.  I had originally hoped to use an embossed Vintaj brass bird on one side of the necklace, but it just refused to behave the way I wanted it to.  (I hate it when that happens!)  I switched things up a little from my original design by putting a large jump ring in place of the bird and changing sides for the hook clasp.  I used some shell pearls and a small flower carved piece of jadeite in this one along with some of the other componets from the earrings.  I liked that the decorative brass piece is called "Sparrow's Compass" and thought that was fitting.

I'm pretty excited that this set sold at my holiday open house in December.  Hopefully my friend is enjoying them!

This is a blog hop.  Please take some time to check out the amazing creations that everyone made for the last two books.

Jeanne Marie Steck

Mary K McGraw

Mary Harding

Andrew Thornton, Laurel Ross, Karen Hiatt

My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me - Inspired by Reading

Continuing my rash of late month design challenge reveals, it's time to share what I made for the latest installment in the Inspired by Reading Book Club!  You can check out more info about the group (you read the book and create something, anything) over at Andrew Thornton's blog HERE.  This month's book was My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, a collection of new stories inspired by fairy tales and edited by Kate Bernheimer.  

I have been entranced by fairy tales since I was a little girl, so this book was right up my alley.  Two of my earliest book memories involve collections of fairy tales.  The first was a Little Golden Book called The Blue Book of Fairy Tales that belonged to my big sister Kathy.  I was thrilled by the dark artwork and a bit terrified by it actually.  (Seriously, look at that witch on the cover...she's scary!)  It made such an impression on me that as an adult I spent years combing used book stores and garage sales looking for a copy of my own...and I eventually found one!

My other early fairy tale memory was devouring the stories in a big fat collection from Readers Digest that my grandparents gave me for Christmas one year called The World's Best Fairy Tales.  That volume introduced me to many new tales as well as the non-Disneyfied versions of stories I already thought I knew.   

As I've grown older, I've developed a notoriously short attention span when it comes to short stories.  Despite that, this collection really held my attention and imagination.  I only managed to read about 12 of the stories and I was sad that I needed to move onto other things since there were still tales between this book's covers that I was interested in reading.  Perhaps I'll check it out again someday, but then again, there are always stacks of new books I want to read!

I mostly tried to read stories based on tales that I was less familiar with and authors that I have enjoyed in the past... I'm not sure why this is the strategy I took, but there you have it.  In the end, I decided to go with an idea from the first story I read, "Catskin" by Kelly Link.  I started there because I had read and liked a collection of dark stories by her called Pretty Monsters and was unfamiliar with the inspiration tale.  (Oh, and I like cats...true confession time!)

Lots of good elements to work with here... witches, poison, cats, strange "children," and more.  Not surprisingly, I found this story unsettling and creepy.  While Mother's Revenge, the main cat in this story, was not black like the focal I chose, I decided this pendant from Earthenwood Studio still worked since this could be her silhouette with eyes glowing in the moonlight.  I kept things pretty simple for my design, just adding some Czech glass that has some bronzy sheen, rectangular bronzite pieces, and Vintaj brass chain and findings.

I also whipped up a pair of earrings based on the same story.  I was a little fascinated (and horrified) by how Mother's Revenge directs Small to lock all of the witch's cats inside her house and burn the whole thing down.  The next morning when the fire is out, Mother's Revenge retrieves bundle after bundle out of the ashes... catskins that no longer have cats inside.  And from the catskins fall golden coins that were "sloppy, slippery with fat."  Ok, totally gross, but that's the inspiration for these pretty little earrings made from pearls and gold filled findings.  I think I found the perfect prop for them!

As always, thanks to Andrew for thinking up and hosting this great book club.  One of these days I'm going to plan ahead and take a little mini-vacation for the in person meet up!  For now, I have to settle for checking out what everyone else made virtually... I hope you'll take a peek too!

Andrew Thornton  Our host!

Sharon Palac

Mary K McGraw

Jeanne Steck

Diana Ptsazynski

Mary Harding

Jenny Davies-Reazor

Sue Kennedy

Sally Russick

Erin Prais-Hintz

The Infinities - Inspired by Reading

So, it's time for another installment of the Inspired by Reading Book Club!  You can find out more about the group and see the reading list for the year over on Andrew Thornton's blog HERE.  We are always looking for more folks to play along.  You don't have to make jewelry either, any creative response is welcome!

August's selection was The Infinities by John Banville.  This book was a real challenge for me to make my way through.  In the course of 273 pages, you spend one day with a dying man named Adam, his family, their staff, and a few visitors and onlookers.  The narration of the story is confusing... it jumps from the dying, comatose man and Hermes.  Yes, THAT Hermes, also known as Mercury, messenger of the Olympians gods and the god of travel, roads, merchants, and thieves.  Another role Hermes played in Greek mythology was conducting mortal souls into the afterlife... and I'm assuming that's a big part of why he is watching over the family in this book.

Back to the story, though.  During the course of the book, nothing much really happens.  We get some of Adam's back story through his memories as he lies helpless in his sickbed and the gods mess around with various characters...but there is no real plot.  As I finished the book I couldn't help but wonder what was the point.  I don't want to spoil anything, but it just felt like the last chapter was spent hastily wrapping things up and saying "yup, the gods have watched you all and interfered but now they're going to make it all better...the end."

While I didn't find much to inspire me in the actual writing, I latched onto the idea of Hermes as a focal point pretty early.  I bought a filagree with a stamp under resin from Andrew Thornton.  I couldn't make out the details of the stamp on the tiny screen of my phone, but when it arrived I discovered that it was Hermes!  Divine intervention?  Maybe!

While I didn't really like or "get" the story, the last couple of chapters did give me some colors and imagery to work from.  Helen's sky blue dress and gold sandals, Petra's jade-green kimono, the red lining of Petra's razor box, the red satin pillow that the dog Rex had chewed, the clouds and rain, the green grove.  Ok, that's a lot of different colors, but I was determined to make something work!

I ended up focusing on the pale blues, deep reds, and some earthy tones to go with the color of the stamp.  I used a little hook and jump ring for my clasp, adding in some little wire wrapped teardrop labradorite pieces that made me think of the rain storm and a leaf charm for the woods.  While I mostly used Vintaj arte metal in this design, I did throw in a tiny bit of natural brass for extra interest.

Considering my lack of love for the book, I'm pretty darn happy with the end result for my design.  Thanks for stopping by... Please take some time to check out what the rest of the participants created this month too!

Jeanne Steck

Sarajo Wentling (you are here!)

Mary K. McGraw

Andrew Thornton, Laurel Ross, and Amy Roadman

Steampunk Leanings

Steampunk is a movement that's been having its day lately in literature, fandom, and design.  If you aren't familiar with the steampunk aesthetic, here's a cliff notes explanation for you:  it's most often considered a sub-genre of science fiction that is usually a re-imagined past or a post-apocalyptic future where steam technology has developed more elaborately than it ever did in our actual history.  For instance, instead of travel by airplanes, you would use dirigibles or ornithopters.

Me looking all serious in my steampunk inspired outfit at a local con.

In books you tend to see a mix of Victorian England or the American wild west with crazy steam-powered gadgets and often a little dose of the supernatural.  Here are a few of my favorite books from this sub-genre in no particular order.  Some are adult and some teen...and I'm not telling you which!

• Airborn by Kenneth Oppel
• Boneshaker by Cherie Priest
• Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
• Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve
• Soulless (as well as the rest of the Parasol Protectorate series) by Gail Carriger

As far as steampunk themed jewelry designs go, you often see things like keys, gears, re-purposed lockets and watch faces.  If you are interested, Jean Campbell wrote a cool book called Steampunk-Style Jewelry.  I haven't gone too crazy with any of my steampunk-type designs, but I've dipped my toe into the pool.

Here is a steampunk inspired necklace that I made in my recent adventures in UV resin.

I used a cool piece of scrapbook paper that was like an old-fashioned hardware ad in the bezel with resin over it.  I loved the gears on it...and originally thought I'd add some metal gear pieces into the necklace.  In the end, I went with a variety of interesting gemstones and a cool key copper toggle clasp along with the chunky copper chain.  I'm pretty proud of the wire wraps I used on the ocean jasper faceted teardrop!

And here is an older piece (I'm wearing it in the picture of me up above!) that I made to go with my costume that I wear to sci-fi/fantasy cons.  I wear this one in real life too, usually with a black turtleneck or something fairly simple.

I fell in love with the key hole pendant from Earthenwood Studio and built my design from there.  I added in some gears, including an enameled one from C-Koop Beads, as well as a couple of different key charms for the long, dangly pendant.  Since steampunk is all about mixing things up, I used two different types of chain... a smooth brass on one side and a snakeskin textured gunmetal on the other.  

It's funny and kind of neat looking back on something that you made a while ago... I think this one is from 2010.  My design aesthetic has certainly shifted over time and my skill set has grown quite a bit since then!  This was one of the first necklaces I made with an asymmetrical design and it was also the first time I attempted a wire wrapped bail.  I feel like I've really come a long way when it comes to jewelry design!  While I still like this necklace, I would probably do some things a little differently if I was making it today.  

Are any of you steampunk fans?  I'd love to hear if you have any great steampunk books that I may have missed.  Even though I always have a huge pile of books in my "to read" pile, I'm always looking for more suggestions.  Please let me know what great books you have come across in the comments!