I went from sparkly little girl necklaces to a beach-combing, sustainable piece this week.
It uses nettle string through drilled bone, small turquoise beads and beach finds to make an environmentally friendly necklace.
The finds include a piece of a whistle, and a tube lid. It also has a piece of pau shell, a mother of pearl offcut and a disc from an old necklace. The copper clasp is bound to the nettle string using old electrical copper wire.
This is one of my favourite 100 days pieces so far. It’s a neckpiece using a piece of brass from the beach, drilled and threaded on a glass and silver bead necklace. The glass beads are from Togo and were waist beads that my daughter brought back. The colours are just right for the patina on the beach find.
This is a silver charm bracelet that I finished for Christmas. It’s a commission for a friend with a piece from the Thames foreshore, from the beach in Fife, a witch stone from New Zealand for luck, a silver threepence and a part of an old earring. So it’s quite special, includes lucky amulets and each piece has a story. I plan to do more for Valentine’s Day.
The iron pour at the Sculpture Workshop went well. (Steve and I ran the furnace under the eagle eye of George Beasley and Eden Jolly) This is the iron piece that I showed the sand mould for in my last post. The found metal, probably copper, from the beach is now included in the iron.
This cup has a flat piece of beach copper in it:-
And this has some copper nails that featured in a post in January:-
The heat of the iron has melted the copper through to the outside of the cup.
This is a teaser photo of preparations for the iron pour that Steve and I ran at the weekend. It is the inside of a sand mould for an iron beaker vessel. I have put a piece of copper alloy from my beach combing into the mould to see what happens.
I now know what happened, but you will have to wait….
The pour was a great success thanks to George Beasley, Steve, Eden and the rest of the team at SSW. Thanks also to Charles Clark for the mould boxes.
I made 10 earrings yesterday as a set, using pieces found on the beach and other oddments/treasures from my collection.
juliacowie 