Tuesday, January 25, 2011

It Was All The Turkey's Fault

I had to come up with gifts for my girlfriends at Christmas and had no money to buy a thing.  I was 13 years old.  What to do? What to do?  Somehow for some odd reason known only to myself I had saved the turkey wishbones from feasts in the past.  Turkey wishbones? Could I make these into necklaces? Hmmm.....metallic gold paint.....hmmmm.  Yup, I painted those suckers ever so carefully, drilled a hole in the top part of the bone , used a ribbon and lo and behold: necklaces!!!  Yes indeedy!  I gave these as gifts that year and had one for myself.  I think my friends thought that I was cccrrrraaaaaazzzzyyyy!  I thought it was clever and cheap.  And that is how it all started.

Then I noticed that I had some turquoise nuggets!  Which I promptly wrapped in silver wire (it was cheap then and Tandy was the only craft place in town)  Wish I could find that nugget today!  I know it is somewhere in this house - I never threw anything out.

So then I went on to scavenge sea glass, now mind you this was in the early 60's!  And there was lots out on the beach when I was 15.  These were wrapped in copper wire. And pebbles became pins.



Finally, I moved on to sea shells and making earrings for everyone and myself.  I was an earring hog!


The discovery of polymer clay lead me to making some awful stuff!  And my mother wore them!  But not all.




I continued making earrings, but it just didn't feel creative enough.  I needed something hands on, so I took a metalsmithing class last year and this was my first piece

.
That did it I was hooked on metal!

5 comments:

AllWiredUpJewelryDesigns said...

Too funny! Glad you showed the polymer clay, that cracked me up!

SilverBlueberry said...

Ha, the polymer clay cats are too funny! Thanks for sharing! Your first metalsmithed piece is great :)

Happy Tortoise Designs said...

haha! I know someone who had a cat named checkers. ;)

Autumn Bradley said...

Ha! Those cats are too funny! It's cool to see how far you've come.

slenon said...

And all these years I've thought you were hooked on me.

Did I mention that I have lots of metal on board?

Kidding aside, I enjoy watching your artistic growth!