For years I've been saying I want to unleash my inner freeformer, and I have made a few pieces with which I am reasonably happy. I do feel, however, that I am holding back from true exploration, so a bit of a push is sometimes welcome. I decided to take part in a blog hop organised by Mandi Ainsworth via the
Freeform Peyote Beading group on Facebook. The brief was to use a 'found' object and capture it in Peyote. I thought this would be a big inspiration, but in fact I ended up 'dithering' for the longest time as to which of my 'found objects I could use: a rock, a shell, an acorn and a twig were all attempted with messy and unaesthetic results. Then a few days ago I was passing the 'free to a good home' table at work, and saw some discarded glass vials, still in the original box and unused.
They are of a type of precision glassware for laboratories known as Quickfit, which has joints which can be connected to different apparatus according to the codes. These have the numbers 10/19 on them which indicates which other pieces may be joined to make up a full apparatus... I decided to turn a vial into a pendant. The stopper may well be embellished as well. Because I took so long to decide, I'm only at the beginning stage, and have decided to call my piece 'Fool's Gold' as it has Alchemical and frivolous aspects, and my colour scheme is gold. Here is my work so far:
As you can see I can keep my working soup in the vial until needed, I expect I will leave some inside to add interest. I can see a few more of these in my future, I love combining the scientific with beading!
Please take time to visit the other blogs listed below (names should be clickable). I can't wait to see what other people began with, and the results of their inspiration:
