Allons-y! It's my first Doctor Who jewelry set!

A couple days ago I purchased a metal stamping kit to create jewelry with awesome quotes and sayings. I've always admired this kind of jewelry, but it does take some investment to get the required tools! I finally broke down and now I'm having fun with a rustic metal look that I've never really incorporated into my jewelry pieces before.

It's probably not a surprise to you all that I am a Doctor Who fan. I have my online friend Elenatintil to blame for introducing me to the show, and several irl friends to blame for getting me completely addicted!

For those of you not familiar with Doctor Who... it's complete bonkers to explain. You always wind up sounding like an idiot, but believe me when I say the show's eccentricities make it epic. Basically it is a BBC show about an alien known only as the Doctor who goes around in a 1960's blue Police Box (which is actually a spaceship called the TARDIS) with various companions (typically a modern day London girl), traveling throughout all of time and space and having wacky, deep, usually-quite-intelligent, and hard-to-explain adventures. Oh, and the Doctor is played by several different actors.

This was an image which greatly inspired this jewelry set:

I don't know who made the compilation graphic with the quote on it, but the artwork featured in this picture was made by Alicexz on DeviantArt.

People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect,

but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint -

it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff.

I love that "wibbly wobbly timey wimey" quote. It's handy to flourish when your brother is asking you to think about light cones and fourth dimensions. :) "It's all just wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff!"

One of my favorite things about Doctor Who is the pure wonder that the Doctor has bubbled up inside of him and how much beauty he sees in everything from the construction of a man-eating robot to a distant star to a single leaf on planet Earth.

This line, which he says when inviting a friend to join him on his adventures, is short and beautiful:

All of time and space; everywhere and anywhere; every star that ever was... Where do you want to start?

I handstamped the letters onto aluminum, cut out the metal and sanded the edges, punched in holes for the TARDIS blue eyelets, and strung everything onto darkened steel chain sprinkled with blue glass cats-eye beads.

If you are interested, the necklace and two bracelets are for sale as a set on my Shoppe.

Also, I LOVE my camera and its lenses. They were a graduation present and I've been having SO MUCH FUN playing with the settings. :)

Fellow Whovians... what is your favorite Doctor Who quote? And your favorite episode and companion and Doctor? Personally I love Don't Blink, Amy, Martha, and Clara (don't make me pick!) and my bug-eyed Doctor (lol-- it's a joke in my family-- I mean the talented David Tennant of course!).

As a bonus, here is the very first piece that I made with my stamping kit! "Inconceivable!" is, of course, from The Princess Bride, one of the most quotable movies of all time. This one has chainmaille details.

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

Namárië

I finished this calligraphy piece several months ago but forgot to blog it-- it's J.R.R. Tolkien's beautiful poem Namárië from The Lord of the Rings. It is written in Quenya (the High Elvish language). On the left, the poem is written in our alphabet, and on the write, it is written in the Tengwar (Elvish) script.

The poem is a beautiful piece which the Lady Galadriel sings to Frodo when the Fellowship leaves Lothlorien to destroy the Ring. 

I didn't have space to fit the entire poem on my little sheet of paper board, so I just used the first stanza and stuck the final two lines (about farewells and finding Valinor) on at the end. 

The border was done entirely freehand using india ink and watercolors. I am pretty proud of it-- this was my first time making an Art Nouveau border, and I'm getting better at making celtic knots with decorative tips.

The heraldic device at the top is the symbol for Feanor, as designed by Tolkien himself. I thought this device would be fitting because not only is Feanor Galadriel's anscestor (if I have my genealogy straight), but it was mostly because of his family that the Elves were banished from Valinor-- and this poem is all about Galadriel's longing for Valinor when she thought she could not return, but nonetheless wished that Frodo may make it there one day. (Valinor is sort of like an Elvish heaven-- sort of, not really, but it's the best description I can come up with off the top of my head).

Here's the English version of the poem:

Ah! like gold fall the leaves in the wind,
long years numberless as the wings of trees!
The years have passed like swift draughts
of the sweet mead in lofty halls beyond the West,
beneath the blue vaults of Varda
wherein the stars tremble in the song of her voice, holy and queenly.

Who now shall refill the cup for me?

For now the Kindler, Varda, the Queen of the Stars,
from Mount Everwhite has uplifted her hands like clouds,
and all paths are drowned deep in shadow;
and out of a grey country darkness lies on the foaming waves between us,
and mist covers the jewels of Calacirya for ever.
Now lost, lost to those from the East is Valimar!
Farewell! Maybe thou shalt find Valimar.
Maybe even thou shalt find it. Farewell!

______________
For those of you complete Tolkienites, the title of this blog post ("Farewell") is not about me saying farewell to blogging or anything. I have one more crazy busy week of school left, and after that I will be taking a couple of days to just do nothing and not feel guilty about it (in other words, I will curl up on the hammock for two days and do nothing but devour some novels and drink lots of iced tea and catch up on TV shows before bed). After that, however, I will be working on some of the hundreds of creative projects that have been clanking around in my brain. :) 

It's so incredibly strange to think that I am almost done with high school. It's been a beautiful four years and I've learned and grown so much! For all of you still in school, when does your summer vacation begin?

Skylines and Turtles

I've grown up in semi-rural and suburban areas, so cities always overwhelm me. However, there is definitely something beautiful about all the hustle-and-bustle and the strangely crowded buildings. Last weekend, we visited some family in Chicago for my cousin's baptism. It was my first trip to the Windy City, and the only sightseeing we did was a stroll along Lake Michigan.

That walk was beautiful and eerie. The lake is practically an ocean, and it even has a proper beach. After driving by so many crowded streets it was strange to walk on the beach and see no more people than I see hiking in the woods at home.

The pier, snuggled between a gray sky and cold gray water, was empty, but we could still see the busy skyline from a distance.

It was a lovely trip and I took some really cool pictures with my family!

There's been this strange sense of unreality for me lately-- it's probably one of those things most teens get when preparing to graduate high school and "start being adults." When we came back home and I had a bit of free time after school and work, I went hiking in our local woods. These are the same trails that I've walked and biked for three years, but the powerful scent of honeysuckle and the heavy, damp forest air made it feel more like a fairytale adventure than one of the crisp hikes I'm used to.

 I know I'm being florid right now. Oh well. Bloggers are allowed to do that sometimes.

And look! I found a woodhollow tree!

I ran into two box turtles on my walk. These fellows are anything but shy! When I got up close and personal to this turtle, he nonchalantly chewed a sprig of grass and kept his quizzically distant gaze fixed on my camera lense. All he needs is a pair of sunglasses and he'll pull of the "cool dude" look really well!

THIS turtle, however, did nothing but glare at me.

Flowers don't glare. They explode like fireworks instead.

My DIY Craft Fair Display

Yesterday I was a vendor at the St. Theodore Tea and Fashion show and I needed a display to put my jewelry in! I spent exactly zero dollars on this, and just used things we had lying around the house! Somehow it still managed to look pretty professional and now I want to do more craft fairs just to use it! (I don't know if I'll be able to this summer, because it's such a time commitment--- we'll see!).

I know that most of you won't have supplies like these on hand, but I always like to see how others come up with solutions for things even when I don't have the supplies on hand. It usually helps me to think outside the box-- something I had to do a lot of for this display. No way was I going to spend $100 or more buying the "real" supplies that "real" artists use at fairs. I can buy beads and wire instead! :) The only item that I personally bought was the white necklace stand, and I got that months ago to use in photoshoots.

As I thought about putting a display together, I kept thinking about height-- no one likes bending over to see things!

The main part of the display is an unfinished oak kitchen cabinet which my Dad bought for $20 because it was damaged. We haven't given it a proper home yet, so it was out in the garage receiving a coat of cobwebs. It's heavy, but not too heavy to carry by myself.

The earring racks are two pieces of thin wood which I cut into rectangles with the scrollsaw and drilled dozens of holes into. The only downside is that a couple of the earrings get stuck in the holes-- they aren't too hard to get out, but they aren't too easy, either. It does make it easy to transport because none of them fall out on their own!

(By the way, I'm curious to know how other artisans price their jewelry for craft fairs. I rarely have more than one of any item on hand, except the ever-popular Evenstar collection, and it's tedious work to put a price tag by every item. Online, I can set each item to the exact price for my supplies and time. I would up compromising yesterday and averaging out the price of items to the nearest even-dollar increment. This meant that I had $7 and $14 earrings on the same rack, priced at $10. It's not ideal but for a one-day event I didn't know what to do!).



The strip lights are something that Dad had in the garage-- something for his truck, I've no idea what they are exactly but they are battery operated and stuck to the top with double-sided tape!

The bracelets are all resting on an empty roll of wrapping paper which I covered with part of a papery fabric tablecloth-- the same one that I use to wrap orders in when I run out of fabric or organza bags!

I put all the cuffs on the bottom of the display and gave it some height using glass from picture frames and wooden blocks.

I'm pretty proud of the hooks for the guitar string bangles and chainmaille keychains! I made it out of this giant roll of cheap aluminum wire I have on hand.

I was trying not to damage the nice cabinet so I used masking tape-- it was just strong enough but I was afraid it would fall down as people fingered the items! (it didn't!)

We had this wooden box lying around with knickknacks in it. I rolled up some fabric into little rolls and laid them side by side to display my rings properly. The cheaper plain wire rings and guitar string rings got jumbled up on the left because I had too many!

The necklace display is made from the cabinet doors. It wasn't ideal-- I think that necklace displays do a much better job of showing off my full necklaces. If I do any craft fairs in the future I will reserve these door displays for the pendant necklaces only. It works *great* for that!

The doors were just propped up on a basket and a book. They also have wire hooks taped to the back.

Lookie! Lookie! More Evenstar colors! It turns out that it's very difficult to find the leaf beads that I use for the Evenstar sets, especially when the website I usually buy from stopped carrying half the colors. Other places have them for crazy expensive prices. Think 50 cents or a dollar a bead. Then I found Brightling Beads and Shipwreck Beads so now I have every color they have in stock. Lots of new Evenstars!

I also will start using silver-plated chain instead of aluminum for the Evenstars. The aluminum I had before was cheap but wasn't up to par.

Anyway, the Evenstar necklaces and Enchanted Forest earrings are on another thin sheet of wood. I drilled holes for the earrings and nailed nails in to hang the pendants up.

The sapphire blue set is on the necklace stand that I made with an old book and a cereal box-- check out the tutorial here.

This is the necklace stand that I bought at Michaels awhile ago, and a folded-over index card (the perfect earring display in a pinch!). 

This necklace very similar to the Eowyn necklace I made a few months ago, only (*cough* if I may say so myself) better made.

It's the first new item that I've had a chance to put up on my Shoppe-- check it out!

Hope you liked this peek at the jewelry display I dreamed up!

Preparing for a Craft Show

This Sunday I will be selling some of my jewelry at the St. Theodore Tea and Fashion show-- local friends, please come stop by! There will be lots of good food and fun, and it all supports the church's mission trip.

Here's a sneak peek at some of jewelry I've made in the past three weeks.

(These first few pictures are from my Instagram account-- @ShealynnsFaerie. It's a weird story why I have an account when I have to use my mom's phone to do it, but basically one of my youngest brothers signed up without permission and now I have to monitor him. What better excuse to start posting my own over-edited, blurry snapshots?)

These are some brand-new chainmaille bracelets! I've been having fun with my two favorite weaves: the Byzantine (lookie at the blue and green ombre!) and the two-in-two mobius. I've also made some bracelets with the Shaggy Loops pattern, the European 4-in-4, and the Persian box weave.

Basically, lots of fun. These are my favorite bracelets to make and to wear. ^_^ I'll photograph them properly later!

Behind the bracelets are some guitar string earrings.

Earrings! These are all on a display that I made all on my own with some scrap wood. I'll take some pictures of my displays this weekend and write up a blog post with tips and tricks later!

One of many necklaces made with my favorite beads ever-- the Czech glass pressed into leaves!

Also hard at work on two of Aurora's crowns!

I made Evenstar sets in every single color I could get my hands on.

The teacup is there because of Tea Trolling. :)

My brother kept pestering me to upload pictures to Instagram the moment I created an account, and I couldn't find anything to post except for the teacup I was drinking out of at the time. So I spammed him with funny pictures of tea or just the teacup in different places. ^_^ If anyone else likes taking funny pictures of tea, use the hashtag #teatrolling. 'Tis fun. Especially when you have little brothers who call tea "dirt water." Tea trolling rankles them. (I'm such a lovely big sister.)

I'm off to go write some essays, drink some tea, and put the finishing touches on the displays! What are you all up to this evening?