Trick or Treat!

I've always loved the Hallowe'en color palette-- pumpkin orange, sleek kittykat black, tumbling autumn leaves in rust, gold, and crimson, big ochre Harvest moon, scudding gunmetal gray clouds over pale stars-- it's rich and mysterious all at the same time.

Since I've lately fallen deeply in love with beach stones and enameled beads, it seemed natural to me to use these two unique elements in a piece about the season. Barbara Lewis whipped out a custom order of her new Persian Lantern enameled beads for me and I found the perfect wave-tossed and tumbled beach stone Hallowe'en focal in the Etsy shop of Stone Me. Happiness is the perfect combination of orange, black and texture!

I paired the hammered copper washers from the auto parts store with the chunky wrapped links my friend Cindy Wimmer used in her bracelet featured on the cover of the latest special issue of Easy Wire. After making several tube beads out of black polymer clay, they were textured differently, cured and then were embellished with metallic powders and acrylic paints. I was going for a raku look and decided the banded one had the right weight and look. I just happened to have the copper seedbeads on hand and used them for little wirewrapped segments up one side of the necklace. The little swirly copper charm hanging from the focal is made with BronzClay, one of the pieces I did in Celie Fago's metal clay workshop last month. You'll be hearing about that more in upcoming posts and seeing more of the things I made there.

So here's your finished Treat, Gentle Readers! I hope you didn't think I'd abandoned you-- just a short hiatus to reflect, renew and refresh my ideas. I hope to share some insights into new directions I'm exploring. I think they're exciting and I believe you will too! Stay tuned!