A New Introduction

For those of you who caught the Kumihimo tutorial videos, I'm Sondra, Rowen's Mom, Rick's wife and a very occassional contributor to Fire Inspired Creations.

In another world I would love to design jewelry and take photos and teach wonderful crafts that are loads of fun and beautiful every day, but I can't. So since I'm pretty much bedridden most of the time with various disabilities you'll see my occasional contributions to help my daughter's college fund and recoup some of the expense of supply buying. :D

I'm the part of the team that's less precision and more organic. Which is strange for my OCD soul to admit, but that's the way it works when I'm designing jewelry. Most of the crafts I've added to my repertoire lately have something to do with jewelry making or designing or fire.

I'm a lampworker and jewelry designer. I also spend a bit of my time when I can be upright doing medieval illumination.

Nowadays I've picked up kumihimo weaving on the modern foam disk as something portable I can do. I find it satisfying to create something beautiful even if it takes me forever to do it with all my "pain breaks." 

I'm posting pictures here of the first round kumihimo metal braiding I did. These were a matched set for a group that I belong to and I happened to need woven metal in green and gold at the last minute... Low and behold...my first round metal project was almost done! Rowen wanted a necklace out of it for herself. It's surprising how much of the jewelry I make goes to that destination. Hmmm. Well, she lost out this time.

The necklaces were varying colors of green colored (copper) metal woven together. Both had a focus bead of dark emerald green transparent glass added to them and additional chains. The male pendant was in diaper bead shape with my "starry night" pattern wound around the flattened glass about quarter sized and spun. The stringers used to put down the gold pattern were a twisted triplet of gold colored glasses themselves. The female pendant was also wound with the "starry night" pattern. But the shape was left more organic. The female necklace also has added copper pailettes. Excuse the picture quality. They had to be taken quick, with my cell phone.

This weave, like most tighter weaves is a bit stiff, but when bent to fit naturally around the neck these laid beautifully.  The green woven wire portion of the male necklace is about 22", the female necklace about 20".