Fresh New Goodies!

Tzitzimitl is the Aztec star diety and I think a fitting name for this stunning Dias de Los Muertos necklace with a Mexican folk art calaca as its centerpiece. The holidays in honor of the dead have their roots deep in ancient Mexican culture. See how the bottle cap is stitched to the baseplate with binding wire? Cool, and an example of how structure can be design, or at least I think so.

The bottle cap was really made beautiful with techniques I learned from the demented Michael deMeng, using acrylic paints. I call that "deMengified."  With a bit of inventiveness you can make a thing look, I dunno, extremely rare, when it's only a smooshed bottle cap found in the street. Thank you, Michael!  You should tap on that link and go visit his blog; you won't be sorry, I promise.

It all started with a small, adorable calaca I got from 
Susie C. on Etsy. Mui autentico, and they just make me weak in the knees with happiness. The first ones I used, you will see in a previous post, I didn't paint, but Susie described that as "raw," so now I'm getting out the brushes.

At last I got up the gumption to try cutting up that wonderful old bullet riddled, sandblasted, rusty enameled pot I found out in the desert. Those little dots on the deep dark blue background look like stars to me. The painted Indonesian clay beads add to the idea -- they look sorta like little planets. And steel hoops, of course, with brass rivets. Now do check out those ear wires. At last!  Black niobium, which I ordered in 20 ga. wire from Unkamen Supplies on Etsy. I have been wanting black niobium for a very long time, and Ralph was kind enough to make up a batch for me and get it out to me within a week. Awesome, Ralph! It's a wish come true.

These babies are five inches long, so have a long neck or improve your posture, dears.

More of those painted pottery beads with sweet etched patterns in them. These are made with, from bottom to top, tropical seeds, bone spacers, Indonesian bead, antique Kuchi spacers, Indonesian bead, stacked bead caps and ta-daaa! tecktites, the glass fragments that result from meteor strikes when the fragments of earth are melted and fall back as glass; knobbly glass beads topped with bead caps, and again ta-daa!, antique crescent shaped black mourning beads worked into findings to suspend the whole shebang, hanging from some of Ralph's black niobium again.

I call them "The Bead Markets of Earth."  Because, of course you must know that Space Gypsies always park their caravans on the dark side of the moon before shuttling down to earth for the best bead trading in the known universe.  They're 3-3/4 inches long, and I think yummy as all get-out.

Time for a break from making. Because the workroom looks like the Clingons sacked it, so I got some cleaning up to do.