9/52 - Midnight Garden

This week my challenge piece is another wand pendant. This one is blue goldstone. It has lots of lovely sparkly bits in it, especially when the sun hits it. Blue goldstone is in fact a man made material, and this wand is nice and round in shape, and super shiny!! It was a real problem to photograph!! I started off on white in the light tent, but not much sparkle! I normally photograph in a tent to avoid reflections, but as the sparkle didn't come up very well I went for some photos in natural light on a dark background as well. You'll have to put up with the reflections on those!! :)

Goldstone was first made in Murano, Venice in the seventeenth century, if you are interested you can read more about it here. I decided some nice glass beads would be the perfect combination to go into the chain and I knew I had some Murano glass beads that might match in well. I'd seen them only recently, but do you think I could find them!! Of course after a while of searching it becomes a challenge in itself! They had to be somewhere, and I wasn't giving up!! 

When I eventually found them they were somewhere I had already looked, not in the sort of bag I thought I was looking for, oh...and they were totally the wrong blue after all that :) Oh well...

In the process of searching though I found a few lampwork beads by Izzy Anderson of Flame and Glass, and they matched in very well. The chain is a mix of handmade links, commercial chain and the aforesaid beads wire-wrapped.

The top of the wand cap has the same design as around the sides, and it is finished with my Joy logo on one side, and three little faux rivets on the other side.

I was pleased that the shrinkage worked out really well on this. At the moment the wand is firmly in place with just a friction fit, but I will remove it to send the piece for hallmarking. I'll add a touch of glue when I refit it for added security.

It was fun to consolidate two of the techniques from my earlier challenge pieces, the wand setting and the beaded chain. I will be doing more faceted wands in the future - they are harder to do than this round one was!! :)

Have fun!

Joy x

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