Photographer Dewitt Jones was doing an assignment for a magazine. He was to be dropped off at one location and soon picked up there and taken to the place where he'd be shooting. He waited at the designated location. Looked at his watch. Waited some more.
Finally, he said to himself, "Dewitt, look around." He started shooting.
Nothing ever came of the original project. The photographs he took while he was waiting, just looking around, ended up in the magazine.
Getting from Point A to Point B with a group of kids can be a challenge, because they're always looking around. As a kid, I loved to look at rocks under water. Turns out half the work in jewelry design and restoration involves looking closely at things, until you can see beyond the obvious.
Take Michele's bracelet.
When I first looked at it, all I saw was a broken bracelet with mystery metal (usually called "base metal"), busted tabs, and missing links.
I kept looking at it.
Problems emerged: The mystery metal proved to be metalized plastic, meaning that adding metal, soldering, and laser welding were all out of the question. There seemed to be no way to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again.
It was tempting to give up. But by then I had fallen in love with the pattern in those squares. There were working tabs on one of them. What if we put that square front and center, and built the bracelet around it?
Fine, but what kind of bracelet? Well, black and gold, right? Yes and no. There are many shades of black. Onyx proved to be the closest in color.
One more challenge: The original bracelet contained three segments with side tabs connected near the base with links. How to get the new one to align properly? Saucers saved the day. They were just wide enough to anchor the bracelet at the center. I used a slightly smaller round onyx to create a two-strand bracelet dotted with 14K gold-filled beads, then made the African ceramic and onyx earrings to complete the set.
And no, we haven't given up on those other two squares. Stay tuned.
©2009, 2013 Laynie Tzena.