AJE November Component of the Month ~ Beaded Beads by Kristen Stevens...La Bella Luna

I feel like such a slug...I haven't been blogging very much at all, except for special challenge posts.  Oh, well...there are only so many hours in the day!!

This past Friday morning, after Thanksgiving, I woke up early, but all couch potato-ey and found my boy up already, on the couch watching tv and playing his video game.  After snuggling with him a while, I plied the remote from his hand and did some channel surfing of my own.  I eventually ran across one of my all-time favorite movies, Moonstruck.  Everything an opera-trained girl could love...Pucinni's La Boheme as part of the story (my most favorite opera of all time!), Italian food, a love story with the under-dog getting the girl, Cher, Nic Cage before he went all weird, Olympia Dukakis, and some of the best movie lines ever!

"La bella luna!"
"Let me ask you a question...why do men chase women?"
"Snap out of it"
"Aw, Ma, I love him awful!"
"It's Johnny Cammereri!"

Oh, and Dean Martin sings "That's Amore" for both the opening and closing credits"

This movie colored my whole holiday weekend after...I went through the days singing "when the moon hits your eye, like a big pizza pie, that's amore" alternating with lines from La Boheme's doomed Mimi singing "Donde lieta usci al tuo grido d'amore".  So, when I finally sat down to work on my Component of the Month piece, featuring Kristen Stevens' gorgeous beaded beads, I kept seeing that gorgeous moon in my head!

The color of the beads I chose were a challenge for me, as I don't usually work with that pretty, creamy winter white. Another challenge is the fact that most of my work is metal and beads that I can patina with liver of sulfer, etc, then toss into the tumbler for a while.  Using components that patina and water might damage takes a lot of forethought!

I made sure to patina everything before assembling them together...Kristen's gorgeous beads, lampwork beads from my stash (sorry, I'm not sure who made them...have had them quite a while!), indigo blue Czech glass flowers that bring out some of the lovely frit color in the lampwork and some hand-wrought copper caps...bigger on the 'moons' and smaller, fluted ones to embellish the flowers.  The lampwork reminded my of a black, starry night, with lights in the city reflecting colors into the sky, and of course, the creamy beaded beads are my 'bella luna' or beautiful moon.

If you have never seen this '80's classic movie, watch it!  If you are a romantic at heart, you won't be disappointed.

Now, go see what the other AJE team members and guests created with their beaded beads!

Special Guest
Alice Alice Dreaming

Jennifer  Glass Addictions
Lesley  Gossiping Goddess
Jenny Jenny Davies-Reazor 

Caroline  Blueberri Beads
Melissa Melissa Meman (you are here!)
Rebekah Tree Wing Studio
Sue SueBeads 

Kristi Kristi Bowman Design

Diana Suburban Girl Studio 
Linda Linda's Bead Blog

Focus on Life ~ Week 4, Create Art

Sally's prompt for the week was "Make Art".

I do 2 things that I consider artistic...I make jewelry and I sing! I do both of them everyday, and while I might consider my daily jewelry making "art," most times the singing is anything but!  I sing in the car with the radio, loudly. I sing with Ben's video game theme music...drives him really crazy!  I sing around the house, whatever comes into mind.  I sing in my head...just mention a song and it will be with me all day!  I sing at church...I am lucky to be a member of a professional choir that sings Solemn Latin Mass weekly.  But this week, I pulled out a few of my old scores from my opera/classical singing days and sat down and ran through a couple of them.  Was it making art?  Probably to no one but myself!

The other art I made, I didn't actually start during the week, but I finally got around to finishing up a few more of my Molten Morsels...I embedded bezels and set some stones.  Not sure if I will sell these as is, or make something from them.

pink coral

carnelian

faceted garnet

Wow, a whole month done...only 11 more to go!