SALE!!!!!!!

In honor of all who work with their hearts and with their hands, please use coupon code "LABOR2014" at checkout to get 10% off all purchases in my Etsy shop, "maggiezees".  Good through the end of September.

My first necklace and earring "set".  How bourgeouis of me!  Anyone who has read my feedback on Etsy knows that sometimes, when the mood strikes me, and the Moon is in the Seventh House and Mercury aligns with Mars... and I'm still not done playing with the beads that are all over my work table, I include a matching pair of earrings as a thank you for the purchase of an amulet necklace.  I know that it's hard to find something to "go" with some of my odder pieces.  But on the couple of occasions when someone has tried to make it a condition of the sale that I throw in a free pair ... well, that just gets me annoyed.  Some pieces demanded earrings to be made - some didn't.  It's not up to me. I'm an ahtist, damn it.

apotropaic

Here's my word of the week: apotropaic.  It means having the power to ward off evil.  Three of the most favorite apotropaic amulets that we use in the West are the open hand (hamsa, Hand of Fatima), the mano figa (a hand gesture placing the thumb between the second and third fingers to resemble a vulva); and the Evil Eye.

Here are a couple more eyes I just listed in the shop in copper wire:  The heavy gauge stuff was headed to the scrap yard when I appropriated it for apotropaic purposes.

the evil eye amulet

    

The Evil Eye.  Malocchio.  Incantations against the evil or envious eye have been found in cuneiform writings from ancient Sumeria and probably go further back into prehistory.  Some of the most popular charms or amulets are intended to deflect the evil eye.  In China and India, mirrors are used to reflect any negative energies; using the same magical principle, the image of an eye has the same effect.  This is my first attempt at making an eye amulet from wire, and I already have ideas about how to improve on it.

green green ...

In the Town of Islip, where Bay Shore is, we had an incredible amount of rain one day last week.  13 + inches in less than 6 hours.  I've never seen it rain so hard.  The streets became rivers and little gurgling brooks turned into raging torrents.  Starting a block away, our neighborhood was evacuated, but miraculously, our basement didn't even flood.  It was almost nice not being able to go anywhere, just sit around and play with my beads and wire, totally free of guilt.  Why do I still feel guilty that I no longer have a nine-to-five job?

Anyway, I used my guilt-free time wisely and made a couple of new necklaces:

I thought I had used up all my lovely big faceted Prehnite beads, but I found a few more.  Sometimes being disorganized is a good and useful thing.  The little iridescent gray/green Czech beads are called "ghost beads" and are quite special.  I should have bought more because they don't seem to be available any more.

a sad story ...

I've been sitting on some packages of Fimo for a while.  Literally sitting on them because I bought them some time ago and they're a little dried out and tough to work with.  I can soften them up while I'm doing something else.  Multitasking at its finest.

I layered translucent and cream to make a faux ivory kind of pattern and then I made them into facsimiles of some of the antler and bone pieces I love to use.  Grunged them up with a little burnt sienna paint and then polished the hell out of them.  The solid pieces survived, but the larger amulets with the indents - well - let's just say they lacked structural integrity.  Which is too bad because I really liked them.

The shields that survived my loving touch got made into earrings.  Lightweight and completely vegan.  Except for the bone beads.

I decided that I didn't really like working with plastic.  It felt like it had no soul, compared with the old, natural materials.  So for now anyway, the Fimo goes back into the storage bin.

I usually don't get so creatively stagnant until halfway into the month of August, but my Summer Doldrums came along early this year.  I gathered together beads with a red theme, thinking of Women's Mysteries - in particular, Croning.  The dictionary definition of "crone" is "an old hag" or "dried up old woman", but fortunately it's one of those words which has been reclaimed by the Goddess revival in the last couple of decades.  Now a woman who has gone through menopause is celebrated as a Wise Woman.  Two women I admired greatly as embodiments of the Crone, Maya Angelou and Margot Adler, passed on recently, and so the two necklaces that were born from this little flicker of creative activity are dedicated to them.

The reds are really more rusty in person.  They look kinda cherry red on my monitor.  This piece could be worn everyday.  To the office. Or the supermarket.  And everyone would know just by looking at you, what a juicy woman you are.  "Dried up", my ass!

The other one I picture being worn at a Croning Ritual.  With all black clothing.  Or all white.  Or best of all - sky-clad!  How magnificent that would be!