Full Fathom Five

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that does fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong,
Hark! Now I hear them – Ding-dong, bell.

Well, it's dawning on me that, no matter how hard I try, I won't have new work to show you for at least another week. Life is just too busy here at the moment. I thought, instead, I could talk about the inspiration for this piece. This is a pretty happy looking bead and necklace, but the original inspiration for the diorama focal was actually the song "Full Fathom Five" from The Tempest. Despite the grim subject matter (it's about drowning), I've always loved this song. I'd been wanting (and still want) to make a necklace based on it.

It so happens that the July Art Bead Scene Challenge had a "Mermaid's Grotto" theme, and I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to try the "Full Fathom Five" necklace. I sketched out three large shadow-box style focals, each containing a fragment of verse at the top and shells, pearls and coral at the bottom. I sketched out stylized silver bones as accent beads. Once again, I just ended up not having enough time to make the whole necklace, so I made this similar but simpler, sunny day at the beach theme necklace instead. By the way, the lovely shells in this necklace are actually ceramic Terra Trinkets by Melanie Lukacs of Earthenwood Studio.

My project book is filling up with ideas, but I've barely been able to try a tenth of them. On the one hand, it's frustrating, but on the other other hand, I really look forward to the hour a day or so that I can devote to this. Speaking of which, I should stop blabbing and get out my PMC box. Thanks for reading!

ps. Something funky is happening with the formatting of this entry. I have no idea what I'm doing wrong, but I can't seem to correct it...