For Your Nightmares & Your Dreams

Dreamcatcher for the Innocents

This dreamcatcher uses pearls, silver and blue jewelry wire. Together they promote healing, calm and harmony. Pearls give purity and promote faith, charity, and integrity, truth and loyalty. Silver is mystically considered to improve speech, bring eloquence. A balance of the color blue brings intuition, inspiration, sincerity, peace, joy, tranquility, faith in oneself and trust in others.

Stephen King has been playing a major role in my mind nowadays. I've been reading his books and watching a few of his movies. I must say his newest one, Duma Key, is quite impressive. The book swallowed me whole and ate up one whole day this past week. My infatuation for his work re-kindled (I've been into him since I watched and read Firestarter when I was 6.) and had to watch Dreamcatcher.

And when I wasn't going through my King files and books and movies, I was wondering what to do with the glass beads I bought. Came up with nil on the beads but Dreamcatcher stirred my imagination and got my fingers itching. I was looking forlornly at my newest purchases and wondering if the glass beads needed elastic thread instead of the wires I'm so used to working with when my eyes were caught by the colorful jewelry wires I bought with the glass. Hmmm.

Dreamcatcher for Spirituality

This dreamcatcher uses amethyst, silver and purple jewelry wire. Together they promote a higher spiritual awareness as well as protects us from psychic attacks.. Amethyst brings energies of stability, peace, calm, balance, courage and inner strength. It has been used to protect against psychic attacks. Silver is mystically considered to improve speech, bring eloquence. Purple encourages spiritual awareness.

I researched on how to make Dreamcatchers and then started making some of my own. Who wouldn't want extra protection against nightmares of the daily variety? I ended making these yesterday afternoon.

Dreamcatcher for Love

This dreamcatcher uses peridot, jade, aventurine, silver and green jewelry wire. Together they promote wellness in affairs of the heart. Peridot enhances the healing and harmony of relationships of all kinds, but particularly marriage. Jade is a stone of fidelity and generosity, it can also attract all kinds of love. Aventurine helps one to see alternatives and potentials in all situations, giving a positive outlook, courage and inner strength. Silver is mystically considered to improve speech, bring eloquence. Green stimulates healing resulting in greater self-love, and thus, love for others.

Dreamcatchers are very interesting things, I think. The legend states that the web catches the good and the bad goes through the hole. I think that's a good thing to have around one's person. We all need something extra to protect us from our daily nightmares.

A Must Have Book (Book #2): Buried Treasure: Travels Through the Jewel Box by Victoria Finlay

This is a book I've had on my shelf for at least two years now. It was quite difficult to find it in Bali as we don't have too many bookstores for English books but I spent a lot of time scanning the titles on each bookshelf in each bookshop over and over again until I found it. (My mom who knew of my search decided to look for it, too. She found a copy and sent it to me but I already found my own. I told her she could keep the copy she has and read it. It's a beautiful read.)

What I like most about the book is that it provides hobbyists information on the histories of the different gemstones we use in our art. It broadens the mind to beyond the little beads and pieces we use and extends the appreciation of each piece backward in time and broadens its geographical feel. All that in an entertaining read, too!

As much as Finlay will give you tours through gemstones using the Moh classification in cutting her chapters, through different localities and countries where stories of the gemstones originated from, through gemstone folklore and recent developments: it never becomes an encyclopedic-too-detached-too-objective read. She keeps you interested in her choice of anecdotes and the clear and precise way in which she writes.

I've read the book at least five times. Each time I get to remember more and more of the information she compiled in the book. I think it was on helluva research she made. She has loads of interesting information in those pages.

It's definitely a must-read for handcrafters of jewelry. It makes one appreciate each stone, each bead... we are made more aware of the history that comes with them.

*Veronica Howell has another review of this book which I think will give more information to those who are interested. I suggest you read her review, too.

A Must Have Book: 1000 Jewelry Inspirations by Sandra Salamony

Bought a book last weekend which is truly inspirational for jewelry handcrafters. It's the 1,000 Jewelry Inspirations (Beads, Baubles, Dangles, and Chains) by Sandra Salamony. Quite a good book to browse through when looking for motivation to make a new piece or re-work old ideas. I really like the way it showcased simple pieces and elaborate ones, too. Lovely to read on a breezy balcony or when facing your worktable and wondering what to make of the beads and wires at hand.

One thing I do not like about it, however, is that it's a bit misleading. The book might have 1,000 entries but there are multiple entries for some pieces - some of which are not even crop highlighted but simply resized to fit in a page.

To illustrate my point, the following item number pairs feature only one piece with two entries:

0026 & 0975
0027 & 0871
0051 & 0932
0250 & 0937
0287 & 0972
0391 & 0392
0424 & 0817
0512 & 0513

Now, don't get me wrong. I still think it's a good buy - I just don't like it when readers/buyers get all misled.

Kudos to all those who have their pieces featured in the book. Each one is truly inspirational. And cheers to Sandra Salamony as well for getting all these pieces in her book. I just wish she didn't re-instate the misleading info by mentioning 1,000 pieces of jewelry in her acknowledgment.