Bezel Set Cabachon

I have spent the last (couple? I lose track) year having fun experimenting and pushing myself, trying to learn new techniques with jewellery making. Jewelry, for you Yanks. Through this blog, I've shared all of my attempts, strange ideas and disasters.
My latest series of flops involved gallery bezel wire. Delicate and lacy, it looks so pretty when it's wrapped around a stone. It doesn't look so pretty when it's melted into a blob, which is what I've managed to do every time I tried to make a bezel with it.
In an uncharacteristic fit of adult thinking, I realized that I had been trying to run before I even learned to walk. I had never wrapped a stone with a plain bezel, let alone a fancy filigree bezel. So a baby step was needed, but pragmatic me was still battling with adventurous me, so the baby step became a walk
to the park and I used scalloped bezel wire.

I didn't melt it! The first piece in a long time that I was half-assed proud of. It couldn't be perfect, of course, so the heart cut into the back plate is a little wonky and it cut my stamped anchor in half.  Next time!

Ode To Rosaline

Oh, the ocean
The huge, lonely ocean
Taking us away from all that we love
Our home, our family, our friends
Ripping us apart
Because our souls are left behind.

What is this world?
Where people kill, maim and destroy
Some in the name of a god
Some just because they can.
It makes them feel powerful
They have no idea
They are just sick and sad and evil.

They don't know beauty and joy.

When will it stop?
It seems that when men are not at war
They make war in their own land
You there! We don't wear those hats here!
God is mine, not yours!
What flaw do we carry?
What is this human imperfection?
Is it not enough
That nature itself
Can kill us?

So the ocean carries me,
Empty, hurting, frightened
My soul in pieces
Alive
As so many have come before us
And so many must still come
To our refuge
Not yet our home.

This place, this country
Can diminish us in our need
As people diminish us with their word
With a shattered heart
Can we regain our pride?
Will we always be less?
I will give thanks
But I cannot yet give my heart
Or my soul
That never crossed the ocean.

I am powerful
I am strong
I will not use that for evil
I use it to survive
To hope that some day I can return
But know that home is forever gone.
Monsters tore apart that world.
I will use my mind
And search for beauty and joy.
Here, across the ocean
I will find beauty and joy.