The upcoming reign in Calontir is a Norse one, and I’ve been assisting a bit in researching largesse items.  I’ve also been working on some other items, so come along with me on what I’ve been doing so far.

First thing up is researching small token items that Her Highness could give out.  After putting together a Pinterest board, I got out my wire and started playing around.  Most are simple wire-wrapped rings, but there are some more complicated items.  I’ll be creating a tutorial soon so that you can make your own, and so those helping out with the upcoming reign can also help keep things moving (which I know I’d appreciate).  They’re pretty easy, once figured out, and relatively inexpensive.  I love that these add so much to a Norse kit without costing a lot of money – just a few inches of copper or brass wire, and a handful of beads, and voila, something that looks like it belongs to the Hon Hoard!

Also in that bunch of wire-wrapped items, I stumbled on a tutorial that replicated this tiny length of chain.  This went to help bling things out a bit further, and I’ve got to get a second one completed soon.  It’s wonderfully delicate, but it’s deceptive, as the place where weakness may actually be located is in the loop, not the straight part in between (which has three strands of wire wrapped up).  I suspect this was used to dangle items from brooches, however, I did find a similar chain on this decorative brooch.  I need to do some delving and diving to see what else I can find.

I was given some fabric a few weeks ago; lovely twills that aren’t as period for my Byzantine kits, but perfect for Norse hangerocs (apron dresses).  With some help from a friend, I now have a more period hangeroc (my spare is made of dead dinosaur and flows wonderfully – but natural fibres are my friend!).  I did a lot of Norse seam treatments, using yellow and red wool crewel thread and a ginormous tapestry needle.  I also discovered that the lovely blue hangeroc with shot silk trim with a yellow tunic means I might bear a bit of a resemblance to a Minion, which is the exact opposite thing that I want to do. I thankfully have a blue tunic, though it runs a bit warmer than I’d like, however, once I get a bit of spare change, a red tunic may be in the works.

Lastly, I got some copal in the mail the other day, and was inspired by this mini Mjölnir carved out of amber.  I had a couple of project fails with this, however, what I ended up with makes me quite happy.  I ended up wire wrapping the hammers so they could hang well, however, I’m disappointed that I couldn’t make a more period solution happen.  Lesson learned here: copal cracks horridly when heated.  It also melts super easily when attempting to drill a hole out.  On the other hand, I’m happy with the relative size of the hammers.  Unfortunately, I did have some project fail due to trying to figure out the hole situation (I lost one hammer completely, and the other is a bit shorter than I intended because of the aforementioned cracking issue), however, these are close to the shape I was going for and the mini Mjölnir replication.  Next time, I think I’ll save up for a bit of amber, and really polish the jeebers out of it after I’m done with the shaping.

All-in-all, this has been a fun diversion.  I still love Byzantium, and once I figure out where my next project will be, there should be a post on that.