Breath of fresh art

During this time of Covid 19 I have been regularly sanitising my hands. Even the regular washing with soap has dried the skin of my hands out. So there has been a lot of moisturising as well. I’ve wondered how all of this has impacted my rings.   I thought about it for a while and, I’ve decided to lock my rings away for now. To be effective, most of our hand sanitisers are alcohol-based, or chlorine based. Could this be doing some harm to my jewellery?  Some organic minerals like amber, coral or pearls can be harmed as well as certain delicate semi-precious stones. Some metals can tarnish and if there is any, for eg. rodium plating, it could wear away.  So some of my favourite rings will come out after "lockdown", shining good as new after a quick clean with my, fit for purpose, jewellery cleaning cloth. (I might wear them all at once...lol!)

I love spirals. Their symbolic meaning is also really cool. The cross-section of an ammonite fossil, like the nautilus shell makes a beautiful spiral design.  I drew a pastel picture using more natural colours and played with lines and curves.  Then I used this as a preliminary drawing to do a large acrylic painting, using bright mostly warm colours.                                                           Here is the end result.

It's easy to make a buff with an old T-shirt Use a darning needle to neaten threads. Once the old T-shirt has been cut apart at the seems, you're left with two rectangular-ish pieces. Stitch the sides to make a tube and trim the shoulder bits off. You can leave this edge raw. T-shirt material doesn't fray easily. If you prefer you can overlock or hem the cut off side. The bottom of the T-shirt forms a ready made hem on the other side of the tube.