The monday made of poo, bracelets for breast cancer awareness & period hair pins

[raffaellasworld]

Now that things have settled down and I'm about to go crash I'll give a better recap of today. 

I got up early to get into work early as I've been so insanely busy that I foolishly waited until the day it was due to reconcile my procurement card statement. So, naturally the entire research unit had no internet access. I called up to group health and wound up going up there, but what  a total pain. I have lots of little notes on what things are supposed to be classed as, where to find obscure info on this, that, or the other, and of course all of it is at  my desk as I just brought up the receipts and bare minimum. The young lady that used to have my position forgot all together until I reminded her, but luckily they didn' t post the charged until an hour after the deadline or she would have been hosed. 

I kind of got myself volunteers to make bracelets as a fundraiser for breast cancer awareness. There was a minor poo storm a little while ago about using stocks as a method of fund-raising and I offered the bracelets as an at least vaguely more period version of the cause bracelets that were everywhere last year. I got 3 done so far, and I used some of the glass beads that slysidonia graciously donated with some additional filler beads that I bought. 



I'm also finally getting around to posting a picture of some of the second version of period hair pins I made with real pearls and gave for baronial largess. I tried silver-toned wire for the first batch but I wasn't completely happy with them. For the second round I had gone taken staxxy on a multi errand run a few month back and when she stopped at her bead store I found some sterling silver blanks as well as real pearls in a variety of colors, they were on sale and what I had been thinking of trying next so I took it as a sign. I'm already seeing where I'll make further improvements. I don't think the "legs" of the hair pins are nearly long enough. I'd love to find information on extant pins, and specifically their condition i.e. did they twist the legs to keep them in their hair, was it for embellishment and not structural integrity? Anyway here's mock 2: 
 
Oh and here's a picture of the new girdle belt I made laid out with the dress and necklace I made it to go with: 



To bed now. Tomorrow is a new day! Payday too :)

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

What guage is the wire on the hair pins and how long are the legs? I decided the other night after dealing with my annoying pearl combs that I am going to make my own. I think I will attach the pins to a prefabbed comb. The current one is an all gold wire one that just doesn't seem to have enough spring it it, doesn't fight back enough and shows through the hair. I want the comb part to blend in and the pearl to show. This one just doing the job. Thoughts?

[ayeshadream.livejournal.com]

That makes sense, what kind of prefab comb were you thinking? I've looked around a lot and unfortunately haven't been able to find much about period hair trinkets. I'll make a separate post with all the hair related links I found. The bottom one will be a merchant that sells bronze hair combs, I love the idea:
http://www.bronzejewelers.com/combs.htm

I think it wouldn't be as wimpy as the gold, which is pretty but way too soft as anything but plating to give any oomph.

Most of the extant examples that I found are post period or at minimum very late period and most of those are Japanese with a few Chinese mixed in.

I'm still hoping I'll find the perfect site, or information on a book that has info (and preferably some sort of picture, or at least drawing) of extant hair pins.