Bower bird brained

For a little while now I've been frustrated at the lack of space for me to come up with some creative ideas that I am finding interesting or satisfying. Now my physical space is always fairly cluttered and that doesn't generally bother me. I 'spose it's like my head crammed full of stuff and usually I like it that way. But recently my head has been over full and anyone who knows me would probably say that it is exactly like my house- FULL. Tim is quite a bower bird, actually he sees himself as a magpie but truly he is a bowerbird
bringing home all sorts of bits and pieces and scattering them about the place hoping to please me with their interestingness or prettiness. Chicky Babe has found an old "No Junk Mail" sign and posted it on the back door it now says "No Junk Mail Please!"
Anyway my head has been too full but I've been concentrating on trying to find some quiet in my head. I've been reading a couple of books about creativity. One is called The Confident Creative the other is 'The Artists Way' the second is a little 'new agey' but when you get past some of the excessive bits it has some great exercises to help 'unblock'.
So over the last couple of days I've started to play with some ideas for making jewellery combining my love of textiles and natural,recycled and found objects.

This one is hand stitched sari silk and recycled beads from old pearl necklaces.
Tim and I went walking along the beach yesterday looking for driftwood, pebbles and sea glass but unfortunately it is not really beach weather at the moment being summer or s(B)ummer. as Anki so rightly calls it. Beach weather to me is winter when the sea throws up so many beautiful bits of flotsam and jetsam.
Although I didn't find anything really interesting to work with I found a few bits and pieces to start playing with and practicing skills for when I do find something worthwhile and I got more exercise than I realized along the way!
 

Crochet pebbles as brooches or pendents- I'm just playing with the technique at the moment using the threads that I have on hand but I will experiment a little more with different threads and colours.

And then when I find some decent driftwood some of these...

This is very much a WIP! and a way of playing with ideas before they get lost in the clutter!

Playing with fire and reinventing the wheel...(post two today!)

I found a couple of yo-yo's or suffolk puffs in my sewing basket. I made a couple of tiny little green ones and sewed them together added beads and sewed them onto some chord.

playing with fire...

I'm using a technique I saw somewhere - but god knows where on one of my report avoiding blog/craft site rambles, that involves melting the edges of synthetic fabrics using a candle flame. It's quite exciting really because until you get the hang of how the flame affects the different types of fabrics they can burst into flames at any minute!

But those bits that survive make quite pretty flowers. They are quite quick to put together and therefore a good one to do for this market coming up suddenly where I don't have a lot of time to put things together.

As necklaces.

I've decided to do these and some crocheted toys to top up what I have left over from previous ventures. As I don't want to spend much money for this event as it is the first time the school has had stalls at the christmas carols and it may not attract a large crowd- then again it could be good (fingers crossed) Plus I think it is a good thing for the kids at school to see me there selling my craft work - a good example of the Arts in Society outcome!!!

PS: an afternoon's work. (I had the circles pre cut, that was an evening in front of the T.V)

Finding a theme... and time.

Boy I've been a bad blogger. I've been pretty busy but just everyday stuff, kids and work- my computer time has been taken up with creating work packages for an Online Teaching and Learning System that I've been learning about but haven't used enough to be very proficient at yet. And crochet.

Mollie Flowers tutorial from Roman Sock

But yesterday I did something a bit different. Months ago I enrolled in a workshop at the Art Gallery of WA run by David Walker. There is an exhibition of his jewellery on at the gallery at the moment. I woke up feeling a bit tired and not really in the mood for it but having paid I went. It was quite interesting and I came away with a couple of bits of important information.
At one stage he was taking us through his exhibition and telling us where his ideas had come from. Now I know you will all probably shake your heads at the obviousness of these revelations but I guess it was just something I needed to hear at this point.

1. Make something that you like...yes it is important that it is something that others might like especially if you want to sell it but make things that you like.

2. Focus on things you are interested in or passionate about- emotionally or intellectually.

The aim of the workshop was more about exploring ideas than creating a piece of jewelery.
Unfortunately one other girl and myself did not get the preliminary workshop notes so we were well and truly behind all the others who came with materials, tools, notes and stimulus pictures as well as some idea of the materials they wanted to explore.
I made a start wrapping yarn around a curly vine. playing with the contrasting textures of the wood and the different types of yarn. I felt a bit embarrassed when David came to talk about "My ideas" and "theme and direction" and I weakly replied "oh, I'm just playing with the textures at the moment....nothing deep and meaningful"
Than I tried melting plastic together with an iron, surprisingly easy and quite effective- something I might do with the kids at school (Sorry no photo, I've lost the piece I made.)

Then I started to think about weaving yarn and came up with these ideas.
(Remember they are an exercise in idea development not finished pieces)



As I worked I thought about my interests, I love fibers and traditional methods of working with textiles things that are predominantly or generally thought of as woman's crafts. I feel passionate about my children and my role as a mother. In my head I played with ideas of how we weave the threads of our lives together, we weave stories and treads of memory and how we bind those memories close - especially now that the kids are growing up I feel a bit sentimental about those memories and those traditional crafts have a link with the women of the past- my own direct past with my grandmother who knitted vests for us and our children and my great grandmother who crocheted, knitted and embroidered but also with the generations of women who sewed their hopes into things they made in the home and wove their memories into quilts, and other things they made for their families. These things in turn become the fabric of the life of the family and serve to provoke memories in the future for the children and grand children.

So I guess these little pieces are about that taking a traditional craft and presenting it in a more contemporary way. I actually enjoyed the different textures but these could be woven in different types of wire.


I also felt better when David found these experiments interesting and wished me well in my jewelery making pursuits.

And this afternoon I finished my crochet (It will be a cushion cover for a round cushion I have hiding somewhere or a trivet for hot pots. I'm not sure which just yet.)
And I managed to post this!

Pendent or pendant??????

(As I typed this post I typed two different spellings of this word, both were accepted!? Is this a case of english verses american? Is one more acceptable than the other,or are they equally acceptable???)


While I was in Melbourne I wore this little guy ( For some reason these pendants seem to have little personalities!) Well this pendent is not that little its about 2inches across. I wore it when I went to the Rose St Artist Markets and several of the stall holders commented on how much they liked it and wondered where I got it. I felt very chuffed as I thought all of their stuff was so delicious and I didn't have enough money to buy everything I wanted to. I bought a very cute little birdie brooch made of felt with embroidered detail, a very funky woolen hat and some ceramic and silver earrings.

It made me think that I'd like to make some more of these pendents.

And low and behold the little plaster molds I made to press the clay into turned up in the general migration of things into my studio! I make the pendents from clay and then hand paint the designs on using glazes and fire them. It is always a bit exciting to see exactly how they turn out because the colours as you paint them are not what they end up as!

This one is quite soft and pretty however the photo does not really show the true depth of colour.

OOps this one lost the flower all together!

This is a bit better, I like to wear this one as I like its shape, and the colours go with quite a few outfits at the moment.

I love the strength of colour with this one. He was fun to make too...

Unfortunately I made the beaded section quite short and the extension chain that adjusted the length with the clasp fell off and now it is just too short to wear comfortably. I must get to and fix that soon! But right now I'm going to get down some of my design ideas for new pendents.

A knitting frenzy

I made this scarf this evening to go with my new hat. I came across a brooch / pin I made back nearer art school days. Copper wire some kind of gem stone (can't remember which) and drift wood collected from the beach after a storm (my favourite time to go to the beach).

I had hoped that the scarf would also match the hat a friend of mine made for me- she who has inspired me to delve into this knitting frenzy of late!

I'm not sure if the red in the scarf is quite right for the red of the hat. Maybe I'll have to make another one after all.

This clasp is made from twisted copper wire and glass beads. I made it as a hair clasp but I think it could work here.

Chicky Babe was quite taken by my hat this morning and my outfit this morning was greeted with a "Hey COOL! Can I wear it? Don't be surprised if it ends up in my room." The best compliment I had all day. A teenage daughters approval is a rare and special thing!

When I made this scarf I felt it needed an interesting clasp, this lead me to have a little search for the driftwood piece. I am feeling a pull to make some more jewellery. Maybe soon...

I have been instructed that my next project should be a woolly hat with the ear covers for Chicky Babe. One with lots of colours and patterns. Not sure if I am ready for anything too complicated yet. I might cheat and get her to choose wool similar to the scarf that makes its own pattern or perhaps some embroidery onto it...I'll check out what is available on line.

Is anyone else out there having trouble loading photo's onto flck-r?