I could not have been more surprised when I won a contest recently, not because I thought my humble offering was unlovely but simply because it was so different to my usual offerings and materials, but I do like to use and put together in my own way things that appeal to me sometimes unusual or overlooked materials.
Thinking about it I always go rather for elegance, it can be simple or elaborate, I have been musing on this a lot lately, why I design as I do, put together certain colours, even use certain materials or gems does it depend on my mood, fashion, time of year! Yes, probably all these things hold a certain sway over how I design and make. Then there is the inspiration, I am inspired by so many things, colours definitely I love colour! My garden, trees, the sea, flowers and leaves, photographs, architecture, sometime a film will spark an idea, art nouveau and many other things, anyway enough of musing.
The necklace for the contest started with hand dyed silk in shades of Pale blue and green with baby blue freshwater pearls for the Kumihimo braid. I made the ends for the braid in silver
Polymer, inspired by the seed pods of Lunaria Annua ( honesty ) no glue was used to attach them to the braid, I hammered
and sculpted the silver wire central shape, the inspiration for these shapes came from a photograph of bubbles frozen under a lake in Canada. Then I wire wrapped the center circular portion to
hang a pendant of rock crystal. One end is also the
hook closure.
So there you have it, Blue Ice the necklace!
Thank you for looking your comments are much appreciated ~Jackie~
The results are in at last of a contest I entered and I won my catagory. The talent was amazing so many wonderful pieces in the different catagories the judges had a really hard time choosing, so I feel very honoured to be a winner.
I have always shied away from contests in the past but got persuaded last year to enter one.
I am not a competative person at all, so it is hard for me to do this, so I just imagined I was showing a new piece here on my journal to all you folks and it was a bit easier. Anyway I thought you might like to see the necklace that won.
It was based on a beautiful semi double scarlet Camellia called Grand Prix. The inspiration came about because I had this circular piece of Citrine crystals, it was quite a large round and I had no clue what to do with it, I got it out of the box several times over the months, stared at it and put it away again, then just before the contest started, I got it out yet again and suddenly, I thought, I know what you are, the centre of a flower, a big colourful flower! It had to be either a Clematis or Camellia, as soon as I saw Camellia Grand Prix I knew that was the right flower for this piece and so to the sketch pad and from there to the clay. I strung with white pearls and coral rounds and added a little female humming bird for fun!
Please leave a comment if you would like to I love to read them all.
