Dry Spell ...

Well, not completely.  But I seem to have absolutely no inspiration for Picture Pendants at the moment.  I've gone from brimming with ideas for most of last year, to ... nothing.  Maybe I burned myself out with that Midwinter window scene, I don't know.  But if there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that there's no point whatsoever in trying to force creativity.  So I sneak around the mental block, and do my best to keep making in spite of it.  I can always fall back on a different take on a Tree of  Life if all else fails - there are endless possibilities with those.

What I have been making mostly, though, is earrings.  I love earrings, although I don't often remember to wear them.  There are lots up in my Etsy shop at the moment, in all different colours and metals.  Having made a pair I was less than satisfied with, I even got to keep them for myself, although there is a cautionary tale involved.  When using different reels of wire, try and remember when one type has been treated to make it non-tarnish - I made these twisted earrings while having a play with square wire, and thought 'oh, they'd look great oxidised' - well, yes, perhaps they would, except that the square wire does not oxidise.  At all.  They looked most odd with shiny twisty flowers and antiqued earwires ...

Anyway, hopefully I'll have more to talk about next time.  I have just finished one commission, with another due to be started, and I'm still recovering from the cold from hell, so I'm not lazing around, by any means! ;)

Rapunzel Revisited

Followers of this blog may remember my disastrous dabblings with the Rapunzel fairy tale.  Well, when Anna from NoriaJewelry deservedly won our last Wire Goddess Team challenge with this beauty:

she got to choose the next theme.  And it was a piece produced using this image as a muse:

with the official title of 'Fairy Tale'.  That window set high in a wall naturally made me think of Rapunzel sealed up in her tower, with only a window from which to let down her hair as a means of ingress to the tower.  I re-read the story, and found that it was Rapunzel's father stealing the rampion plant (in some versions) from his enchantress neighbour for his pregnant wife, that caused the enchantress to demand that he hand over the child - his first-born.  Which he did, and Rapunzel was imprisoned in her tower.

Here is my piece inspired by the fairy tale, with plaited wire to represent Rapunzel's hair, and spiky rampion flowers with their bare stalks.  It's nothing like my earlier attempts (which, if you've been reading my blog, you'll realize is a good thing!), but I'm happy with how it turned out - not least, because there's not a face in sight! ;D