Dreaming of Spring ...

Well, the latest Wire Goddess Challenge is up.  Ruth won the last one with this awe-inspiring wire sculpture based on the same theme as mine - Rapunzel.  But what a different take!  (I absolutely adore this piece.)

So Ruth got to choose the next theme, and she chose Spring Blossoms.  Which I think is a fabulous theme because it has plenty of scope, and it's not hard to enjoy looking at pictures of Spring flowers for inspiration.  I immediately thought of the carpet of nodding bluebells that bloom in English woodland in the Spring.  This picture, which is used as a stock photo on Wikipedia, was taken just a few miles from where I live:

You can see it's really not hard to take inspiration from views like this.  I did think 'daffodils' briefly - I love daffodils! - but it just had to be English bluebells.  So here is my piece.

And I'm happy to say it's a Picture Pendant, and hopefully there will be more on the way.  I can't wait to see what the other Wire Goddesses create, and I will as ever post the link here when it's time to vote.


In the meantime, roll on Spring.  As usual in this country, the weather doesn't know what it's going to do next, and is keeping us on our toes! :)

Tentatively hopeful ...

Well, after whingeing about my creative dry spell last time, I'm tentatively hopeful that the creative juices may finally be starting to trickle, if not quite to flow (why does that sound slightly gross?).  Maybe partly because I've been trying to put myself under a bit less pressure (commissions aside).  This is an ornament I made to hang near my original wire goddess, when I was allowing myself to have a rare play with the copper wire the other day:

As I think I mentioned before, I've been working on a commission - and this one is a larger version of the Midwinter pendant that pretty much switched off my inspiration last time, so I was a little nervous about it.  However, it is well underway, and although it has left me very little time to play with things like the tree above - wonder of wonders, a few ideas have pinged into my head in the last week.  They're still just ideas until I have the time to explore them, but it's a start.  And I was so desperate not to forget them, my long-suffering hubby was called on to write a couple of them down in the form of speedy notes that I think perplexed him somewhat ...  But I was in the bath at the time, so someone had to do it, and as I usually do a rough sketch, it seemed a bit beyond the call of duty to expect him to do that!

Before I started the commission, I did squeeze in the time to make a Midnight Tree pendant using one of a string of rather pretty blue agate beads I bought last week.  They were part of a purchase from an Etsy shop I've got quite fond of recently, SilverSense - great service, and a free gift of pretty Czech glass beads with every purchase. 

   So I'm not going to tempt fate by stating categorically that the muse is back.  But I'm hopeful ... ;)