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 ... ;)

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

Midwinter Challenge - please stop by and vote!

Just a quick post and run here.  As promised, here are the links for the surveys in which you can all vote for your favourite Wire Goddess Team entries to the Midwinter challenge.  There are three separate ones which are open to public voting - please vote once in each survey.  The winners of all three will then be voted on by the Wire Goddess Team members, and I'll post a picture of the overall winner here.

Part 1: www.surveymonkey.com/s/BRWTFMM
Part 2: www.surveymonkey.com/s/BWHNZW9
Part 3: www.surveymonkey.com/s/BM3WN63

Thank you for having a look, and I hope you are as stunned by the incredible work arrayed there as I was - voting was seriously difficult! :)

Challenging ...

As I was lucky enough to win the last challenge set by the Wire Goddess Team on Etsy with my Harvest Moon pendant, I got to choose the next theme.  As it's *cough-cough* days till Christmas, I couldn't resist a seasonal theme, so I went with Midwinter.  I had an idea in my head, that I sketched and pinned it to my noticeboard (had to unpin it to photograph it, because the light's already rubbish).

So far so good.  And that was when the challenge began.  I made the window frame first, then got on with the fiddly job of making the fir tree branches.  I always knew the moon would have to be suspended from a thread, so using a piece of Fireline was fine.  But that pesky snow that was meant to nestle so nicely in the window frames ... grrr!  I stitched some lovely little units from seed beads (no mean feat for me, I struggle to follow a pattern, never mind come up with something all by myself!), loved them:

decided they were too large, and would obscure the picture, so I made some smaller ones:

These were just what I wanted - they looked perfect in the window frames.  BUT!  I just could not come up with a way to secure them that didn't look completely hideous.  So, after wasting absolutely ages messing about with them, I decided to just wire some beads on and have done with it.  And here it is:

The snow was not quite what I was aiming for, but I'm reasonably pleased with it - at the very least, I'm pleased it's finished at last!  Maybe I will now be able to track down my mojo that seems to have done a runner while I was wrestling with the snow problem!

When it's available, I'll post a link to the voting page for all the entries - let me tell you, there is some seriously beautiful work in the running already! :)

Goddess News

Yes, we finally have a logo for our Wire Goddess Team on Etsy - this fabulous piece of
wirework by the very talented Ruth Jensen:

It was fun making something as a challenge, and we also have our first Wire Goddess

challenge up and running, with a theme of Harvest Time, appropriately for this early

onset of Autumn.  My entry is this Harvest Moon pendant:

It gave me a chance to play with my polymer clay for a change, and although I knew exactly

what I wanted to do, I think 'challenge' is the correct word, I struggled a bit with this one!

Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing all the other entries, and I'm enjoying having specific

themes to work to for a change.

In other news, I noticed that there were very few earrings and rings in my Etsy shop, so I'm

working to fix that - there are several new pairs of earrings now available, and when I've

finished the ring I'm currently making (for myself - to take on my hols!), I hope to add some

more.  Is there anything people would like to see there that they don't currently?  Challenge

me - I'm up for it! :D 

(Oh, and apologies for the weird font and spacing on this entry - Blogger is doing my head

in at the moment!)