Welcome

Welcome to the weird and hopefully wonderful world of my imagination , jewellery inspired by the animal life around me and the mysteries of history.
Click on the links to see more of my work, feel free to contact me if you have any requests or suggestions.

Wednesday 31 October 2012

Just take one pumpkin

And carve.....................
happy pumpkin
angry pumpkin

wicked elf pumpkin
scarecrow pumpkin 
rat infested pumpkin
Its a good idea not to drop your pumpkin 
Gently decaying pumpkin several weeks later


                          Happy Halloween

Friday 5 October 2012

Enamel insect and flowers

Anyone who saw my last post about my brass bird, may have wondered why it was sitting on a real branch. When I first started it it was going to be sitting in a nest made of wire, but having made its legs and feet I didn't want to hide them . The idea I had was to make a Victorian taxidermy style diorama  ,  with metal creatures instead of stuffed ones.
So what follows are the close ups of the piece of bark that the branch is mounted on with its accoutrements.......
First I made an insect, this was intended to be flying in the air above the bird, which is why the bird is looking up but finding a suitable branch was impossible so it has ended up on the floor....of the piece that is.
Is body is enamelled top and bottom with a brass band around its circumference to hide the join, the legs are copper with beads melted on to the ends for feet.


I also made a copper worm which had a great dark wormy patina from heating, I'm so tempted to make some sort of a brooch with a whole bunch or these so they would emerge out of a pocket.....would anybody buy it though?
 

Then I made some plants from copper which I enamelled





and

I was particularly pleased with the way the leaves turned out, they are all enamelled on both sides, which in the case of the brass flowered daisy was probably a waste of time as you cant see the back, but working out how to make them was very instructive. I'm now trying to decide how to combine these flowers and leaves into a brooch.
And here is the picture of the whole thing for those who have not seen it on my facebook page.

My apologies for the state of the photos they were taken late at night the day before I sent it off for the exhibition when I realised I had no pictures of the finished article. I really wanted to have it all under a glass dome but couldn't find anything suitable that was affordable. I found a couple of websites selling old oblong domes, plenty of stock but no prices, I hate that. If you have a shop why not put the price on things? It reminds me of the thing that posh antiques shops do, where the assumption is if you have to ask the price you cant afford it. My attitude is that if I have to ask the price I assume you don't want to sell it.  
This was great fun to make and I'm thinking about what creature to make next, I spent a very boring day at work today stapling bits of insurance policy documents together whilst daydreaming about dragons, but don't hold you breath it will be probably after Christmas before I get a chance to make another project like this.