Saturday, February 13, 2010

Green Things Growing

Brass, turquoise and a dragonfly inspiration

My mind has turned to growing things, to imagining the world outside my door alive with all that flies and flourishes on gossamer wings. In the summer, so many varieties of dragonflies sail by the river, I lose count. There are the neon fliers with black velvet wings, the steely grey ones that look straight out of robo world, the magnificent wide-bodied jets who spoil their impressive effect by flaunting black and yellow pj-like colorings along their torseaus. I love them all. They are my flags of summer. So, as always, they have inspired me with jewellry designs and a vest design still unfolding.

Recently, I've been working a lot with brass and copper, using components gleaned on my trip to Spain. Spain is a fabulous country for beaders, by the way. Rock shops and jewellry-making suppliers abound, especically in Barcelona. Above, the copper round came from a little shop in the Gothic Quarter, the green turquoise from New Mexico and the bits of dragon-skin agate again from Spain.

Spring eternal

Above you see the intense green turquoise disks I found in Spain, very rare. Such a green needs very little in the way of supporting players to shine so I linked them in among real copper-covered leaves, bound in real copper wire and links, added dragon skin agate and fastened it all with a length of very soft silk ribbon. I won't be taking these to the shops until May so, if anyone's interested in having one, just contact me.

Oh, and what about knitting you ask? Well, here's a peak of the colors unfolding in one of my new designs:

Bring on the green the yellow the deep blues!