Look what I found!

I just found my very own petria plant in my complex
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My fern castings

There is always an element of surprise in casting! You are never quite sure how it will come out but I am happy with the way my bits of plant and flowers cast! Bit of a bad photo but one can see what I am talking about!
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Alidra Alic

Here is another jeweller who creates beautiful orchid jewellery. I cannot tell whether her jewellery is cast but the detail on the orchid is beautiful. She also uses a plastic on her pieces that adds colour to them. Take a look:
http://www.klimt02.net/jewellers/index.php?item_id=7506

Other jewellers who have used flowers

As it would turn out some where someone has always tried out the idea you had in your head that you thought was unique and original! I found a man who casts beautiful flowers, including orchids! Wow they are lovely! Here is his link http://www.nicbladen.com/ . His name is Nic Bladen.
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Cast orchid

I am so pleased with the result of my cast orchid! I am very excited to put a touch of enamel on it! I need to start thinking how to create this into a unique piece of jewellery! I am going to research other jewellers that have flowers in their work. I far prefer this cast orchid to the other 2 I created by hand at the beginning of the year. I enjoy how it looks and feels as if it was real before it was changed into silver! I am so excited to see what else I can cast from the garden to create elements for jewellery!
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The orchid

I was looking up the meaning of an orchid and there were 3 common meanings: beauty, refinement and love!
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Casting my orchid

When getting changed to go out one evening I noticed my mom's orchid in her bath room and ever since then I have wanted to create an orchid for my hair to clip in! I think they are the most beautiful flower and their colours are so tastefully put together! Marlene was very kind an d bought me one of her orchid flowers that had fallen off her orchid and I decided to cast it!
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A bit of my process

I made wax sprues to attach the fern to the button where the silver will run in, in order to cast the fern.
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flowers to cast

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flowers to cast

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Trying the real thing

For the last 2 years I have made flowers out of silver and using my own templates and I am tired of doing this for now so I have decided to try casting the real flower to get a more accurate feeling of nature in my jewellery. So here are some of my photo's of the plants I want to cast!
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Earrings using fern design

I decided to make this pair of earrings with a oval shape. They are slightly different from each other and I like creating earrings like this, where each earring is not identical. If you look at flowers or leaves from the same plant they all look the same, nut if you look closely at each individual flower or leaf, they are all unique with slight differences. I am going to create a few earrings with this fern shape that each earring will be different.





Here are the earrings.......

more cut outs

Check out this blog site, the paper cut outs of leaves have the same feeling of my fern that is growing out of the metal! These leaves ahve been cut out of the paper but are still atached to the paper. interesting!http://www.paperphine.com/

Fern Designs

I have been too caught up in the idea of the final piece of jewellery rather than taking my element and exploring it even more. For example using it's negative shape and using the positive shape aswell as its pattern to roll mill textures of the pattern onto the silver.



Here are a pair of earrings I made just before I decided to start experimenting more.

Giving depth to something plain and creating something delicate from something ordinary

On the link below there is an artist that creates a 3 dimensional plant or object by cutting it out from a plain toilet roll or a piece of news paper! His name is Yuken Teruya! The toilet roll cut out has the same 3 dimensional feeling that my fern has coming out of the metal! I want to create more of this feeling of depth and interesting layering in my work! The thing that also catches my attention is that the negetive space where the object is cut out from is just as beautiful as the cut out themselves! I think I am doing alot of looking at negative and positive shapes and how in piercing out one shape there are so many different aspects of beauty in it. I am very interested in his work! click on the link below and find out what I am talking about! http://www.paperscissorsstone.info/

More flowers!

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A picnic in the gardens with our class

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A bit side tracked- Origami in fine silver

I got a bit side tracked and I decided to try out folding flowers and hearts out of paper. I followed some of the demo's on marlene's computer...

experimenting more with my fern designs

I have been piercing out more fern designs...

I have been making earrings...

The fine silver plate shapes of my earrings on my soldering block

I am not fond of the edges of the earrings and these still need big development. I find the one side of the earring far too straight.

Fern Designs in process

I decided to try and make some ferns out of silver to use as elements in creating earrings and some interesting things happenes as the ferns grew ( as they were pierced out)...

I enjoy how the fern has become 3D. It has movement and looks as if it is growing. I want to keep capturing this feeling in the rest of the jewellery I create. It is very delicate and this is what I am wanting to carry through in my jewellery. There are so many different aspects and different angles that this fern coming out of the silver can be explored in.

Fern Designs - www.greenroomeco.com

I'v always loved this design. It is on the cover of my prayer journal. And it just so happens to be eco friendly:)

Orchid House- Bot Gardens

Orchid house at Bot Gardens

The orchid house at Botanical Gardens.

flowers

A Frangipanny or something like that

beautiful texture

This bark has such a beautiful structure.

Soft colours

I love the suttle pink against the green and cream

A Spotty Fern

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Beautiful flowers from my sisters garden

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New Project- Fashion

Our new project for March is Fashion! So I have been thinking of what is popular and "in" at the moment but whilst saying this I need to focus on something that will still fit in with the jewellery I am busy creating at the moment which is delicate jewellery based around flowers and nature.

It seems that society has become very aware of the "green" movement. It has almost become Fashionable to many people, but actualy there is a seriousness behind it to try to start protecting our planet to the best of our ability. I am going to explore creating more jewellery with my reference being nature and the outdoors to tie into this big movement the world is experiencing at the moment.

Japenese book binding

I have put together my first chapter of my Btech research. Chris helped me to bind it using a Japenese binding method. I am quite interested in the different types of Japanese binding used to bind books. Here is a picture of my process...

I had to crimp all the pages together tight , I then had to punch a hole with a sharp scribe through the marked out holes on the margine i had drawn and I then had to thread the bimding through the holes, in, out, in, out and back again. You have to start binding from the middle.

Outside lighting

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Testing

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A bit about my Splash project

For my splash project I wanted to explore creating flowers out of silver, but only flowers that held my personal memories within them. In doing this I wanted to create fragile, delicate pieces of jewellery which is symbolic of the fragility of these memories as well as the characteristics of the flowers. The memories were a trigger point for the creation of the elements which were to make up the piece of jewellery. I explored different techniques such as chasing, fold forming and enamelling and found that it is very difficult to create a flower out of silver that will have the same feeling as the real flower. This is an area which I still need to resolve and do more experimentation with. But in saying this I wore the neck piece out on Friday night and this piece which was created with inspiration from the Petria flower (examples on my blog) and was pleased when a friend looked at my neckpiece, examined it and then said “oh we have these flowers in the back of our garden and they spin like propellers when you drop them from a height”. I had not told him where my inspiration had come from. I was pleased that I had got the general feeling of the flower in my piece of jewellery across to the viewer as that is what had tried to do when creating it. For the neck piece I got the overall delicate feeling that I wanted but if you look closer at specific areas of the neck piece there are still many unresolved aspects, such as the way it is linked (although I like the “twig” like look), the catch and the fragility of the flowers which I am not convinced was successfully captured.

I am pleased with the overall delicate feeling that was captured in the flower ring I created. I need to find a way to keep the petals of the flower at the top of the stem and to stop it from slipping down the stem. My next pieces of jewellery I create will be a series of these rings where the flowers petals are propellers and they spin in the wind. There are two aspects of fragility I focused on in these pieces created:

1. The visual aspect of the piece (it looks delicate, the thickness of the metal, the way it is joined etc)
2. The handling of the jewellery/the display on the body (it can be easily deformed or broken or damaged.)

I am unsure of my theory at the moment as I am still researching and trying to find out more about memories and about what aspects make up a delicate piece of jewellery and how delicate can a piece of jewellery actually be. These questions are going to be what I am going to research and try answer in the next few weeks.

another splash piece

This piece needs to be refined. The parts that make up the flowers need to be more delicately and specifically shaped. I put some of the flowers in the piece for the photo.

Lindsey Mann- propellors in her jewellery

Talking about propellors- Lindsey mann has some beautiful pieces of jewellery where she has mini silver propellors in her work!

some of my splash project pieces

I want to make a range of these rings where th petals are propellors and they spin in the wind

I love shadows! Especially jewellery that makes for good shadows!!!

more of my journal sketches

Here are the sketches for the earrings that I blogged about on tuesday. I forgot to put the sketches up.

Pages from my sketch journal

Here are som seeds of Dandelions i tried to create out of silver wire...

I have been thinking about the dandelion flower and how it is made up of individual little delicate seeds that float when you blow them and make a wish.

I really like the middle small sketch of the upside down umbrella flower, floating in the middle of the page.

The question I have been asking myself this week is: how delicate can a piece of jewellery be and what makes it feel so delicate. (still looking about and thinking about it.)

Designs from my drawing journal

Some design ideas for my shining lights competition drawings. They all come from elements and flowers i have been experimenting with.

My flower punch came into good use for this design