Saturday, April 10, 2010

Somthing that is not an owl, something that is, and something that was supposed to be.

So my sister gave me a not so subtle hint that my blog has a lot of owls. As a consequence here is something that is not an owl but was inspired BY an owl. The inspiration is the owl from the previous post, it IS kind of skull like, something that I noticed as well as a friend (thanks Sonia). Piraticowl badge, a lampwork bead mounted on some hand-tooled leather.

Pirate badge


Speaking of leather, it is my latest inspiration/fascination particularly as a vehicle for mounting lampwork. A satisfying process and IMHO a complimentary result.. It also means that I can make some brooches utilising the beads. (finally! it has been bugging me no end)

I recently undertook a project as a result of reading about an exhibition which the International Society of Glass Beadmakers (ISGB) were mounting. The brief was to create a piece of jewellery that an imaginary or historical person would wear. Ofcourse my thoughts went to Athena, Goddess of Wisdom in Greek mythology, whose creature was an owl. I thought about the kind of jewellery she might wear and came up with the idea for a brooch to hold her toga together ;-) So it developed from there. It utilises a bead I developed earlier, an owl on a shard of glass.

Anyway I submitted images of it to be juried, and found out yesterday that my piece was accepted!! so very excited :-D

Here it is. It's the first of it's kind so I know it could benefit from more skill etc but ya gotta start somewhere. It is titled "Badge for the Order of Athena"

Badge for the Order of Athena


Lastly I started making an owl that refused to be an owl. It turns out it was a princess. I called her Princess Pettigrew. I think she has potential as a design. I like how her skirt flares out over a balloon underskirt.

Princess Pettigrew glass bead