Monique of A half-baked notion is first up on this little monthly blog hop masterminded by sweet Alicia. Monique used inspiration from the National Gallery of Canada exhibit: Artists, Architects & Artisans. I’m a lucky small town Ottawa girl with big city treats like a National Gallery to go visit – and visit we did. The Gallery does an excellent job making the space interesting for all ages, Averleigh had a great time and did not want to leave. They had a table full of supplies, and an employee to direct you to them, set up in the Garden Court to make “miniature environments”. They handed me a piece of heavy stock paper with instruction to fold and cut to make the floor and two walls of a room. Then you could choose to make your furnishings from pasticine and there was assorted crafts stuff for decorating. Averleigh chose just to draw instead but the idea got stuck in my head.
With the new year here, I had been tidying up the studio and found these unfinished wood dollhouse armoires. I seem to remember they were a quarter or less, and you know, I needed them. I had to get to painting them and decided I’d make all the interior white so I can use them for the much higher purpose of storing some special beads in my studio.
Oh look it can hold earrings! These are a bit of a warm up to the main event. Monique sent along the pretty wood squares and I matched them with a little frosted blue glass, a jet black octagonal type crystal (32 unequal faces called ?) and a bronze coloured enamel headpin. It’s the exaggerated scale of the huge kidney ear wires that remind me of the era. Actually, I really need to show you the necklace to walk through all the inspiration…
Monique’s butterfly is exquisite and I knew I had no desire to add any of my own polymer work, I was just looking for a way to showcase it. After seeing the beautiful iron work at the exhibit I had all kinds of fanciful antennae ideas floating through my mind. I eventually pulled out my super special piece of reLuma from my friend Annie. This piece of glass is from a gin bottle, it’s a square diamond and it is blue – that’s a trifecta of awesome for me. Once I wrangled that 16g wire around the glass the rest kind of fell into place. I love the czech glass that Monique included it’s such a beautiful match to the faux wood of the pendant.
I recently acquired those black crystals from Andrew Thornton in a mystery box of goodies (so full of wonderful things). They were just the thing reminded me of these dramatic iron light fixtures from the exhibit. The lampwork in the centre of the horn ring is from Bead Abundant.
I’m sure there is special term for the proportions of the time, but I don’t know it. That equivalent of the golden rectangle was what I was going for and I certainly enjoyed the pursuit.
A moment of appreciation for the beautifully finished textured back of the pendant. I can recall being very concerned myself about making the back special on a piece so I sanded and buffed it so smooth, it was beautiful. But the first time I wore it I found out that is really the worst since all that did was allow it to stick to my chest in the most irritating fashion. This is how to do it right!
What a treat to create with beautiful things collected and made by friends. I’m very excited to see what the rest of our CC7A group created!
Here’s the team:
Monique of A Half-Backed Notion
Christine of One Kiss Creations
Cynthia of Antiquity Travelers
Sally of The Studio Sublime
Therese of Therese's Treasures
Alicia of All The Pretty Things
and me makes 7
It’s such a privilege to be invited to take part in this blog hop continuum, that Alicia, sweet and clever! My mind has already started turning around ideas for next month, featuring Christine’s piece and inspiration of “round and round”. In truth, March is further ahead in my brain but I like to invent rules like I have to do each month in order, just to add my own crazy into the mix.
