Spring is in the air and Summer around the corner

Time to indulge in my other passion - little shoots are peeping up  in my garden all over the place , telling me its time to clear up winter debris and get ready for some sowing. I got some poppy seeds to sow out - poppies are my favourite flowers - if only the leaves didn't look so dreadful and straggly once the flower has died, or they lasted a bit longer - Oh well, you cant have everything. I have a little idea for poppy based jewellery, but that will have to wait. This week it is the turn of the sunflower. I have a smallish garden,with nowhere near the space I'd like to grow masses of sunflowers - like the paintings of Provence - you can feel the heat coming off the land in those paintings. So I decided to make my own with my favourite (currently) - polymer clay.

The most famous sunflowers of them all - Vincent Van Gogh's Sunflowers

Monet's contribution to the 'sunflowers in a jug' genre

Monet's Garden at Velhuil

Impressionism is a 19th century artistic movement that swept much of the painting and sculpture styles of the period. It was not just a passing fad but has defined an entirely modern way of expressing one’s artistry that eventually rubbed of in other art forms like literature, photography and film making - I wondered if that could be replicated in jewellery making as well. I have a few prints dotted around the house and can spend hours gazing into the dreamy quality of the paintings. The impressionists painted by recreating the sensation in the eye that views the subject, rather than delineating the details of the subject by simply applying colours and brush strokes that took on a strange accuracy , rather than attempting to recreate a photograph with paint.

These are puffy, frilly polymer clay flowers, edged with gold - light as a feather, anchored to copper wire and adorned with gemstones. The left -over one was anchored to a memory wire choker and a wire dragonfly added to one side - and there you are, I am an Impressionist too!

A garden in waiting

Harry the house - guardian

Green and lush in midsummer

It's hard to believe that a garden that looks like the first picture, can be the same one in the last - coming from the tropics I wasn't used to the aggressive changes in climate reflected in the garden, and of course mood! 
It will be St Patrick's day soon - the end of Lent - and the Irish diaspora will be out celebrating - I have a very good friend who is Irish, and we spent a lot of time together in our training years - she put the story out that we were actually long lost sisters - according to the epic story her father had been stationed in India in the war...... my mother might have had something to say about that, and anyway, I'm not that old - but a lot of gullible midwives actually believed it and congratulated us on meeting so late in life and how well we got on - let's just say, I have a sister and her name is not Fidelma. So, being virtually part Irish, I am celebrating too.

Bollywood would have loved this story line - except we would have been twins, and there would have been a fire or a flood and our mother would have managed to carelessly mislay one of us in the struggle to survive, one of us would have been evil and the other a police woman - as it is, Fidelma and I are both gynaecologists - very prosaic!

With my Irish / Impressionist hat on, I created this Peter Pan collar with green howlite slab nuggets and cream wooden beads, and a sculptured bow at the neck. The Peter Pan collar was originally designed by the actress Maude Adams in 1905 for her role in the Broadway play of the same name. I called it the Tinker Bell collar though, it certainly is green enough and the collar was created for someone like her!

I read this poem by Tiffany Kuhanez, and this about sums it up - 
Tinkerbell a little fairy
That glows within the night
She surrounds me glowingly...
Surrounds me with pixie light.
She sprinkles pixie dust
That helps you to fly
And when she blows dust from her little hand
Now I can touch the sky!   

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My friend Jinny Holt continues to make her wonderful books of spells - wierd and wonderful! - she is a true artist and can effortlessly turn her hand to lots to creative things. Read about her in her blog
http://creativesoulcreations13.blogspot.com/  

Je T'aime - the necklace

Do listen to the music - I'm sure you will enjoy the jewellery more if you do. I love this song, and though it is a bit racy, it makes you want to dance. 

Clematis Tangutica

Je T'aime was inspired by a picture of my garden shed last summer - I have a yellow Clematis Tangutica scrambling all over it.
I made it with some orangey yellow silver lined seed beads and my favourite medium - wire - I hope you like it. 

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The flowers arrive in late summer and I love this Clematis, especially as it is a species that is out of the norm. It has dandelion like seed heads which are pretty in their own way, but I simply love those flowers.

The Angel's wing necklace

We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another.  ~Luciano de Crescenzo 
Luciano is a Neapolitan writer and film maker - now 83 - I thought this was very profound - after all , who of us wouldn't like a hug.....
I made what I thought was an angels wing in wire and silver lined shiny seed beads - an angel ought to be shiny surely .....
 this is what occurred - this is, I think a night time version of the 'Spring fever' necklace 

The Spring Fever Necklace

Vine leaf toggle clasp to pick up the lucite leaves in the necklace

Silver and white with coloured leaves as accents

A large quartz crystal glows gently to one side of the necklace

The Angel's Wing Necklace

I have had to go back to my day job, my holiday at an end - have a nice week and I hope I will find you well next weekend. Happy Mother's Day and St Paddy's day to all of you.