Monday, January 26, 2009

Challenge entry

I stumbled upon the Art Bead Scene blog not too long ago... i was intrigued by their idea of having a monthly challenge. This month, the challenge was to create a necklace based on Van Gogh's 'Irises'. I have always found this to be a beautiful painting... I decided to enter.

The point of the 'Art Bead Scene' blog seems to be to promote using hand-made beads (they call 'art beads') in jewelry as opposed to using the factory created beads. I do see where they are comming from, but i am glad they are not so hardcore about it that it feels limiting. MANY different mediums for creating the beads (including wood carving as i used in mine) are accepted, glasswork and polymer clay seeming to be the most common. This is my submission to the challenge.





















I was inspired in a variety of ways for this piece. My first point of inspiration here came from the blog of the lovely Daryn Mentock, from one of her lovely curled wire journal pages. I saw it and i just knew i had to make one myself. The idea for the beads with the wrapped wire came from a flickr picture i'd seen while surfing around, but i forgot to write down who it was or a link (too bad, as hers were gorgeous). The ideas for the pendant bead was all my own. I had stumbled upon a super cheap wood carving kit at a local stationairy/art store, and even though i have ZERO experience or training with wood carving i decided I couldn't resist. I had a lot of fun, keeping it simple, carving the 'leaves' into the wood here. I then painted it up with a mix of paint and pearlescent medium.

I finally bought a drill this weekend and, as it was a four day weekend here in Seoul, i have been having so much fun drilling to my hearts content and finally finishing a couple of projects that were just waiting for the drill. More necklace posts to come!

In conclusion, wish me luck having my name drawn from the contest, as i would win a wackload of handmade beads if they pull my name. I am so excited to see what the theme will be next month!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Very nice! Wow, Dale...it's hard to believe you've never done any carving!