Romantic girl with a hammer

Actually I am very romantic in some ways

My favorite film or TV show ever is Pride and Prejudice   with Colin Firth and all...I just love everything Jane Austen

And I spent lots and lots of time when growing up drawing  pretty princesses with gorgeous dresses  :)

a romantic ring I just made 

On the other hand the rest of the time I spent doing lots of practical jokes and building tree-houses and using my fathers tools in the seller working space....

never played with dolls much..

When i left home and moved out into the world( to study) at 19 I brought with me lots of nice tools from my fathers stash.....some without permission ...hrmmmmmpf

He did not get mad at me..but gave me some more stuff including a nice electricdrill  to make holes even in the strongest walls....

 a necklace for a princess?

At the moment I am indulging myself in romantic stuff like laces, vintage buttons and pretty fabric to make some new lovely jewelry  (hopefully)

Just have a look at those incredible hand crocheted laces made by the grandmother of a friend   ...what a lot of work!!! are they not lovely!! (really vintage)

And some more in my closet ...

And how about that hammer ??  guess it is resting at the moment until next time I need it for some earrings or clasp making .........

( and I admit I like to watch "Dye hard" tooo sometimes)  :~)

The love of ICONS

In my house there are  lots of  ICONS.

I am a bit of a collector and blessed with a friend who is a real icon painter. She makes them from scratch with wood and cover with some kind of fabric and use the ancient way building them and  blending colors (egg-tempera) and gold

first pendant is mixed media with stone, script paper, laces and picture  + resin cover..

and now I will start making  some jewelry with this kind of pictures....

this one has e very ancient feel  and is imperfect aswell :)

I did make a post about Icons last Year but I will show You some of them again

they give You a calm feeling to have around

my first icon and one of my favos  It is VERY heavy on a thick piece of wood

 

another favorite and very unusual   Jesus with WINGS

 

and below a painting of Maria I made in 2002  painted on wood with a nice crackle effect to look old  - about 40 inches high

I gotta beautiful necklace :)

I fell in love with this necklace when I  looked around in Cece Vineeta´s 

aka  The Beading Yoginis Flicker treasures

and sent out a question to her if it was for sale

She wanted a couple of my ceramic focals ......so two envelopes travelled over the Atlantic 

I do admire this creative and artistic multi- media piece with  so  many skills shown....and love the micro-macrame work witch I can not do myself .......(I wish)

Just look at those jummie colors

Take a close look at this pendant

With American Cresent cykels as inspiration

 August monthly challenge  from Art Bead Scene  is to create something with inspiration from this vintage poster :

I do love those colors and was planning to  making some jewelry for the challenge 

When I looked through  some pretty beads I got from my friend Janet McDonald  of Singing Glass  I got an idea for a playful  pair of earrings ......and they turned out like this..

I have used  Janet´s  lampwork discs and beads + ancient small ceramic beads + some silk and my hand made wires

I am also very  happy  to have been featured as designer of the week at the ABS-blog with those :)

Here is a picture of  some other pretty beads from Janet  that she made special for me = nugget  that I do love.....

Arrival of the MUSE for the BSBP

Well .....:)  who would not get turned on by those beads I got in the mail from my partner Alice Boyce  yesterday      (You can read more about Alice in an earlier post)

just take a look at the fantastic play of colors in those lampwork beads she made for me!

and this pretty toggle with butterflies + African beads

and it is a challenge as well as it is GOLD :)

more challenges like those GORGEOUS  tiny tiny seedbeads  Russian size 10! fantastic colors as the lampwork

and finally some more pretty beads to complete the soup,  blueberry quartz qubes and some Czech faces +  Swarovski pearls

Time for the  right brain  to go to work

The spirit of IMPERFECTION

I think it all started at the Art summer schools  I attended during my high school years. I was lucky that my town Jönköping had the teachers from Swedish Art School in Stockholm coming down for 5 weeks during summer to teach art in my High School building..and also I was happy to be accepted as their student !

The man in charge of drawing and painting classes talked a lot about how to build pictures and such and he said that " the perfect is un-interesting"   If You see something perfect with the eyes the brain sort of "turnes of" or something like that  ....at least the way I understood his words...and I think for me this is very true......
Why make a painting that looks like a photo??

Also if I look around me in the world it is full of  US  the perfect spirits created  by GOD   but still not so perfect in our striving to  fulfill our purpose on this planet

and therefore  I like when my ceramic show up imperfection and has a touch of vulnerability ...........they do not look like this because i can not make them different but because I like them this way.......

I had in mind to make this post for some weeks now and was going to have a picture of a beautiful necklace I made from a pendant with edges like those cuff-focals picked out by a lady  in my studio (with hundreds to choose from).......... actually she choose the one with the biggest imperfection AND that made me think about creating this post.......but...
She came to pick it up earlier than expected so I have no picture ;

But here is another necklace I made with one of those not perfect pendants

A small SNEAK PEAK of what Im sending

To my lovely BSBP partner  Astrid  Boyce

so............. Im planning to ship it out tomorrow :)