Niky Sayers Artisan Jewellery: art elements blog

31.7.18

July Art Elements Challenge

July's Art Elements Theme Challenge was chosen by our wonderful and talented Jen Cameron and was seed pods.
As soon as I learnt of the theme I started to collected all the different seed pods that I came across, but I had no idea what I was going to make and found it hard to get started.

I decided to try some thing easy to begin with and made this copper fold formed seed pod with Jen's beautiful lamp work head pins bursting out....

Then once I saw Claire's fantastic polymer clay tutorial on the Art Elements Blog I decided that I needed to try making some of those, I did not unfortunately get to Finnish these as I am very easily distracted and they need a few more coats of paint....

The polymer clay got me thinking, oh how about moulding tiny seed pods and recreating them in silver metal clay?!?

I looked for the smallest I could get my hands on but with the best textures and heres what I came up with....

I started to add gems and beads to see what I could create with the metal clay pods but in the end they just looked much better on there own so I made them into simple earrings, the studs have a wonderful star type pattern.

Then I wanted to try some art work, I really like the idea of painting and drawing but always find it hard to get started! So on these ones I used parts of the seed pods and either stuck them on to the page or used them and some acrylic paint to print on the page, these were experiments and need a bit more work but as I was making the "helicopter" seed pod piece I was distracted by how much they looked like dragonfly wings so then I made this....

Not seed pods but seed pod inspired, I made a water cooler background (I had much too much fun doing this and may have made 50 or so water colours splats) and used the helicopter pods and some acrylic paints to print the wings and drew a very simple dragonfly and added some more water colour, I rather like this one!

Thank you Jen for inspiring us all this month, I can't wait to see what everyone else has created...

Guest Artists:

Tammy

Raven

Alysen

Anita

Cat

Kimberly

Rozantia

Art Elements Team:

Jen

31.3.18

March Nest Theme Reveal

Today is the day for the March Nest Theme Reveal over at Art Elements Blog! Thank you Cathy for such a wonderful theme, I have throughly enjoyed this one, but as luck would have it I had more ideas then time this month so mine are all works in progresses!

I had so many ideas for this theme that I had to start writing them down and then came the rush to buy supplies and then life got in the way and slowed me down! The original plan was to needle felt some spring scenes onto the polystyrene eggs and crochet a big fibber nest for them to rest in, think beautiful mossy green coloured nest with little pieces of ribbon woven in for a touch of colour, but the moss wool did not arrive in time and the needle felting did not happen! In the first photo there is also the beginnings of a little bird house, I found one on pintrest with a penny tiled roof and thought oh my I need one of those but you can't saw a bird house with a jewellers saw or a massive man saw which were the only saws I had. The mossy star was a christmas decoration I feel in love with and have kept on the wall the plan there is to create a woodland scene but I'm pretty sure this project will take me most of the year.

These are the practice crochet nests I made while waiting for the moss coloured wool, this gold mohair wool is just so lovely and the smallest nest is just under an inch wide. The plan is to needle felt a humming bird for the smallest and fix it to a twig mounted on a plinth.

Also you may have noticed if you follow my instagram account I am slightly obsessed with making wooden books at the moment and there was this beautiful gnarly hole in one of the pieces that I thought would make a wonderful space for a nest, Im thinking of having a metal wildflower set into the corner cover and some how having this quote on the front.

I think next time I shall have to focus one one project at a time rater then all the things!

I do hope you will join me in seeing what everyone else have created....

Guest Participants-