Iris as Inspiration

As I got ready to start blogging about my newest really big project I realized that I wanted to show some of the background of how Iris have inspired some of my previous pieces of art.

The purple Iris shown here are happily growing in my garden, my Mother sent them to me from her garden in Iowa and before that they were in her Mother's garden.  I think Iris are incredibly beautiful flowers and there are so many varieties out there that no matter what color you like you could probably find some to please you.

Since I started beading Iris have shown up in several of my pieces and I am sure that like other flowers will continue to show up.

The first beaded piece I made that used the Iris is my necklace below.  I made it for a contest at Turquoise String Beads in Fall River, Massachusetts where I got my beading start.  They were having a summer themed contest and I designed this piece for it.

After I started doing bead embroidery I knew that I absolutely had to make an Iris piece.  Even with size 15/0 beads (which are quite small); I knew that the piece would have to be fairly large to get the details that I wanted.  I had this purse that gotten at a charity sale and realized that it would be the perfect canvas.  With lots of photos of Iris in hand I played with ideas until I came up with what I wanted.

I used 50 colors of seed beads for the purse to allow me as much freedom with values as possible.  The Iris has some ruffled edges to the petal which helps give dimension to the flower.  This purse is still one of my favorite pieces that I have made.

My pond piece was inspired by some Iris we saw in a little pond when we were hiking  in New England.  I mad this piece to enter into the Bead Dreams contest for their crystal category.  The Iris in this piece is entirely 3-dimensional and was added after it was made.

At Bead Fest in Philly last year I took a Mini Mosaics class from Joan Babcock.   In class we learned how to make mosaic pendants using seed beads instead of tiles.  I loved the idea, how cool and "what if...."

Oh how I love the "what if"s,  when my creative brain slams in to high gear and takes me for a ride.  What could you do with this technique only bigger?  A mirror frame?  A piece of wall art?  Or how about a backsplash for behind our cooktop in our kitchen?  Mmmmmm......  I like that idea.  We didn't have our builder put in a backsplash because we didn't like any of their options, we wanted something more interesting.  I had been trying to think of a really cool idea for over the cooktop and then we were going to use that to pick the rest of the backsplash for the kitchen.

Since we weren't in a huge hurry I could take on this project which I knew would be a big undertaking.  The project started with measurements and a to scale drawing so I would have an idea of what I wanted to do.  Hmmmm.... what did I want to do?   At this point we had already painted the kitchen blue and copper.  Nature has always been my go to inspiration and the idea of using Iris just jumped out as an image that we would enjoy year round and could pick up on the blues and coppers in the room.

The scale drawing was a rough idea and gave me an idea if I could make it work and what I wanted to use and to see what Wayne thought since as always he was funding the project (luckily he doesn't have to pay me by the hour).

The photo above has the drawing that is sitting on top of the substrate that I am using for the mosaic.  I will leave you with this and continue with the project in my next post.  If you can't wait you can check out the photo album of this on my facebook page.

The Good News and The Not So Good News

Starting with the good news I got first and second place ribbons at the Southern Maryland Quilt and Needlework exhibit at Sotterley Plantation. My Dragonfly purse got first and my Iris purse got 2nd. I didn't have any competition in the bead work category. It still was great and I got good critiques from the judges and the people in charge said I got lots of good comments so it was a positive experience.

We leave in a couple of days for our trip to Bead International, Mid Ohio Track for Wayne, and time spent with Wayne's folks and his niece's graduation. I have gotten most of my stuff ready to go including the important stuff like jewelry and purses and projects to work on. The back of the car will also be full of track tires and tools for Wayne's 2 days on the track. I am sure we will have a good time. I still have some things to do before we leave but things are coming together pretty well.

The not so good news is that shortly after we get back Wayne will be heading back to Iraq. It is not really bad news since he won't be gone too long, actually he will be going twice in just a couple of months. I should be able to get a fair amount done while he is gone each time and since I have to get my journals and cards done for my BJP pages it won't be all bad.

I am looking forward to our trip, it should be a good time.

My First Beaded Commission

I have managed to get all of my Bead Journal Project journal entries moved onto a new blog. They were all entered with in 2 days so if you want to see the pieces from a particular month you will need to use the labels for June or July. It took a bit of work but I think it will make it easier for people to access it. I will have additional photos for each month on my website.

I went out for lunch with Colleen (my landlady) today. We had a good time and she is easy to talk to which is helpful at times.

Wayne called on Monday night and is doing well. He has built a bit of storage furniture for his group to use. He is keeping busy and working out regularly. It sounds like there are lots of critters there, more than you might think of for a dessert. They have bats and lizards and birds and other animals that he tells me about once in a while. Since many of those eat insects especially those that bite I am sure they are glad to have them around. I send him daily e-mails about how the Red Sox are doing so he gets to keep up on how they are doing. Wish we were still in New England since they are doing so well this year, going to the games are always fun but when they are winning it is even better.

My class yesterday didn't end up happening (no students) but things are slow at the bead store especially classes at the moment. The good news for me at least was that I had my first piece of commissioned bead work. Not anything overly elaborate but kind of neat to know that the bracelet that I had at Bead Boutique made the man ask for a necklace like it for his daughter. I went in to the bead store and made it while I was there since I needed the crystals to make it and didn't really want to drive there to get it, come home and make it and then drive back to drop it off, especially since he needed it in a week.

Things are slowly moving forward on my projects here. I am a little further along on both my pop-top purse and my July BJP page. I have spent more time on the computer getting my 2 blogs up and running and will work on getting my new website figured out. Since I am moving it anyway I decided on starting sort of from scratch. Now that I know how to do things it won't be as time consuming and my site will feel fresh. If anyone has any suggestions feel free to e-mail or leave a comment. It will still be with dotmac and somewhat graphics intensive but I will continue to play with it to see what I can do with it to reflect my art.

Recycled Art

I am still working on getting everything figured out for my upcoming change to my website and learning a lot about what my computer can do. The good news is that I have few distractions and lots of time on my hands so I have also had time to play with creative endeavors.

My BJP for July is coming along and I will probably get more time spent on it tonight. I am thrilled with the texture and dimension that I am getting with the piece and the creative journey my life is taking as I go through the process and my life at the moment.

My other creative project at the moment is my Pop-Top chain maille purse. I started playing with the pop-tops about a year ago and built it up a little here and a little there and this spring I decided that I wanted to turn it into a purse. At that point the hard part was to figure out how I wanted to do that, but I love a challenge and slowly things are coming together for it. I am planning on entering it in the "Bead International" bead contest. They consider anything pierced as a bead so I figure that my pop-tops would count, they also tend to like innovation and such so maybe this will get in. I just need to get it finished before the September deadline. I don't think that should be a problem now that I have figure out how I want to do some of it.