Bronze medal winner!

Yesterday I had a nice surprise in the mail. A couple of months ago I had entered some of my pieces into a competition and they were returned yesterday with a letter that said I was the bronze medal winner for the metal clay category. Just like being in the Olympics!

The competition was with Fire Mountain Gems, a jewelry supply company in the US. They had quite a few categories in the competition - most of them beading - and more than 1,300 people entered.

The first stage was to send in photographs and descriptions and then they selected some 300 or so pieces for the finalists and we then had to mail our pieces to them for the final judging.

I entered 6 pieces and 5 of them got through to the final. My bronze medal winner was the Three Little Pigs necklace and earrings set. The other pieces that got through to the final were my birdcage earrings, Little Bo Peep and her sheep, I'm a little teapot necklace and teddy bears' picnic. By the time I had to send them off, I had sold the teddy bears' picnic piece, the teapot piece and the birdcage earrings. I tried to recreate them all - but didn't have time to redo the teddy bears!

So the Three Little Pigs is the children's story book. If you aren't familiar with it, the story is about a mummy pig who sends off her three baby pigs and tells them to "take care and do the best you can".

One pig sees a man selling some straw so he buys it from him and builds himself a house from the straw. Unfortunately, the wolf comes alongs and huffs and puffs and blows his house down. (In some versions, the wolf gets the pig - but in other versions the pig runs off to his brother. I prefer the gentler version!)

The second pig sees a man selling sticks so buys them off him and builds his house from sticks. But that nasty wolf huffs and puffs and blows his house down too....so both pigs run off to the other pig.

The last pig sees someone selling bricks so buys them and builds a lovely house of bricks. The wolf comes by and huffs and puffs.....and huffs and puffs....and huffs and puffs...but can't blow down the brick house.

The two pigs with houses of straw and sticks - the earrings - have sad expressions on their faces because they lost their houses, but the smart pig with a brick house has a big smiley face! He won over the wolf.

I did think of making a wolf to hang at the back of the necklace but then thought it might be a bit scary!!!
This is the first competition I've entered so it's most encouraging! I got a small cash prize for the bronze medal and my design may appear in the fire mountain catalog and website.

Feels good! Good old piggies!!