I first came across coneflowers when we moved to New Hampshire. We had lots of them in our garden there and they just seemed so unusual to me with their raised cone center and the petals hanging down below. Their botanical name is Echinacea - which comes from the Greek "echinos", meaning hedgehog! And they are prickly too! I have lots of hedgehog stories - but another day for those...
Anyhow, the first time I tried carving in metal clay, I was doodling and trying to decide what to carve that wasn't too difficult...had a little bit of a cut-out in it that I could patina to stand out...was easily recognisable...
Well I was still making quite a lot of silver flowers at that time and so the profile of a coneflower came to me.The shape of the piece then just seemed to follow the flower shape and having a textured background where the cutout would show through just seemed to all come together.
I keep seeing lots of flowers lately - not just seeing them, but taking note of them, so I feel I'm up for a resurgence of flower jewelry...but maybe as the summer is ending, I'm too late??? Never too late for flowers. Maybe some new ones will appear soon...
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pretty necklace!!! I love flowers! Especially in winter when everything is so grey and colorless here.
Echinacea apparently too, is really good for your immune system. A few months ago when I was going from cold to cold and never really seeming to lift my head above sick waters, someone told me I should take some echinacea suplements, that they would help. I thought...hey, why not... not like aspirins are doing much. And it did work...
Hedgehogs... they visit our garden everynight....
You're right! We need flowers even more in the winter!
Watch out for those hedgehogs. I was attacked by one years ago when I was saving it from being attacked by our dog!! I could have done with some Echinacea after that!!!!
I love coneflowers too. Marian is right, Echinacea is very good for the immune system. We visited the Eden Project in Cornwall recently whilst on holiday and there were so many of them. Beautiful.
It's funny how doodles can turn into jewellery, isn't it? I've been drawing these funny flowers for years and years now, especially when in boring meetings. And they other day, I thought to myself, hey that would make a great pendant! Can't wait to start my silversmith course now as that's definitely one of the things I'm planning to make.
I want hedgehogs in my garden too...
I've never made it to the Eden project but here great things about it. Maybe if I made it over to England in the summer one year, I could go! Doesn't seem quite so appealing in November - but then I guess alot of it is indoors too.... And careful what you wish for with those hedgehogs! My foot tooks ages to recover after I was stabbed by one!!
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