Towers and perspectives

We went on a lovely walk yesterday with some of the family around Prestbury, near Cheltenham in Gloucestershire. It was a crisp cold day but the sun was shining and the sky was blue! There were many stiles to climb over, little streams of water to paddle through and mud to slide in. It was a great walk.


About half way through, we walked past Hotel de la Bere. This was built in 1485 as a manor house. The architecture is lovely with many different parts, including chapels and towers and...


The tower seemed to catch the attention of all of us.....and it was so funny to hear our perspectives.....one of them was "just think how many apartments we could squeeze into that".....another was "think of the heating bill to keep that place warm"....and "how would you find anyone in there"....but mine was "what a nice necklace that tower design would make!".


Interesting to see how diverse we all think looking at the same thing!

Just before I came on this UK trip, I re-took some photos of some of my pieces of jewelry, and the photos here show the triangular tower necklace that I made a while ago. Mmm maybe its time for the triangular tower to move over and a La Bere one is on it's way....

Front page of Etsy!

The trunk show is fun. Still going on and while it's going on, a few of us from the Etsy Metal Clay team got on the front page of Etsy. For those of you who don't know Etsy - it's quite something to get front page! Good old Rapunzel!

More than 100 people came to the trunk show - and some were in and out - so don't know a final total yet..... It was an interesting experience. I think next time we do one, we'll all know more about how it goes and how you can post and answer questions and add photos and........ Bit of juggling involved!

It was nice to see some familiar faces there.

Merry go round coming up next.....

Triangular tower

Well it may not seem like a good starting point...but the inspiration for this piece came from the brickwork texture! The texture came from a hobby railway set of a small building and so I made my own brick texture plate with it, from two part silicone rubber. I didn't want to just make a house with this lovely texture - so this "olde" castle idea came to mind. The triangular part just appeared as I was troubled how a square tower would sit/hang properly. So I made a support from a card and wrapped some silverclay around it. Then I added the textured layer.

I love the idea of little ramparts... I think every castle tower should have them to shoot those arrows out of.....But then sometimes castles seem a little scary so I made the door partially open so that it would look inviting...make the viewer want to peer inside and "enter". I put the bail on the back to hang the chain from....but then the idea of winding stairs up to the top of the tower, to the ramparts...has that sense of mystery...so I decided to add something just for the wearer that others wouldn't see.
I added a cobalt blue stone in the top - so when the wearer looks down - they see this gorgeous colour. Also when outside, the light hits the blue stone and casts a general blueness to the inside of the tower, like there is a light on inside...
(I have this idea to create a piece with an actual light inside ....but that is a work in progress....)
So the wearer has their own secret that they can choose to share or not.

I've actually done a few castle pieces....from 'talking towers', which were round tower earrings that seemed to be saying something to each other, to 'Rapunzel's towers', to 'An Englishman's home is his castle', to 'Tuscan towers' to 'Home sweet home'.. The idea of architecture really interests me. And it was piqued even more when I recently read the book by Ken Follett "Pillars of the earth" - but that inspired another piece of jewelry which I'll relay another day.....

The pictures of the castle here are Castello di Amorosa - a new winery that has recently opened in Napa Valley. The owner spent $36million creating this castle - which he doesn't even live in! It makes me laugh. It is a brand new castle but he spent such attention to detail to make it look like an authentic old castle. Its amazing. You just have to love it! There are three storeys below ground for the wine to "live" in and three storeys above ground to "play" in. Alot of events are held here and the owner likes to be the "king of the castle"!!! A fun place to visit if you are in the area....
Anyhow - hope your home is your castle..... and is full of surprises!