Girls day out

Recently I had a lovely family come over to my studio to make some jewelry: Jenni, Phoebe and Eve.  It's sort of a complicated story to tell you how I met them - originally a year ago - and that meeting was very brief, but a connection was made that resulted in us all having a great day together.  Jenni is the mum and Phoebe and Eve are her daughters aged around 14 and 11???

They'd never made jewelry before and we had a fabulous time trying out silver metal clay and then they each made an aluminum/aluminium bangle.  It was pretty quiet though - lots of concentration going on!

They had to go back to England before the pieces were fired, so I finished them off and sent them to them.   Not sure if they have received them yet.

The photos are of the pieces before they were fired. Jenni did the bird on the left, Eve did the bird on the right - the collared dove, and the heart, and Phoebe did the stars.  I'll show photos of the finished pieces when I know they have received the jewelry themselves!

I hope they enjoyed the day as much as I did :=D

Willow birdhouse - Part II

So here is my finished woven birdhouse:

I was really pleased with it.  The weaving seems secure and it all holds itself together well.  Our instructor gave us the option of decorating the houses with lichen and seeds and nuts and other things, but in my usual minimalist style, I left it as it is, with willow for the base and the roof woven in leaves.

My friends' houses came out great too. Here is Elisa with her large house, where the roof is made from eucalyptus bark and the house is decorated with twigs with lichen:

And here is Monique's house with her flower style roof made from leaves. Isn't it fabulous:

This final photo shows Monique with Cheri on the right - our instructor. 

It was wonderful day and I do think I'll be trying willow weaving again sometime....especially as I have a weeping willow tree in my garden.

Have you tried anything new recently?