Literary Inspiration - Dragons

Last week literary inspiration was an artist's work as referenced in the novel The Calder game. 

This week it is a favourite mythical creature, the dragon. Dragons are a part of many cultures around the world and are featured in a variety of great fantasy novels.

Christopher Paolini has a quartet of books about dragons and their riders. In the first book we meet Saphira, a blue dragon.

Cover of Eragon, showing Saphira

Using some dichroic, and metallic blue beads I created this version of Julia Pretl's dragon box to represent Saphira.

Saphira Box

Having completed Saphira, I decided to create a box inspired by another favourite dragon, Smaug, from The Hobbit. Smaug is described as being crusted with gems and fragments of gold from his hoard.

Smaug as illustrated by J.R.R. Tolkien

To bring the luster of the gold I used gold plated delicas. The finial on the top of the box represent the Arkenstone, a treasured jewel of the Dwarf Kingdom stolen by Smaug.

Smaug box

In total I have completed three dragon boxes. I hope to do more in the future including Glaedr, a golden dragon, Thorn, a red dragon and Fírnen, a green dragon.
 

Iris Twist Vase: progress report

A month ago I started working on a beaded vase inspired by this amazing painting of bearded irises by Vicky Mappin.

This first step was pulling the colours from the image to use in my design. I went to Beadfx and spent time comparing tubes of delicas to the picture on my ipad.

colour selection in progress

 In addition to the palette of purples I added silver, yellow and green. Here is the final selection.

Final palette at the start of the project

 With the colours selected and layed out in my working pattern I started at the bottom centre of the vase. 

completed bottom of vase

Once the bottom is done I started the long process of working up the sides of the vase. I continued the twist of the colours as I builded up the height .

Making progress

Getting ready to add more thread

When the sides are about double the current height I am going to start the do some decreasing to taper the vase.

Happy Mother's Day to my mom and sisters. Hope you have a great day!!!

Literary Inspiration

Next to my passion for beads is my passion for books and reading. I work in the children's department of a public library in the west end of Toronto. I love to share books and stories with children. Sometimes the books inspire a bead creation.

Two years ago I was inspired by the children's novel "The Calder Game" by Blue Balliett. In the story the children learn about mobiles and the artist Alexander Calder. I decided to make a mobile for the Bag of Beads challenge at the Toronto Bead Society. I made a number of beaded objects and created a mobile which hangs from a copper pipe structure.

Beads we were given

Stumpers, copper pipe end and metallic fibre paper

Work in progress

Finished mobile

It was fun to create each of the individual objects, but then I had to fine tune them and the lengths of wire they balance on. The science of the art of the mobile was an added challenge.

The completed mobile sits on my book shelf with the books by one of my favourite children's authors, L.M. Montgomery.

Being inspired by a book and and artist for this project was fun.

I am off to work on a vase inspired by a flower. More about it soon.

Have a great weekend.

Ancient Inspiration

I love to work with some of the amazing lampwork beads created by local and international glasswork artists. The challenge that can arise is how to create a piece that showcases the lampwork but is wearable and stylish.

If there are enough beads in the set you can just add an accent and create a simple strung necklace like this piece.

Copper plated dragon necklace

Here I added the Swarovski crystals, copper rectangles and spacers to the lampwork. There were enough beads to make a complete necklace.

There are times thou when the set is smaller or you want to keep the beads as a centre focus. I was inspired by this ancient Greek necklet. I imagine that the ends could be connected to lengths of chain to create a full length neck piece.

Gold and blue glass paste, Cypro-Classical, 450-400 B.C. (ROM)

Here are few of my pieces using this design idea.

Circle around my heart

Owl Babies

Elizabeth's necklace

Aqua Dots

Blue Galaxy

Purple Galaxy

Spring Creativ Festival

Here are some sample of that I made earlier this year for Rypan Designs. All of these beautiful designs are going to be available as kits at the Spring Creativ Festival. Rypan Designs is booth #372. Stop by to see these and other great designs, oh and say hello!

Wisteria

Textured Net with Icy Blue

Textured Net in Tangerine and Blue

Textured Net in Beautiful Lilac

Textured Net in Royal Blue

all images and designs are ©Rypan Designs

Inspiration sources

I am always amazed at what inspires artists, designers and crafters. I am going to try posting regularly about some of my current and past inspiration sources. Along with the pieces I created from them.

One of my current favourite places to go for an inspirational boast is the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum). Here are a few recent pictures I took that are now in my inspiration folder.

From the Teck Galleries -














From the Asian galleries -










From the Art of Collecting exhibit -









Next Friday I will look at one of my inspirations and the piece that it inspired.

Have a great weekend!!

Flat pack origami

For the Paper Arts design of the Designer Style Challenge I am going to do some origami flowers and a vase.

I have made some in the past, including the table centers for a friend's wedding a number of years ago.

For the design I wanted an unusual vase design. Looking thru origami books I came across a book called Unit polyhedoron origami by Tomoko Fuse. It shows how to combine folded shapes to make 3-D objects.

Using triangles, hexagons and connectors I was able to make this.


Here is another view.


I made it with origami paper I already had, so this is not the final colour. I like the general shape of the base, but I am going to modify the height to make it more like a bowl.

Using paper I was able to get at the Paper Place, I am now playing with the colour and texture for the final piece. Smooth shiny silver accented with purple or a crumpled and textured silver accented with purple. Prototypes are in progress.