Making Floral Birds

         Jewellery inspired by nature is special, I would say dreamy. Sometimes it reflects the symbolic meaning it may have and is important to us. For me the birds symbolise freedom, flowers celebrate natural beauty and femininity.

      Every year I'm making flower canes. I have made various cane designs: simple, common (I think every clayer at some stage has made at least one rose cane) and some complicated flower canes too. Now I am in love with my own tiny flower design canes. For the background I like to use just one colour, it works equally well for various shapes.

     I have been making birds in the past and I was using a blank bird shape base I filled with various cane slices but ideally I wanted to make a bird pendant just using polymer clay. Early this Spring I felt it's the right time. I sketched, cut out various shapes, thought about fastenings, chain or cord and many other things. Challenging was to find the solution for the border around the pendant. I didn't wanted to use one colour line around it so I tried to add organic line of translucent clay pieces  with inclusions (in this case it was glitter and powder) and I'm happy how it worked out.

Scroll down to have a look at step by step process and of course I had to make the  matching earrings.

Enjoy the Spring and Summer, birds singing and flowers blooming!

Take care,
Liga

Perfect Destination for a Creative Weekend in Ireland

     It really is inspiring to go away for a weekend, learn a new skill, meet like-minded people and in this situation I just loved that it was taking place in the beautiful part of rural Ireland at Ennis Creative Arts Centre in Tubber.

     What do you do to nurture your creative side? I'm sure many of you have seen at least one of those lists titled (x number) Ways To Stay Creative. No doubt they are good and full of great advice but often we soon forget about them. Here is my ideal top 5 ways to stay creative and I almost managed  to tick them all off last weekend.

• Spend some time in nature,
• Learn new skill,
• Collaborate,
• Challenge myself,
• Turn off distractions.

      A few days ago I came back from wonderful Precious Metal Clay workshop with Debbie Carlton and I'm delighted with what I learned. The material consists of microscopic particles of pure silver powder mixed with a non-toxic moist binder which burns off during firing leaving objects containing .999 pure silver - aka fine silver. PMC can be shaped just like any soft clay, by hand, texture sheets or using molds.

Various pieces I made during the workshop.

     I chose this workshop because precious metal clay can be easily combined with polymer clay and Debbie showed us really great samples. I haven't decided exactly how I will include PMC in my creative process but I'm sure I will be using it again. I particularly like the fact that tools used are almost the same for both mediums.

     But workshop is only part of this creative weekend. Important part  add participants who come to the workshop. It's great to meet like-minded people, exchange ideas and build friendships. At the late afternoon when workshop is over one of the must destinations every time is GalleryCafe in  Gort. Pure essence of creativity - gorgeous interior and heavenly food!

     To complete the package you will find wonderful b&b only a short distance away from centre.  Perfect for an early morning walk into the beautiful countryside.

Lunch break at Ennis Creative Arts Centre.

     Ennis Creative Arts Centre in Tubber is located almost on border between Co. Clare and Co Galway. It is wonderful venue offering variety of courses starting from decoupage, sewing, jewellery making, felting and much more. I'm almost sure wonderful owner and hostess Shirley Bredin has some new ideas and is always expanding. Maybe in future there will be painting classes or creative writing workshop. 

     I was thrilled to participate at Polymer Clay workshop with Ronna Sarvas Weltman at Ennis Creative Arts Centre in Summer 2013. Click HERE to find out more.

    Stay creative!

All the best,
Liga x