Merry-Go-Round - Visual Inspiration

Jump on our merry go round and join a group of artists/crafts-women from around the world as they link hands and tell you a little bit about their lives in craft.

Do look up the answers from the rest of this band of crafters (links to your left).

If they haven't all posted yet, remember we all live in different time zones and check again later...

This month:

A photo that inspires you.

This photo inspires me in that it is the positive I get out of a not so pleasant time.

As you can see, it tells of movement, speed, travel.

It was taken from a train, on one of the several trips I've had to take over the past four weeks. Because of a mix of professional and personal obligations, this has been a very busy month, both at home and elsewhere. And not in a creative way, I'm afraid.

Actually, I'm on my way again this afternoon, and then again on Tuesday (flying off to Edinburgh for a few days) for the only one among those trips that I have looked forward to a little bit, if only because I chose to go, as opposed to being made to... There'll be one more train trip, And then I really look forward to a quiet, creative summer, mostly at home...

The reason why I like this photo, is that I can sit back and look at the movement and all that green. A bit like when I'm on the train. I find it soothing. I enjoy being in transit. It's all the bother before and after that I mind...

I'll try to take a photo from the plane too!

PS: I also have True Blood, 3 rd season, and Mad Men, 4th season, to go home to! Just so you know how much I long for some quiet here...

Merry-Go-Round - Inspiring artist

Jump on our merry go round and join a group of artists/crafts-women from around the world as they link hands and tell you a little bit about their lives in craft.

Do look up the answers from the rest of this band of crafters (links to your left).

If they haven't all posted yet, remember we all live in different time zones and check again later...

This month:

An artist that inspires you.

I'm really not sure what to answer to that. I cannot name one or even several artists whose work I feel is an influence on what I make.

Of course there are a few visual artists I am particularly fond of.

Painters Turner and Magritte, as well as photographer André Kertész come to mind immediately.

For some reason(s) that I'm not sure I would want to explore, even if I felt I could.

I simply enjoy looking at their work and letting my mind ramble.

But I wouldn't say they are an influence. It's more like what makes me like them is also what makes me come up with the ideas and objects I come up with.

One work of art that has played a special role in my life is this landscape by Van Gogh. It's entitled Yellow Wheat and Cypresses.

I am not the happy owner of this painting— it's in a museum somewhere, possibly in the National Gallery but I'm not sure.

I have just owned three reproductions of it. Two of them face each other across my living-room at the moment— a large framed print and a larger unframed copy that my brother had made especially for me in China (unsigned, as I asked— it's a copy not a fake). One of the (many) things that make people find my flat "interesting" to plain old "weird".

I first "saw" this painting when I came across a very large print of it, as I was browsing through prints, looking for something to make the white walls of my Cambridge room less white. It was love at first sight. The print was really huge and much too expensive but I just had to have it.

For two years, it was the "detail" that, to my eyes at least, made my bedsitter harmonious as opposed to its original drab state.

After that, it was my visual haven in three more flats, until the paper (I never framed it) couldn't take any more. I was starting a new life, in a different city— I shed that skin.

But after a few years I remembered it and realized I'd missed it. So I hunted down a quality print on the net. Not as large as the "original", but good enough. I felt much better once I'd gotten, framed and hung up the successor. And then two years ago I had the opportunity to have a copy made— for texture— A really large one.

I must have spent hours gazing at this landscape, getting lost in its perfection.

I am no Van Gogh fan. I don't even like his painting most of the time. But this particular painting is me. Somehow.

There's quite a bit of yellow in this, and ususally, yellow is my least favourite colour. But I just love the yellow strokes in this. Just as much as the gorgeous green ones and the delightful blue ones.

The mix of violence and placidity I see in this picture is mysteriously soothing for me, to this day.

The chaotic harmony of it— I really cannot get enough of it.

I guess it epitomizes the mystery of art. As opposed to design. So, a very, very distant influence and source of inspiration...

FOW One!

Find(ing) Of the Week is my new plan to overtake the world of crafty crafting and blogging.

January is a time for change, renewal, bright new clever (?) ideas and this is mine for this year: since my aquisition addiction tends to show mostly in the way I keep grabbing and hoarding findings and notions and whanots (many of those), I've decided to share (show off?) every week some of the unsung treasures that, for some and any reason, inspire me. New find or old, it will vary...

This week, meet the three cuties who inspired me with the whole FOW project.

Not quite, quite sure where exactly, yet, but you can see that these darling creatures are going somewhere!

A ring would be fairly obvious and yet charming, but I also have plans for some fascinator-like hairpin...

So watch this space!

Toutes les semaines, j'ai décidé de monter ici une de ces petites trouvailles que je ne peux pas m'empêcher d'accumuler pour toutes sortes de raisons, mais toujours parce qu'elles m'inspirent... Certaines se retrouvent rapidement sur un bijou ou un accessoire ou... Les autres attendent patiemment que mes idées prennent forme.

Cette semaine, il s'agit d'une trouvaille récente, dont j'aime le pas décidé. Je sens qu'une ou deux pourraient bien se retrouver en train de voyager sur une bague, mais je crois que j'en garderai une pour diriger une barrette / bibi.

A suivre...

Merry-Go-Round - Networking

Jump on our merry go round and join a group of artists/crafts-women from around the world as they link hands and tell you a little bit about their lives in craft.

Do look up the answers from the rest of this band of crafters (links to your left).

If they haven't posted yet, remember we all live in different time zones and check again later...

This month's theme:

What do you do to network? In what ways does it work or not work?

These days, I have even less time for networking than for crafting.

Over the past few years, I have tried the usual (myspace, blogging, among others) and the less usual (this Merry-Go-Round, the Thursday Sweet Treat...). I don't believe the networking sites, such as myspace and facebook (which I keep personal) are any good for me.

The only forum I still visit on a daily basis is the DaWanda forum. If only because I find it much more congenial than the Etsy forum where you get a measure of support but also a lot of gratuitous aggression. I have no time for this... Still, the Etsy forum is where I found the Thusrday Sweet Treat, which was a really inspiring 'place', (when I still had time to be part of it...) and it is much faster than the DaWanda one, especially in English, which is a shame.

As I have never done this full time,
I really have no idea what concrete results it has brought about, or what it could have. What I do know, though, is that it has allowed me to learn a lot from fellow crafters. It has also inspired me in a way I couldn't have been if I had only been focusing on making and selling.

It has kept me curious and — relatively— ambitious.

In short, though it sometimes felt like the networking time was stolen from crafting, I suspect I wouldn't be crafting at all anymore, if it wasn't for the virtual ties that have kept me going.

Using my blog address as a signature at the bottom of all my mails has brought me at least two clients among aquaintances who didn't know of that part of my life. I also keep giving away my business cards, though I still don't know what effect it may have had. Who knows...

Merry-Go-Round - Inspirational Photo Challenge

Jump on our merry go round and join a group of artists/crafts-women from around the world as they link hands and tell you a little bit about their lives in craft.

Do look up the answers from the rest of this band of crafters (links to your left).

If they haven't posted yet, remember we all live in different time zones and check again later...

This month's theme:

Inspirational Photo Challenge: take a photo of something that inspires you and show what you make from this as your inspiration.

What's that? I hear you wonder...

Well, over the months, you will have seen many photos of nature and the countryside on this blog, so I thought that, this time, I should show something you don't know of. Something crucially inspirationnal to me indeed.


What this photo shows is a minature Jag (the famous E-Type). This one is actually a gift from my lovely mother who first told me about this amazing job.
I guess it is a car for girls then.
I wish!...

Anyway, it is my car, you know...



Not only has this glorious piece of British designing genius inspired me to finally pass my driving licence (not a small feat, I can assure you) which was my own Christmas Miracle of 2009, but it has inspired a new line in my jewellery.

Wait, not one but three!

You might remember that over the past few Merry-go-Rounds, I was doing a lot of mulling. Well this Belle Anglais sort of pulled me through.


Starting from this seemingly absurd choice of car (no I don't have one yet, well, apart from this miniature one, but one day— just you wait!) it brought me to accept the fact I am genrally a fairly high-maintenance creature. Or rather, I would be if I was not doing all the maintening myself...



The result of this simple reflexion is a carload of ideas to make up the High-Maintenance line.
The blue Jag Ring is the first piece in this line— had to be— but there will be plenty more...

Following this whim, I also came up with loads of ideas for Difficult Women (I love them!), beginning with this Thelma & Louise ring (OK, it's a black Mercedes, but whenever I see an angular convertible like this one, I think T & L...).

Finally, obviously there will be the (Self-)Love is Blind line, Beginning with this I am a Goddess ring. OK, this really works much better in French because this car is a Citrën DS (DS sound exactly like "déesse", the French word for goddess...), but who doesn't want to be a French goddess, right? (she flashes a shameless arrogant grin).

Inspiration

Hier, en quelques heures, j'ai pu mener à bien une très plaisante transaction avec une cliente qui voulait une de mes bagues fleur, mais avec son propre choix de couleur.

Il y avait longtemps que je n'avais pas pris autant de plaisir à travailler. Ça m'a rappelé à quel point j'adorais fourrager dans mes stocks et chercher l'association harmonieuse...

Yesterday, in just a few hours, I put together this ring for a very pleasant customer who wanted one of my flower rings, but with her own choice of colours.

It had been a long time since I last felt so much pleasure. It reminded me how much I like rummaging through my stuff and looking for just the right mix of pearls and findings.

Elle me plaît beaucoup !

I love it!

Follow up on Inspiration

Here's what one of my scribblings defacing the lovely Muscha notelets turned into.

Better than any of my drawings, I think. Especially as it is modelled by the lovely, fresh hand of my lovely, fresh niece, Hortense...

Once more, inspired by the Thursday Sweet Treat blog: my Moon River ring.

Suite du message précédent qui traitait de l'inspiration. Un de mes gribouillis portait sur un projet de bague utilisant certains des matériaux accumulés récemment.

Le résultat est beaucoup plus sobre, et je l'adore. En toute simplicité et juste entre nous, bien sûr; ;-)

D'autant plus ravissant que le mannequin qui présente la bague est ma délicieuse nièce, Hortense.

Inspiré par le thème de cette semaine du blog Thursday Sweet Treat, ma bague Moon River.