A Bit of a New Direction

Whew!  Is it the end of the year already???  And what's that?  Is that sunlight?  I'm afraid I haven't seen much of it lately as I've been locked away in Vickie's studio, forced to "create"!  I've been working on a new piece for the past (what seems like a VERY long) while and thought I would share some pics on the blog.  So, without any further ado, may I present to you, my viewing public, CL Necklace 1.0:



CL Necklace 1.0

 I wanted to create a bit of a statement necklace for some Gala events I have to attend this winter.  I was tired of the usual Little Black Dress with the standard drop jewel pendant or big, glitzy earrings.  I wanted something that was more "me"...something that made a statement about who I am and give a bit of an idea into what's been driving me these days.  And apparantly, the statement I'm making these days is that of "I'm a Crazy Lady" according to my husband, who said he was a little worried that I was going to look like a "Crazy Lady" when he saw all the pieces I had been planning to put onto one necklace.  I in fact ended up only using about 2/3's of the charms I had made...so I guess that makes me only 2/3's crazy?  This is where I got the title for the piece ;)

I had been very much inspired by the charms Vickie made for her Jules Verne Meets Urban Grunge necklace from last spring's Claymagination.  While I have used several found objects and metal in this piece, I also loved the idea of using the clay to imitate some of the found objects to give it much more of an individual feel and also get rid of some of the weight that tends to accumulate when you use a lot of metal and glass.

A bit of a different perspective

As you can see, I've also incorporated some of my hand-sculpted bird parts.  I feel this piece came to tell a bit of a story about secrets and protection. Two things I feel the raven has come to represent to me.  The "leaves" all have little messages written on them - some of them funny, and some of them wistful; and the tiny glass bottle even has a note that I wrote, carefully rolled up inside and all but obscured by elements around it.

Anyway, I find I'm quite addicted to creating more runes for more works of what we're calling Neogrunge pieces.  We like to think of them as arrested city mechanics in fine art form.

Pretty cool, eh?

*Please ignore what's below this sentence as this post was created by Sandy, not Vickie.