The hen and the egg

A few weeks ago, we visited the local pottery "Töpferei auf dem Jackenhof" where I also got my happy yellow mugs last year (and yes, I still love them so much and use them all the time). Although I was just the company this time, I couldn't resist to get at least a little something, in this case a small vase in a beautiful blue and shaped like an egg with a broken off top.
I showed a picture because I have friends who also love pottery and one of them said she wondered what hatched from it.
Now I found out! It's a little surprising, though, I had expected something bigger ...

Whenever I'm learning a new technique, my goal is to try and combine it with my previous techniques.
Obviously bead embroidery is the easiest one to mix with hand embroidery. Just throw some extra beads on there, right?
Like so many of my pieces, this tiny hen was completely unplanned. I had a small piece of linen and wondered if I would like working without a frame. The inspiration to make a hen came from a cartoon I had seen shortly before.

Of course there are things I would do differently now. I would have planned in to pad the hen, so the silver edging wouldn't sit on the top even if they are size 15 beads. I would not have used the thicker felt to stabilize the linen and my hen would have got a beak that's more visible. My only excuse for making it ecru is that it was late at night and I just grabbed something without thinking.
After all this was just meant as a small experimental piece originally, I hadn't even thought it would come this far.

I definitely learned something from it. Maybe I'll find a pin small enough to put on the back and pin my hen to the collar of my denim jacket. Or maybe you have an idea?

Art Elements Design Challenge and Blog Hop - Sunflowers

I admit it. When I saw Susan's post for the June Design Challenge on Art Elements with the theme "Sunflowers", I thought I got this, but alas, I have been living together with myself for 53 years now and still know so little *sigh* Yes, of course there were some things that got in the way, life tends to be like that, but I really should have known that I would harbor ideas, tucked away neatly in my brain until shortly before the reveal - but I made it.

A few weeks ago I mentioned the sunflowers here that I used to have as a teenager. Since we didn't have a real garden, I only had a little spot. As I am also blessed with what I like to call ten black thumbs, all of them left with me being right-handed, plants don't really stand a chance around me. These few sunflowers, however, did their very best in a probably not so perfect spot. The highest one was around 30 inch, I'd guess, but the others were much smaller. The end of it was a last tiny flower, more like 5 inch. When a friend of my little brother's pulled it out, I became, well, let's say, a little harsh (just words, no violence). He was a natural at crying, though (that's putting it nicely), not so small anymore, and I had warned him before. When I met him decades later, he didn't seem to be too traumatized to talk with me at all, so I would say we both got over it ;-)

So that was one inspiration, the other one was obviously the first picture in the challenge post, Van Gogh's sunflower painting or should I say one of them?
"“The public is hardly aware that Van Gogh created a series of paintings of sunflowers,” says Leo Jansen, a curator at the Van Gogh Museum and editor of the artist’s letters. “For nine out of 10 people I tell, it’s news.”" This is from a BBC article about the "unknown history" behind the sunflower paintings. Yup, another thing to admit, I would have been one of those nine people. In fact I never really thought about it because - and please remember now that the perception of art is different for each person - I'm not that much of a fan. I have seen one of Van Gogh's sunflower paintings at the National Gallery in London and it didn't become a favorite of mine.
How did it become an inspiration for my piece anyway then?

What I knew first was that I wanted to bead the flowers. I had made a beaded sunflower for another challenge once using a mahogany obsidian cab in the center, but hadn't been completely happy with the petals, so I finally ripped it up again. I had also crocheted a large sunflower from wire and beads before.
This time I wanted something different, more delicate which was a good decision considering I started so late. I looked around for chessboard crystals as centers, but didn't find any brown ones, so went for rivolis instead. I beaded two blossoms and two leaves - not as easy for me as it sounds because I hardly ever bead off loom - but now what?
Put them on a bracelet? Or make them into a pair of earrings which I had actually been one of my very first plans? At least add another leaf because I blatantly ignored the rule of the uneven number (just like Van Gogh did in some of his paintings, by the way!) and turn it into a pin?
None of those because I suddenly had a different idea which was probably really triggered by me looking at the Van Gogh paintings, even if I hadn't been aware of it. A vase. A beaded vase, though? No, I didn't have an idea how to do that best, and time was running out for experimenting.
Wire. Of course. Woven wire. With some texture to it. A tad of three-dimensional feeling.
Here you go. I did it. One day before the reveal. And I like it. Something to keep in mind for future playing. Different flowers? Bigger? Oxidized copper or a different wire? Time will tell!

Hopefully Art Elements is going to let me participate again next time, and this time I'll start earli.... forget it, I know I won't. Maybe I need that pressure, who knows? ;-) I can dream, though, right?

Now to all the other participants of this challenge. I'm already looking forward to going through their posts with oohs and aahs, why don't you, too? :-D

Guests

Alysen - Anita - Cat (c'est moi) - Divya - Jill - Kathy - Linda - Linda - Mischelle - Norma - Raven - Sarajo - Tammy

AE Team Members

Caroline - Cathy - Claire - Jenny - Laney - Lesley - Sue