Victoriana in Bead magazine

now that the latest issue of Bead magazine is on the news stands I can show and share the Victoriana floral locket. To create this Winter special magazine, Chloe the Editor invited designers to be inspired by an era, and I got Victorian.. which as y'all know is a perfect fit as I love all things vintage inspiration. I used my oval acrylic windows as templates and took the prettiest snippets from scans of old postcards which were saved by my Grandma. Pretty postcards like these were often posted in the morning and arrived by lunch time! I have one which was an invitation to afternoon tea that very same day, a testament to the power of a penny stamp and a great organisation; I guess they are also the forerunner of our emails and text messages.

Two Victoriana Lockets for Bead magazine

My 'Locket' has room for two images sandwiched between  acrylic windows, so is completely reversible. The project in the magazine give instructions for the embellished bezel, bail and a dainty beady ring, through which you can thread some ribbon to finish off the vintage look.

If you don't have vintage post cards, there are lots of on line sites offering free or very reasonably priced down loadable images, You can also spend a small fortune and many happy hours in craft stores choosing papers and ephemera in the papercrafting section.

Make a matching birthday card and gift

I admit happily to being utterly charmed by anything that is made personal, such as home made greeting cards and small hand made gifts. These will win my heart every time, so I'll definitely be using this design for some presents.

Divine iron inspiration

a mystery to be solved

I love a good bit of door furniture, and it doesn't come more divine than this over the top creation discovered in the Bishop's palace at Wells. I'm also rather keen on that nice muddy paint colour too. What I find delicious about this ornate door handle is that it is utterly beautiful, yet surprisingly uncomfortable to actually use... some fiddlesome door funiture for fine fingered clerics... argh! couldn't help the alliteration there!

I'm finding that I keep coming back to this image not because I want a door like this, but because it is tickling away at a couple of ideas.

The first is for the beady alternative to the metallic bronze, silver or gunmetal, my staple metallics so far. I have put in a request with Miyuki for an antiqued copper (so far they have a nearly OK one but only in size 11 seeds and not the same in 15's)...  most of the gold beads are all just too gold, brash and harsh, so I love the pale as straw colour of the metalwork in my picture. The door paint is another colour I keep seeking. I have just a pinch left, they are matt, mushroom grey and add gravitas to all other colours, but obviously out of production, sigh!

I also return to this image because it's so 'homage to' Pugin. Divine symmetry is snapped off and the keyhole aligned to a gap in the tracery, rather than designed for this particular door... so was this a piece of Victorian Gothic envy? Pugin was responsible for influencing a generation, as architect of six cathedrals and forty churches, whereas this ecclesiastical building had already been standing for 700 years. I suspect that someone might just have sneeked in a few twiddly bits to keep up with fashion.

Finally I love this image because it is singing pendants, bracelets and other design ideas which are safe in my sketchbook until I have beady time and some pale gold beads.

A day with the antiquities

The Natural History Museum

exuberant column top to go

 My friend Mary and I spent a day in Oxford visiting both the Pitt Rivers and Ashmolean museums. Quite a stretch for the legs but worth it for the simple restocking of inspirations.
We took sketch books, but I find that the brain refuses to engage meaningfully, and instead is busy absorbing things randomly.
Firstly, let's just celebrate the Natural History Museum and home of the Pitt Rivers collection. Stand back and applaud the creative literalism of mid nineteenth century architecture. You can find out all about it here, paid for mainly by public subscription,

what you see today is what was created before funds ran out and interest waned. I LOVE this building and interior, it tells, quite lyrically, of the excitement and energy surrounding the quest for knowledge, anywhere your hand touches a stone ballustrade there is a beautiful curl of carved leaf or bud by James or John O'Shea, those on the stair worn shiny and nearly off by a million hands.

mongoose eating beetle... of course.

What's not to love about the cast iron columns, each topped with a collage of plant life picked out in gold and each one different. The stone columns carved with fruits and animals, insects... I love that the stone masons worked from live samples brought up from the botanical collections... each column in the central hall smoothly carved from a different marble or stone from the British Isles.
OK, enough, visit yourself and enjoy.
Pass quickly by the collections of dinosaur bones and impaled lepidoptera to a small door in the far wall, to enter the Pitt Rivers museum. This I love too, rows of tall glass sided mahogany cabinets stuffed to the gunnels with, well, stuff.

Each cabinet is themed on an aspect of life, the contents brought together from all over the world to show how humanity addressed that aspect, a kind of collective divergence. It is lit gloomy, a little enervating as you really don't know if you will turn a corner and be confronted with a collection of shrunken heads, shoes, weaving looms, pots, talismans, or objects not instantly identifiable, causing you to peer closer to read the inked labels.
It is the ultimate manifestation of all small boy's need to 'collect' indulged to the n'th degree.

Both here and at the Ashmolean, I was fascinated by the personal items, the every day objects that become talismans and votives, the small treasures that may not be precious of material, but imbued with meaning for the owner, and mysterious now to us, the inquiring observers.
I now want a metal thingy with little dangling fish and fruit and a key and a miniature tambourine, how utterly eclectically Steampunk is that!!!