Blue and Golden Yellow

Ever-enamored of the blue and golden yellow color combination, I cut up the plates to give these birds a golden contrast.

I added some of the tiny flower patterned pieces along with touches of blue and black. I just need to cement it all together.

Ceramic Lace Bird

The idea is to use the same imagery in different materials. My blue cotton bird brooch was transformed into a ceramic lace bird (still blue!). He's been fired and colored with blue pigment.

Inspiration

I found these lovely plates at the thrift shop recently. You have to go often, since they get "new" old stuff regularly. Seeing them all in a stack makes me want to get to work cutting them up!

I especially love this rich golden yellow/brown. When I'm cutting them for my mosaics, this golden glaze reminds me of caramel.

I don't usually work in black and white, but this floral and paisley pattern is so interesting, perhaps I'll make an exception!

These tiny blue flowers are so sweet!

The colors and patterns on these, you might say, rather ordinary dishes, are very inspiring: they whisper ideas to me, suggest ways they could be used and what they'd go perfectly with. And in the end, I always listen!

Flying Girl

Sigmosaics included my flying girl in a treasury on etsy! This is my first appearance in a treasury; I'm so excited! Take a look:

http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=28827

Fabric Shopping

I went to the outdoor market yesterday (located on the peninsula between the Rhone and the Saone rivers) to buy some fabrics for my spring collection of bird pillows. My favorite fabric stand had some sumptuous silk blends in bright colors: the rich red flowered fabric is gold on the other side, the pistachio green has a raised vine pattern, and the blue one has pumpkin and peach accents. In decorator fabrics, bright colors and romantic patterns are in for the coming spring. In France, of course!

a lovely little bag

I would love to have this bag from Red Bridge Studios. I checked out their etsy shop. Everything is pretty, with beautiful screen printed patterns, and items made with natural fibers. I especially love the print on this bag; I'm a city dweller and the squares recall the windows in a building, the cobblestones in the old part of the city, the mail boxes one next to the other in the hall of our building, or the metro car coming into the station! This would be a neat little bag to carry around!

handmade ornaments

I'll admit we have a fake tree. We've had it for about fifteen years; it was bought for our daughter's first Christmas. However, I can proudly say that almost all of our ornaments and decorations are handmade. By me, by the kids, at school (some of their best work was done in kindergarden) at home on rainy days. We get them out each year and decorate our home. Here are a few of our favorites.

Camille made a skinny Santa marionette with movable limbs. Achilles made the Rudolph sculpture, next to which is a shiny gold box of candies (long since eaten!) We made the ceramic ornaments using slabs of clay and cookie cutters, engobes and copper oxide for the metallic effect. Camille and Achilles still make beautiful things, but I love the charm of the decorations they made when they were little!

Plushy Animals

Here's a plushy rooster I made today. He's not a brooch, a little too big. Also, he's not as flat as my brooches; I stuffed him with polyfil to round him out a bit. I also made him a wife, little red and brown hen, but it was far too dark to photograph her by the time I was finished. I'm working towards my bird pillows.

My First Blog

Gosh, I never thought I'd be able to do this, but here I am. Just clicked on create a blog and voilà! Here is the picture I chose for my business cards, a detail from a mosaic that I love too much to sell. It took a long time to sculpt all those heads (there are seven in all, plus two that were discarded). There are birds in it too, but not in this photo. These little ladies are having a conversation, about art, or maybe just about the price of beans!