Tide pools - Theme challenge at Art Elements

It is time again for our monthly theme challenge at Art Elements. This month Lesley chose the theme "Tide pools". I don't know what I should say to this theme other than that I believe it is really, really difficult to not find any inspiration in that!

I started playing a little bit with water colour. Experimenting with the effects I get by combining heavily granulating single pigment paints with ones that are not granulating...

...trying out some plant shapes as well as my new diamont silver aqua bronze from Schmincke (yes, so totally worth the money!)...

...and then going for some sketches. I had a look at Instagram for inspiration pictures just to get started and get a feeling for what I like and not.

I was undecided. I am actually playing nearly daily a little bit with my water colours, but not in any direction fitting for the theme. I use this daily play time more as a kind of diary or in combination with some personal note, so I didn't want to force myself to paint for this challenge.

Then I had a long look at my table after seeing  some sneak peaks from other Art Elements team members. Sitting there, looking at pieces of my work, I realized that I am mostly drawn to colours, effects and surfaces that all fit perfectly in the theme "tide pools".

Like I was not really doing anything else! Bowls, spoons, pendants, beads...

I made a tutorial for these glorious crustiness over at Art Elements, have a look here :)

Therefor I wanted to show you some things I made that I thought would fit for this challenge and hoped that while doing this I would get an idea what exactly I want to create.

This years I am mostly working with mixed media, water colours... not so much beads, ceramics, or jewelery. I spend a long time sitting in front of the cupboard where all my bead boxes are (the ones not sitting on or under the table ;) ) and going through all of my beads and art elements for creating jewelery I have. Gosh, it was a little bit like christmas seeing the kind of treasures I haven't looked at for months now!

I made a huge bead soups with fitting colours because I had the idea to finally make some necklaces from all the pendants I have. Didn't work out because in the end I came back to one of my oldest love "Earrings"!

It was a little bit slow at the beginning because my hands had to get their work memory back but after I finished some earrings pairs, all had come back and I realized how much I missed the joy of creating jewelery.

The photos of the earrings were all taken after some heavy rainfall creating a somehow quite fitting background. ;)

I am never sure whether my earrings will find a person who loves them as much as I do, sees the beauty in the single elements included and the stories they tell... but I was often surprised who bought which earrings from me and (sadly) which ones are still in their box waiting for someone to be treasured.

Please have a look what everyone else made for this theme challenge! And just again a thank you to all the guest who participated in this challenge, I can't wait to see all your creations!

And PS: Lesley, thank you for the wonderful theme! :)

Guests:
Raven
Kelly 
Cat
Kathy 
Tammy 
Alyson
Elaine 
Mischelle 
Deborah  
Anita 
Jill
Shirlee
Sarajo 
Melissa 

AE Team Members:
Caroline
Cathy
Claire (you are here)
Jen  
Jenny  
Laney 
Lesley 
Marsha 
Niky
Sue
Lindsay

"Ancient woods" - Necklace

This necklace was a commission with the idea that it should be green ;) Better to say it was a birthday present for one in our research group. Since green is one of my favorite colours especially in creating beads as well as jewellery I had quite a collection to select beads from.

You'll find some of my own handmade beads, made from ceramic clay as well as polymer clay.

But also a lot of art beads from others. Among them one of my favorite glass bead artist Kimberly Rogers from numinosity beads. 

As well as beads from Julia Hay, Sue Reynolds, Michelle Susanne, Samantha Capeling (I etched the beads, hope you don't mind!) and Karen Totten.

There are also new and vintage czech glass beads, some natural materials like petrified wood and even a tiny roman glass beads that is between 1000 and 2000 years old. 

It comes together with knotted waxed linen. As different as all the beads are, they come together through the colour scheme as well as the gradient size shape. I love how it turned out. Every bead has its own story, 

Simple without being simple :)

"Tribal marks" - Long earrings made with polymer clay

So much I would love to do, so much I just have to do... and in between a lot of ideas are lost or worse, in the little saved time, there is no energy anymore to be found to use those ideas. It happens more often to me than I like to admit. But this is also the reason why I try to do baby steps. One at a time, not the overall big idea or project, but the little parts... 

So I made some more polymer clay beads. I made hree pairs in total only (yes... in terms of energy definitely a waste, in terms of motivation for me, just worth it!)... one o the other ones you can see here: "Grown in time"

I was thinking of adding something more but in the end I just stopped at the simple dangling earrings. The polymer beads are already full of interest with the tribal marks, their length and the different colours. 

I also listed them in my shop here :)

"What time tells" - Delicate, rustic earrings

Delicate and yet rustic, lovely shades of green combined with a really dark patina. They seem to be just found at a archaeological site, some ancient relics from a different time. Holding them in my hand, they seem to tell a story about earth and stone, about dark woods and wild land.  

The green crusty beads are made by Kimberly Rogers from numinosity beads and the tinned headpin drops are from Sasha Crow with some small semi-precious stones in between.

They are also listed in my shop :)