POST

Where would we be without the post?

This week's task was to design or emulate a city scape, depicting the cityscape four times on individual postcards, all in different mediums.

The first post card was to be in black and white:

The second, to incorporate at least 8 colours to represent the city scape:

The third, was to be created using layers:

And the fourth, made from markings of any kind:

The final element of this task was to in someway, distort or play around with a postpack, to house the mini city scape postcards.

This final tower was created using a cylindrical postpack, sliced open with a stanley knife!

I aimed to create a kind of city scape building out of the whole piece, with little elements poking out to represent each element of the city.

Feeling Fruity

Another day came with another project.

This one involved creating an object that was

A) A piece of fruit, and

B) a brooch

all made using office stationary!

After spending a ridiculous amount of time browsing the aisles of officeworks, I finally found myself walking out with a mixed array of office regulars...

Some black board pins, white out, green post it notes, exercise books... the lot!

A quick trip to my fridge was where I was heading next, to pry out my fruity victim for investigation.

Following a nasty bite on an apple which had definately seen better days, I knew I had been foolish in my choice the minute I landed my eyes on the sweet, modest and ever so flavoursome kiwi fruit. This guy didn't let me down, I knew I had made the right choice.

A bit of doodling in my folio followed soon after, examining all aspects of the delectable kiwi, especially focusing on the beautiful vibrancy and variety of greens evident underneath it's skin.

The mood of the lime green inside the kiwi was one element I really wanted to capture within my piece, also investigating the black seeds, and copious amounts of juice that seeps out when you attempt you dig your teaspoon into one.

Abstracting the form a little to appear more of an unusual sort of juice bubble, I incorporated, to me, what seemed like key elements, finally resulting with this:

Black board pins (also serving as small hooks on the back side of the brooch to attach it to your clothing), white card, cardboard and lime plastic from an exercise book, white exercise book binding wire and an elastic band.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!

This is the final result from my cute lime green cutlery adventures...

Initially, as we were only allowed to use multiples of the one item, by simply playing around and experimenting with different cutlery formations as presented in the previous post, I discovered that as a brittle and strong material, the cutlery seemed to work best when manipulated to form structures, almost like building beams.

By interweaving and supergluing knifes, and segmented knife pieces into triangular formations, I was able to create this vibrantly coloured and oversized necklace. As we had to create something wearable, I though I would pay a little hommage to my obsession with large and chunky jewellery! Finally, I linked the formations together with cut fluro pink balloons which formed long, flexible ribbons that abled the neckpiece to hang comfortably when worn. The use of the extra material was the one exception of the project, where we were able to borrow and little something from our neighbour. Hello pink balloons! I chose hot pink to both contrast and compliment the brightness of the lime green cutlery pieces, and use of the white triangle to break the reptition to create a sense of shock or disruption within the piece which I quite like.

If the shoe doesn't fit...

It's been quite a while... I know! But with a few minor camera hiccups been and gone, and a new canon ixus under my wing, I can finallllly post up pictures of the final products from earlier projects!!

Remember that old golf shoe I was ranting on about a few weeks ago?

well shoe no longer....

From the deconstructed and may I add rather stubborn shoe components (removing those pesky little spikes was nearly the end of me)... I decided to construct a neckpiece with a sort of bohemian feel, if you will. It almost reminds me of some kind of native Indian ceremonial garment.

Up next... the development from my cutlery play arounds! Keep posted.

Fred Butler

Oversized. Geometric. Fantastic.

Love is a many splendoured thing

Loves of the month...

• MANIAMANIA

http://www.themaniamania.com/

When it comes to jewellery, I'm a sucker for anything big and chunky, and the kids from ManiaMania give me my fix with their colossal sized bangles and cuffs and embellished statement neckpieces. Their perfect union of raw crystals, gold and silver demonstrates that with large and simple in mind, amazing things happen, and their oversized and almost armour like pieces have a sort of native feel, which I absolutely love!

• Love a bit of Dinosaur Designs...
  
  

http://www.dinosaurdesigns.com.au/

From various ranges, their stuff is always bright and funky! Also a good source of inspiration for a bit of resin work.

• Sandra Backlund

http://www.sandrabacklund.com/

This woman's work is nothing short of amazing! Although she works in the field of fashion especially in the form of contemporary knitwear, her garments present unbelieveable structures and patterns unlike anything I have seen before as well as unusual layering and weaving techniques; ideas which can be adopted into the jewellery making process!

These are all commercial designers or brands which always give me a bit of a kick when I'm short on ideas, as well as these, there are also so many beautiful works and art jewellery by both local Australian and renowned international artists out there...

check them out at www.galleryfunaki.com.au, www.egetal.com.au, www.studioingot.com.au and www.glitzern.com.au.

Let's get some shoes...

Shoes... they go on your feet, right? Wrong!

Our task of the week this week was to mess around with an old (and preferably unloved) shoe until it's days as a shoe were done and dusted! We ripped, teared, sawed and hacked till our little heart's content, and until we no longer left with whole shoes, but random components of which to contruct something completely new and very un-shoelike.

Here's a quick peek at the old leather golf shoe I picked up - pre-violent operation!

So what now?
It's deconstruction time!
Those spikes on the bottom look naaaaasty, going to have a hard time attempting to pull those guys out...

I'll continue to post photos of the work in progress as I go along :)

So I see you've played knifey-spoony before...

For our task this week we were instructed to bring in a random material, as long as it came in multiples! My choice: Lime coloured plastic party cutlery! - the stuff mum gives you as a kid to take to school so you don't go tossing out all her good spoons.

Above are a few images of my fiddly little attempts to make models using solely the cutlery and heavy duty super glue (ew, nasty stuff). I enjoyed working with the plastic and loved the vibrant colour, although they proved to be a bit of a challenge to manipulate as they were quite brittle, limiting my models slightly. So after a good play around, with small pieces of plastic ricocheting off each wall, I was left with few options... snapping, arranging and gluing!

I then progressed to creating a wearable piece, a neckpiece constructed from plastic knifes glued into triangle arrangements of varying sizes and interlinked. Due to my crappy glue, the piece needs to be re-worked, but here are some basic photos so you can see what I'm on about...

Stay tuned for the final piece!

Exquisite Corps

What fun! Who remembers this game from when you were a kid? You know, you fold the paper over into sections to divide up different parts, draw a head, pass it on, the next person draws a torso, passes it on... etc etc etc, well we got to do it in class, but this time with a bit of a twist. Each of us brought in 3 items, and were told to sketch a third of each item, eventually forming something that may look like a head, torso and legs - although slightly more abstract.

My corps is formed out of a crystal perfume bottle head, toothbrush handle torso, and some kind of wooden debris from the beach acting as little feet.

Hello week one!

Week one... our introduction to our first class of Small Object Ideation with our lovely tutor, Miss Natalia Milosz - Piekarska. Our first task, 'cut-up poetry beasts' involved selecting 5 adjectives at random out of a hat, which would then become the defining traits of a type of 'beast' or oddball thing that we were to then draw.

My turn to pop my hand in and pull out my lucky five, and i found myself with: moist, misty, bold, stretched and shimmering.

An hour or so later, and this is what came out....

I wouldn't exactly call it a beast... in fact I have no idea what you would call this!? Some sort of energy orb? Anyyyyway... i tried my best to fit in all 5 adjectives.

Bonjour!

Hi All!
Finally, after a decent session with the old help tab, I have finally sat myself down ready for my very first date with blogger.com. Just like any first date, i am slightly apprehensive and a bit lost for words... but I guess we're all in the same boat at one point, right?

As of two weeks ago I am a uni student; a life of verrry little money and big dreams, embarking on a three year journey into the world of Gold and Silversmithing - all very new to me, that's for sure! Two weeks in and I've blow torched, riveted, and forged my way around until my arms have practically fallen off, but here I hope to share with you some of my inspirations and my beginning works in progress as a newbie on the scene, which i pray will one day look as good as some of the ones I'll be posting up. Nothing wrong with dreaming a little!

Very soon I will post some images of beautiful works by various jewellery designers and random sources of inspiration for a bit of food for thought. This sort of stuff always gets the ball rolling for me for new ideas and a bit of motivation, keep posted!