Friday Inspiration - Challenges

Inspiration is a funny thing - sometimes one has an idea for exactly what needs to be done, exactly how to create a piece.  And sometimes an inspiration is so filling that it makes it hard to figure out the details of a project.  Which brings me to sunflowers ....

Sunflowers are hands down one of my favorite plants (not just flowers) on the planet!  They mean summer, they go through so many changes, there are lots of varieties, they're usually easy to grow, and they are just plain beautiful.  I often feel very inspired by sunflowers, so one would think there would be a lot of sunflowers in my body of work.  Nope.  Except for a piece of ice dyed fabric I once made that turned out to have a sunflower on it, there is none.  Anytime I've tried to come up with a sunflower idea, I'm not happy with how it looks - too cliched or kitchy, usually.

I've been looking at a few blogs lately that have monthly challenges.  What a good way to step out of the box, try new things, and actually get something done!  The challenges remind me of being in art school and getting assignments - at first you work through the too usual ideas that everyone has already done and you keep on going until you come up with something new and, hopefully, exciting.  And you keep at it because you have to turn something in on the due date!  The challenges I've found so far are all for art beads or jewelry (if anyone knows of quilting ones, tell us in comments!).  Which brings us back to sunflowers!

Imagine my surprise when I looked at not one, but two of this month's challenges and found that the subject was .... sunflowers!  I had already told myself that this month I WAS going to actually do the challenges, not just lurk.  So I wandered around looking at all of our sunflowers.  Now this is the middle of September and they're all looking pretty ragged around here.  But still beautiful in a very different way ...

I didn't really feel into making dead or rotted sunflower jewelry, but a sunflower deconstructed, taken down to its parts did sound interesting.  I decided to make ceramic petals, looked around and found some bone beads that reminded me of sunflower seeds and a couple of green glazed beads I made for a different project.  And this is what I came up with for the We're All Ears Sunflower Challenge-

The wire wrapped circle wasn't difficult to make - just a little fussy.  I wrapped the wire around my finger twice and then started wrapping  the circle I got with the long tail that was left.  Needle nosed pliers helped in getting the wraps to lie flat and closer together.

So one challenge down, two to go ... and one is another sunflower challenge.  I'm going to see if I can come up with something using some other sunflower components I made - beads and small charms.  If you have ideas you'd like to make using the petals or want to see the other sunflower components, they are available for sale in the shop.  Either hit the shop button at the top of this page or go to stoneypointstudio.com.

Happy Creating!  Deborah