Monday, 24 December 2007

Frosty leaves, tree rings and felt sausages


These photos were taken about 10 days ago at another of my favourite haunts, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, West Yorkshire. There had been a heavy overnight frost, but it was melting a little by the afternoon. I very much like the shapes of the leaves, and the way they are arranged on the plants (especially the red ones). However, I suspect the picture that will lead to the first item of jewellery is the one showing where a branch has been cut from a tree.


The mixture of textures is very appealing, and I was also struck by the similarity of the tree rings to some wool felt beads I made recently at a felt making workshop. In the picture you can see some simple earrings made from the beads, together with the sausage of wool from which the beads are cut.


The beads are made by the wet felting technique: layers of different colours are rolled up like a swiss roll, and then wet felted for a considerable time until the wool sausage is really hard. The beads are sliced from the sausage. This tutorial with pictures shows the principles. And there are some great tips from the Funky Felter about felt beads here.

My preliminary thoughts involve setting the felt in a wide wire frame, and then surrounding that with something with concentric crinkles.

1 comment:

DogNamedBanjo said...

These orange felted earrings are really lovely! I adore them!