New 'Things'

The last couple of days I have been working on my bookkeeping which is due by thursday. It is not really a 'thing', so I can't show it of here, and so I took a few days off from the 'thing'.
I did get a couple of hours of torchtime in on sunday though, and here is some of what I made.

A goddess, nice and slender, and big! It's been a while since I made one last, and I were surprised to see that she is very close to the size of my largest ever goddess. Which is nice since I want to go bigger.


A purple leaf pendant bead, like the one I sold at Valdemar Slot Christmas Market.


And two tops for plantsticks. They would be lovely pendants, but they are huge!


Then I decided to end the day with another goddess. Unfortunately I forgot to keep her heated while fiddling with the neck and shoulder area, and she exploded :/ If you can use a broken goddess do let me know and I'll send her to you. Something mosaic perhaps? She is complete except that she has no nipples. It is the very last thing I do when making a goddess, and the only thing undone on her. And she is not annealed. (ETA: the broken Goddess is on her way to a good home)



P~

Nipsenåle

Nipsenåle is an antique toy, that was given to little girls in Denmark during the first half of the 1900s. It is a purely Danish phenomenon of playing with pins with a glass head.

Some pins were short and with a simple single coloured drop of glass, those were for playing. Others were more interesting and were for collecting and admirering. Those were longer pins and had glass figures at the end. Many were of birds and other animals, and different series like 'People of the World' or 'Animals from Africa'.

The needles were stuck into little pillows, often made form expensive fabric, and were arranged and rearranged over and over by the little girls.

Today these fascinating little treasures are still collected, and since I have always loved miniatures of almost any kind, I have decided to try my hand at making nipsenåle. These are my test needles.




It really does take some practice to work at this size, but I am very happy with these. Especially the tiny cute elephant who is about 1 cm tall, and the robot who unfortunately has cracks from getting too cold while getting the details done.
I have gotten hold of a bunch of long pins and I look forward to decorating each one with a little piece of nostalgic treasure.

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Thing-a-day 2011

Today is the first day of this years Thing-a-day.
Last year I joined up and had a lot of fun making different things for the 28 days of february (although some days it would end up being an emergency haiku). At the end I proclaimed that I would do it again this year, but ... It seems I am already good at giving myself projects to take care of, and I will have plenty to do without the added stress of having to blog every day. So I have decided to not join up, but to do my own thing and blog it frequently.

The first thing I'd like to present was made during the last days of december. I needed a gift for my mother for christmas, and after a bit of thinking I decided to make something myself, and that I would be making plant sticks. I have been making a new (to me) type of pendants lately, so I figured: 'Make a large one, turn it upside down and glue it to a stick', voilá, a nice and fancy plant stick.
I sacrificed a couple of my less worn mandrels, and this is what I came up with.




They look great, catching the sun among the greenery on her windowsill :)

P~