Potter friend Claire came to me wanting a wedding gift for her daughter……… something personal she thought, “with crows and roses, oh, and I need it in 2 weeks and the wedding is in Hawaii”.

 Ummm, thought I, I have done crows before but Claire was thinking strung up to form a garland/bunting perhaps?! (She loved the garland I had created around my sheep skull for ‘The Curious mouse’). She sent across a photo of the inspiration, her beautiful daughters tattoo of crows and hibiscus, (not roses!….my mistake.)

Ummmmmm, how am I going to do this?

I staggered in to my shed for inspiration and on the way stumbled across this stick!

A-ha, ‘S’ is for ‘stick’ ……and ‘Sally’, (Claire’s daughter).

Can you see the ‘S’ at the end of the stick! It was ‘S’ is for ‘sign’ for sure!!

And the rest was easy……….(???!!)

Using a wonderful Arthur Rackham sketch as my inspiration for the Crows I drew up a template and cut them out in stunning streaky dark violet glass. I applied a matt of black paint and scraped the feathery design in to it, then off to the kiln.

The hibiscus flowers were going to be experimental…..how to make them look 3D? I painted some 2D flowers on to my favourite hand-made pink glass and popped these in the kiln too with my fingers crossed.

But hey – result! They came out looking stunning. I leaded up the crows and added legs for mounting. I foiled the flowers and cut out some leaves. Then with a bit of clever wiring I created some 3D blooms.

Assembling went like a dream as the weight of the birds balanced out the fragile wiggly, wee stick perfectly. (I had thought I might have to mount the stick on a base board but was glad I didn’t need to.)

So what do you think? I love it….these flower embellishments are just perfect and I like the way they look so delicate but are surprisingly durable and poseable too……..(plenty of scope for future designs and ideas!!…..)

 And hallelujah, the Crows and Claire have landed safely in Hawaii and Sally and Eldon loved them too apparently.

(Claire sent me the wedding video link, oh my, how stunning…….lots of beautiful people on an understated beach with gentle waves rolling in – in Hawaii!! It was like watching a really cool American movie with an absolutely superb soundtrack……..)

Snap out of it Deb!

So, meanwhile back in ‘Shed world’ where we are not swimming with turtles (unlike Claire who is out there for weeks yet!), I am knuckling down for Chrimbo, next weeks Craft fair, the following Friday’s ‘Open Studio’……. And my current big job……3 windows!!

Will let you know how they are going……….busy, busy.