Vineyard Wanderings

Wine Cellars along one of the countless paths to and around the Bisamberg. Love their beauty in decay and that as time goes by they seem to become one with the nature they are built into. 

Rusted door knobs and handles, peeled paint, ivy claiming back its territory...

Wine treasures locked behind painted doors.

Feeling embedded in the constant humming of the busy bumblebees, birds song and the gentle whisper of the wind that played the ivy like a violin, we walked and let our spirits wander too.

We will return to this lovely place soon, trying to escape the hectic life of the city. 

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Bird Necklace

Servus and welcome to my artful blogging corner! I am happy that you stop by my little creative spot :)

Today I want to share with you my latest soldered project - a bird necklace.

I used some driftwood alongside an old thimble, some lace ribbons, wire and designer papers.

I love to work with wire and I also patina-ed the soldered frame  to give it a more antique look instead of the silvery shine.

The tiny piece of driftwood is a collectible from my favourite summer resort at the beautiful Attersee in the Austrian Salzkammergut.

The thimble is a find from my husband's grandmothers sewing chest. I dremel-ed a hole into the top and inserted a piece of wire that fixes the thimble to the pendant and holds the ribbons in place too.

The designer paper I used for the tiny collage is a scrap from the "Madame Payraud" stash. The egg was stamped, fuzzy cut and glued in place (as were the printed words).

The tiny feather is a feather from one of our three budgies. I blended it with DI "gathererd twigs" to tone the bright yellow down a bit.

Before I put the two memory glass pieces together I gave the insides some dabbs of alcohol inks around the edges to add to the aged feel of my necklace.

I enter this creation to the challenge at Inspiration Emporium "A Few of my Favourite Things" (actually I used quite a lot of my favourite things on it: solder, glass, wire, drift wood, a found object (the thimble), ribbon with text, alcohol inks).
I also enter it to the "Anything Goes" challenge over at Crafty Hands Challenges, to Simon's Wednesday challenge "Happy Easter" (as there is a stamped Easter egg incorporated with one of the collages and the necklace is an Easter gift for my sister) and Eclectic Paperie's "Wood" challenge (as I love my collection of drift wood and have included one with this project).

Things we love to do...

...when we are out, enjoying a walk in the lovely Vienna Woods: creating "land art".

Especially when my son was a bit younger - five or six years old - he loved to lead the way, leaving arrows on the narrow paths when they branched so we could follow and find him. Sometimes he just used large branches to form a gigantic arrow, at other times he left little land art "treasures" like the one I want to share with you today:

What makes land art so special is that you create just for the joy of creating, knowing that wind, rain or other travellers on this path will soon destroy your creation. The colours of leaves, stones, moss or bark are a neverending source of inspiration and there are some land artists who really create the most wonderful projects. Using flowers pollen to "paint with", arranging moss or rocks so they form special patterns....which brings us back to "mark making". Remember when I talked about mark making in this post?

What makes land art so special is the fact that we use what's to be found in nature but create something artificial with it... a pattern or shape or installation that indicates that we were there. Humans....who are able to give objects new meaning and/or order (well, some animals do too ;). Leaving traces for others to detect... not only children love to do this. ;)

A gorgeous post over at Manu's blog today reminded me to try create some land art as soon as the weather and time will allow me to do so. And it also reminded me of this land art project my son did some years ago. I hope you like it and maybe will create some land art too some time. We invest such a lot of time imitating textures and/or colours that are inspired by nature...how could our projects look like that were done with what nature provides us with - done in nature? I would love to learn!

Thanks for stopping by! Claudia x