Thursday 3 September 2015

Garden Inspiration


A large amount of our materials and inspiration comes from the beach. But the beach is not our only source of natural found materials, the forest and our own garden gives us gifts too.
These feathers are of the Eurasian Jay, I find them one by one in our garden and collect them together to eventually make earrings of them. We made several pairs in the past and they were all sold out so it was time for a new pair.


This is the only picture of the Jay I have been able to capture, they constantly hop from one branch to the other and usually pretty high up in our pine trees. He is mostly black but the wings have those blue stripe details which you can not see in this picture.


And here are the earrings, the feathers are accompanied with vintage abalone shell drops and handmade lampwork beads, very bohemian and although pretty large, very light weighted.


This year we have much more Cicada's than usual, I only notice it from the amount of noise, but also of the amounts of skeletons I found. I have been collecting their beautiful wings, they are weightless yet strong, pretty amazingly constructed. I am not fond of the insect themselves so won't show an image of that :)


I've made a necklace by pairing a pair of wings and sandwiching them between two crystal cut glass pieces and soldering a frame around that. This way you can appreciate the beauty of the wings and they will be protected. I've just listed the necklace a few minutes ago.


These feathers are not collected from our garden. They are the feathers of a friend's parakeet. Again cruelty-free feathers, I only collect those that the little guy leaves behind, he himself is unharmed and happy.


Here is the source of my material :) He is very cute, and has a large cage which is open all day so that he is free to wander. If left without attention for a while he will walk after you like a pup, very cute :)


And here are the first earrings made with his feathers, together with vintage enameled brass triangles and handmade lampwork beads.

8 comments:

  1. Cruelty free :-)
    Love the parakeets! Especially the bit where they can just move freely, but choose to stick around.
    In Amsterdam many escaped, and now the parks have big families of them, quite cool!

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  2. I very much like your new feather earrings :)
    And that parakeet is beautiful!!

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  3. Nice pieces! Nature is the key to create, love the Cicada's wings, I use to collect them too :)

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  4. The wings are beautiful! Never seen cicadas around here, therefore I never seen such wings!
    And I definetly like what you've done with the little parrot's feathers :)

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  5. All of them are nice pieces but my favorite is the pendant with the cicada wings, it looks so cool!

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  6. YAY for cruelty free :)
    I love the feather earrings but I simply love the cicaca wings necklace.
    I wonder if I could make something out of cat hair...

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  7. Beautiful inspiration! Wonderful work Estella!

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