My new medallion shiny I made last week really got me excited. It's part of my 'learn to weave' thing I've been doing. Learn to weave + learn to make a dream catcher + dying to make scroll work = my first medallion...
...which led to my second medallion...
I uber love the first one. I /want/ to love the second, but... it bothers me. It's close, but no cigar. The scrolls are wrong. Not shapped right, or maybe that bottom one is just too big. They're slightly crooked too. Maybe too open. Maybe all of the above.
This displeases me.
So, I set off to practice my scrolls. Scrolls are very hard for me. I obsess to much on things like... are they even? Are they round enough? Are they the right size, shape, without kinks, with graceful curves, good lines, blah blah blah... drive myself crazy enough I usually just give up after my gazillionth try. But, my medallions must have ... something. Something... scrolly. So, that's what I've been doing all week. Making scrollies.
I have about ... 1000. Mostly rejects.
They're starting to come out better finally. I even got the torch out and decided that everything was better with little molten balls on the ends. Now I have some ... molten balled up scrolly thingies.
Curious if I can torch the other many hundreds of rejects sitting on the table into some kind of usable something. Will have to give it a whirl.
That second medallion led to something else too. The openness of the bottom scroll shows too much of the back netting. Looks fine enough, I suppose, but it's not what I'm after. I want the netting to not be a focal feature, just a behind the scenes hint of a ... something. A filler. As well as a very useful construction component. But it's not to take front and center. The stone is. And the scroll design.
No idea what to do to fill it all in. I tried layering different scrolls on top of what I had. That was kinda cool. I need to play with that more. Last night I decided to throw away the strict design of the scrolls, threw away any rule I thought I was hanging on to and went full freeform.
Freeform and I are not friends. Freeform is actually next to impossible for me. Everything I do I use some kind of tool for. Could be one of my many pliers, or it could be a makeshift bottle mandrel, but everything is made with tools. It's the only way I can get everything straight, even and round. Not even my trees are freeform. Not to me. I use the stone as the tool to dictate to me how the tree looks. I'm not free to just... twist one up all willy-nilly.
Freeform? Ugh. There is nothing straight, even and perfectly round about freeform.
To bad, so sad, it's not up to me. The medallions seem to want some kind of ... I don't know what. Tools weren't working right. Too rigid in the forms. Maybe. Time to get out of my box and figure something different out. So... suck it up shinymaker, it's freeform time.
Got 2 that I kinda like.
The first is a smaller one. I got a little crazy with the swirling so it came out kinda ... dense. 1/2 way thru I decided to see what a stone would do, so it inherited a Red Tiger Eye. Then, remembering that everything looks better after I set it on fire, I torched that baby. >:D
I think I got lucky that I didn't crack the stone. Not sure you're reeeeeally supposed to torch things with stones on them. Prolly not.
After messing with that one, I decided to try for a more open feeling one and ended up with...
... a garnet swirly freeform thingy.
Not entirely sure what they are, if they're anything. They might be center pieces for my next try at a medallion. Maybe they are pendants. A friend suggested that, or that it could be a brooch, or even a tie clasp.
*ponders*
Could very well be something like that. Yep.
Time will tell. Whatever they are, they were one thing for sure. A lesson in free form. Considering how hard it is for me...I think it went well.
I am pleased.
:D
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