Flowers and Leaves - An Inspiration

The physical shapes and textures of nature are a great influence to my handmade jewellery work, and in my personal life too.  I really enjoy pottering in my small garden in Northamptonshire or simply taking time to sit in it and enjoy the plants growing and the wildlife going about their day, infact I'm sitting out here now as I type this.  Most rooms in my house have a plant or three and I love nothing more than seeing if I can grow a cutting or leaf into a new plant.  The success is variable and that is where using metal keeps me happy as I can make everlasting plants!  Flower jewellery makes the perfect gift, they require no watering, just a polish every now and then!  I look to both flora and fauna for my inspiration but in this post I'm going to be sticking to the plants.  

I use the shapes of flowers and leaves to create pieces like the Silver Flower Earrings and the Copper Leaves Necklace.  Using a generic shape to make a beautiful simple outline which I can use to create a variety of designs from.  The silver Acorn and Oak Leaf Earrings are each hand sawn making each pair I make different, just like in nature.  I have a few more specific plant designs in working progress and as each of those move from my head, to a sketch (not my strength), to a finished piece I'll share those with you. 

I also use textures from nature in some pieces like the hammering of these linear lines in a non uniform fashion have the look of tree bark on the Tree Bark Ring and on the Tree Bark Bangle.   The differently orientated filed lines of the Lines Ring reminds me of reed stems by a pond or long grass blades in a wild grown garden.  These are just a few and I'm always keeping my eyes open for more texture inpiration, like the colours found in rusting metal of a bench, or the dimples found on the surface of a leaf, or the ripples on the surface of a lake.