Working with hand painted anodised aluminium is very rewarding, I create many beautiful patterns and colours for my jewellery work, but I've becoming a little obsessed about all the little bits that are off cuts from my work, they are too beautiful to discard and so I keep them and use them until they get smaller and smaller or more miss shaped.
Eventually all the very small bits end up in a lovely colourful jumble keeping my guillotine company, yet still available to retrieve once again as perhaps a tiny test piece. Still with the possibility to become precious. A variety of colours, hues and shapes, that I just can't make myself scrap. They still have value to me even in this discarded state.
The Concept
Every time I use the guillotine the vibrant scraps of colours sing silently of their beautiful clash or harmony.
They need to be heard and so my next project is born.
An idea for a brooch that has been in my mind for several months that I have named project Reclamation. The Brooch.
The Conclusion
I have created something of value from something deemed invaluable.
A reminder to me of how much I value my ability to create.
All the tiny pieces I used are memories of previous successes and failures and I reclaimed some these pieces exclusively to generate the new piece of work.
The Reclamation Brooch.
The most difficult part of the project was not making the brooch but editing out what not to use.
I loved all the bits equally.