Copper Dragonfly Brooch

Its been so hectic here lately that I haven’t had much time to make anything for a while. Starting a new business venture in the form of an arts cafe is proving to be very hard work! It’s extremely fulfilling and great fun, but it doesn’t leave me much head space to think about designing or creating new pieces. My father once told me it’s better to have fingers in more pies and that is what I am doing. I guess it’s about balance, like so much in life, balance is the key.

I am panicking a little if I am honest as the Vogue feature will be published in just over two weeks. The plan was to make lots of new pieces for the shop in time for the feature on the 10th December but so far I have managed only a couple of new designs. I hate working under pressure so I am trying not to think about it too much.

After playing around with a necklace bail I made for another piece, I dismantled it ( I tend to do a lot of that!) and came up with my first ever copper insect. I have never made anything that looks like something before as most of my work is abstract and organic. It started life as a moth with fairly short squat wings and not the elegant dragonfly I had in mind, so with a little bit more work and some extra length added to the wings he looked more like the beautiful graceful insect I intended to create. The delicate wire wings do remind me of the veins that can be seen on Dragonfly wings so am pleased with how these turned out.

Then there was the dilemma of what to make him into. A brooch? A necklace pendant? My facebook fans decided for me and a brooch it was!

I added a handmade pin onto the back and secured the dragonfly onto it, in fact it was a brooch pin design I had learnt from Sharilyn Miller’s Contemporary Copper Jewellery book. I haven’t made many brooches so far so haven’t designed my own working version of a pin just yet and this design fitted just great.

 Dragonfly Brooch with Turquoise beads

The reverse of the brooch using Sharilyn’s coiled brooch design.

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