Sugar Skulls and Other Inspirations...pt 1

So, as mentioned previously, I thought I'd write about the inspirations behind my current collection of jewellery. It's called Día de los Muertos so there is a big clue in title already about what to expect, but first I think I should go back to the beginning and why I wanted to make it.

When I started to think about what jewellery I wanted to make, my first thought was 'what did I want to wear?' - I wanted to make something that I myself would be happy to wear. Now I'm not a fan of delicate, elegant jewellery - I'm not saying that I don't appreciate a timeless thing of platinum-diamond-infused beauty, but to wear it myself? Well it just isn't me. I like big, bright, colourful, jewellery. I've got a growing collection of Tatty Devine jewellery if you need anymore clues as to the sort of thing I mean. But as wonderful as TD is I still wanted to wear something else, something that I couldn't find in the shops. I wanted something colourful, bright, and cute. But I also wanted it to have an edge - no butterflies and unicorns for me, I like wierd stuff, skulls, demonic teddy bears* and such like. So let's start with the first and biggest inspiration: Día de los Muertos, the Mexican Day of the Dead festival.

The Day of the Dead festival is celebrated on 2 November to remember and pray for deceased friends and relatives. Offerings are made at shrines and usually consist of sugar skulls, flowers, food and drink. DayOfTheDead.com is a really good website to go to if you want more info on the history of the celebration, and contains beautiful pictures in it's 'gallery' section. Since I was a child I've been fascinated by this festival as although it's focused on death it celebrates it in a fun and colourful way. It's about honouring those who have passed on but not in a solemn, gloomy way.

The thing that has always stuck in my mind though are the sugar skulls. They are so bright and colourful; there is so much detail on them. They take what is quite a scary looking object and make it fun and exciting. I wanted to use this element of fun and bright colours, but with a twist in my jewellery.

I now knew that I wanted to incorporate skulls into my designs along with the bright colours of the festival, but Dia de los Muertos wasn't the only thing on my mind when I started to design. In my next post I'll be discussing some of the other inspirations.

*Check out Gloomy Bear, like I said, weird stuff. :)

An introduction

First of all, welcome to my blog! It's my first so don't expect any slick operation, this is just me in my living room and my trusty laptop and a handful of html codes. This is going to be a learning experience complete with a steep learning curve no doubt!

I wanted to blog for a few reasons:

Numero Uno - I make jewellery in my spare time and I wanted to write about that, show people what it's all about, where the inspiration comes from and maybe even how I do it.

Second, I enjoy writing and communicating with others. I like to have a good old chat and a blog is somewhere where people can express ideas and promote discussion. I also have a tendancy to ramble on when I get into an interesting subject so if you can bear with me hopefully you'll find something in here that sparks off your own curiousity or gives you inspiration!

Last but not least, I wanted to have something that documents all the creative bits and bobs that I do. I have a full-time non creative job and it can be difficult to remember all the cool, fun, creative things you do and think of when you are sat in front of a computer all day with a pile of paperwork to get through.

So enough of that, what is this all about and where to start???

Well, as you may have gathered, I make jewellery in my spare time. But not your run-of-the-mill pretty diamonds and hearts jewellery, oh no no no, as my shop says I "make jewellery of an unusual nature". At the moment this means I have a collection of jewellery inspired by the Mexican Day of the Dead celebration on offer, all skulls and rainbow colours. Shameless plug time: Wanna have a look at this amazing jewellery of which I speak? Visit Deviant Panda for more details! Ha! See how I segued into a link to my shop there? Okay maybe I lied when I said this wasn't going to be a slick operation coz I thought that was pretty slick...seamless you might say! :) But enough shameless plugging! I make jewellery and I love it, ALOT!

I'm currently being inspired by trashy B-movies, schlocky horror films, Voodoo, death rituals (as in the Mexican Day of the Dead), kawaii manga and anime and collectable vinyl figurines.

I'll leave it at that for now as I don't want to bombard anyone with information overload just yet, but in my next post I will be exploring the inspirations behind my current jewellery collection.

DP