With the autumn season approaching, I’m turning this week to one of my favorite motifs – bellflowers. While I don’t have a great track record with many plants, bellflowers are one of the first flowers that we tried to grow in the my family garden when I was a child. I’ve always been fond of bellflowers, and although I don’t think I’d try to grow them again now, I have a real fondness for bellflower kanzashi.
The majority of the pieces used to create this particular kanzashi are new, but the resin butterfly is a salvaged from an older kanzashi project that I just didn’t feel waws particularly successful.
As such, I consider this piece to be part of my yearlong effort to remake older works into shiny new pieces.
For my small kanzashi hair pins I try to keep them relatively simple in concept; usually they have three flowers and two pieces of foliage. But for medium hair forks like this one, I always want to add a little more – making them just a touch unique. For this piece, that meant including the butterfly, and then adding the sagari or fluttering strands of petals.
I usually pair autumn or late summer flowers, like bellflowers, with dragonflies instead of butterflies. But, I felt like this purple butterfly was just the right shade to be paired with the delicate pale purple and white bellflowers that I crafted for this piece.
That said, I do hope I’ll be able to work on some new pieces that do incorporate dragonflies. I tend to go through phases, where I make a lot of one type of creature, but I really enjoy variety and find that if I mix things up I am less likely to burn out on crafting.
This piece, like many of the pieces I’ve been working on this year, was made possible by a production grant from Creative Saskatchewan – who were kind enough to support the production of over 500 new works of tsumami craft made by me. I can’t express enough how grateful I am for their support. If you’ve ever wanted to support an arts organization, I can’t recommend Creative Saskatchewan enough.
Anyhoo, that is all I’ve got for today. I hope to see you guys again next week with more crafty creative projects.
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