Day 7 has ended and I am ready with my retreat. I feel a bit egoistic to have taken this whole week for myself, but it has been a precious experience.
I’ve connected with myself in ways I didn’t expect. I became silent in my head around day three and that gave me a lot of rest to keep working. Only on day five on the end, while writing, I had a dip.
I didn’t realize I normally spend so much time on the computer instead of making. That was a real eye opener. In the future I will take care I have more time to create.
I feel more in harmony in what I want and what I do. My visions for the future have become more clear. The list of accomplishments is vast, plus some great ideas to start a new series of jewellery.
It has been of great help to read all you comments. A quote from George Berkely comes to mind: "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
A heartfelt thank you for reading my stories.
So what’s with the Fairy Tales, you ask?
I want to develop a new necklace in the Cultural Message series. One about fairy tales. The tales I read are the ones I am going to incorporate into the piece.
Today I did the calculations & initial drawings of the elements. Templates are made in illustrator, ready to be cut-out. I work very planned and almost all my jewellery starts as a paper mock-up. I try out, shift things around and fiddle with it, till it feels right.
Having had this week with the free associations in unfamiliar material, made me free of mind. I could listen how the piece wanted to be manifested. You can see here one of the paper tests which will be translated in silver very soon.
I have made a fabulous start, thanks to the retreat.
Flow
To get in the flow of working I started today with making 2 slabs in Silver Clay with the bark pattern. One will be made into a ring and the other piece I turned into 3 pairs of earrings. I will show them when they are ready.
Live talk
Tomorrow I will prepare the Google+ hangout. When you add me to one of your circles I will invite you automatically. Helga’s Google+ profile
I will show a few things that I did make, draw a winner for the Inner Star and most important, I will answer questions. I start at 23.00u Amsterdam time. A recording will be available on YouTube.
If you have any questions, please ask them in the comments below and I will answer them tomorrow.
Information about Hangouts you can find here: Hangouts.
I end with my list of activities and projects realized this week:
- Draw a Labyrinth with chalk and walk it 14 times
- 9 charcoal drawings and a bike tour.
- Cut a gate out of two trees
- Read 2 chapters op Campbell’s “Power of Myth”
- Sawed a silver billet and hammered it down
- Cleaned up an iron Anvil
- Meditated ever morning for 15 minutes
- Juggled a lot
- Soapstone sculpting: made 1 finished piece
- Read 7 tales in English: Little Muck, Firebird, Goldilock, Little Ida’s flowers, Diamonds & Toads, Parsley/Rapunzel, Snow-white & Rose-red
- Draw 7 picture storyboards of the fairytales
- With salt-dough sculpted 7 remarkable elements of the tales (of which the dog ate one!)
- Took pictures + processed them for publishing
- Wrote every day a blogpost and promoted it.
- Cooked every day a meal (except for one day, thank you JP for cooking)
- Made a notebook incorporating my own pictures
- Kept a diary containing 47 pages written
- 61 square, 7 small 3D, 4 big slabs and a tree bark sculpture from porcelainclay
- 1 bronzeclay sample
- 2 silverclay samples
- A necklace design that is ready to be made in silver
- + walk the dog every morning
Pfff!
