More Necklaces and a Pin

Helen and I have both been very busy, of course, but we found time to make a few things in between working, trying to garden a little in this very cold weather, and trying to organize a few reviews of Helen's new recording (check out the super sexy new press release and a couple tunes here). To begin with, Helen made her first nanohana.

Nanohana is the flower of the rape plant. Despite its unfortunate English name, rape is a very tasty vegetable, and I understand its seeds are also useful! Nanohana is a kanzashi flower for March, and is usually portrayed in clusters. Helen just made one as a pendant from vintage kimono silk with a wonderfully crinkly texture...

 

Buy the necklace here. What else? A colorful little star-shaped flower from the remains of a beautiful silk blend jacquard that Helen's friend J9 gave her.....

 

 

....a red habotai flower with yellow jade.....

 

 

.....buy it here  . And finally, a flower that just had to be a brooch, made from an old silk scarf that J9 gave to Helen...

 

 

We just love the colors. It will probably end up in a gallery. We can see making some ume or plum flower pendants from this fabric.

 

OK, that's all for the moment. Soon, kanzashi bracelets.

Kanzashi Necklaces

 

Sorry for the delay, as usual, but there are so many new things to report! Helen has a new recording, a new publicist, a new iPad mini, a new Alexander Technique teacher, and a new kanzashi design......necklaces!

Here's what happened: Helen's friend Rebecca came over one day and said, "Make me a necklace, here's how you can do it". Rebecca is an art teacher, so she always has lots of Ideas. Well, not all of them work, as it turns out, but Helen liked the concept, and decided to try it.

Helen never cared much for fabic flower necklaces, because combining fabric with metal chains never seemed Quite Right to her. Rebecca's idea was for a long ribbon necklace with just one small flower. After doing some Experimenting, Helen arrived at her pendant design, and here's how to do it.

OK, make your flower.....probably something small with 4-7 petals. Now, cut a small piece of thin satin ribbon.....1 inch is probably sufficient. Fold the ribbon in half.....this is going to be your loop. Hand sew the ribbon to a small piece of fabric that won't fray....some knit or spandex sort of thing. Just tack it a few times. It will look roughly like this:

That's the underside. Glue this side to the flower. Here's the exposed side:

All right, it's hard to tell from the photo, but it looks relatively clean.....you mainly see the fabric, a few stitches, and a small ribbon loop. Now, glue it to the back of the flower, and slip a long ribbon through the loop, like this:

OK, so you've glued it. What about the back of the flower? You have to have something to protect it and hide the unmentionables, like glue and/or stitches. After trying a few things, Helen has decided on using the same fabric as the flower. Cut a small circle, treat the raw edge with fray prevention liquid or heat, and glue it to the flower back. All right, now for the fun part. Here are some completed necklaces. This one is silver fabric with a coin pearl....

 

 

That one's at the Morning Glory Gallery . Here are some that will be in Helen's Etsy shop soon...these are all silk of various sorts. This one's more about the leaves than the flower....

 

 

Fleur-de-lis.....

 

 

Dupioni silk with a coin pearl....

 

 

Another dupioni silk with a blue jade bead....

 

 

More to come.

 

Just a tip...pendants get bumped around more than brooches or hair accessories, so Helen is trying to stick mainly with silk for these flowers. We're impressed by the staying power of habutai, and the resilience of chirimen (neither of which are pictured here, lol). We all may stray to synthetics every now and again, but we can see the reason kanzashi were and are made from kimono silk....it's absolutely the right fabric.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yorkshire Rose Kanzashi

Long time, no blog! So sorry, we've been working a lot. Well, Helen has been working a lot. I've been, you know, taking care of the house, making sure I get my naps in, demanding more food, you know, like that.

Anyhoo, one of Helen's most admired kanzashi items in her Etsy shop is this one , the Tudor Rose. It's not a real rose, but a symbol of the marriage of Henry Tudor and Elizabeth of York......the red rose of Lancaster surrounds the white rose of York. Tudor roses are frequently represented with leaves (or is it supposed to be the calyx?) in between all the petals, like this....

Well, a couple weeks ago, Helen got an email enquiring if she had ever made a Yorkshire rose, which is the same as the Tudor rose, but all white. Helen had not made one previously, but was game to give it a try. Next question: could it be a Christmas tree ornament? This was something new for Helen, and likely for many kanzashi makers. Well, here's the Yorkshire rose...

...and here's Helen's solution for hanging it on a tree....make a loop with organza ribbon, sew it to a small piece of fabric, glue the whole thing to the top of one of the petals (on the back), and run another ribbon through it, like this.....

It looks nice hanging, and Helen is thinking about offering more of her kanzashi flowers as Christmas tree ornaments, especially the red ones! We'll have to wait till fall to really act on that, but it's worth keeping in mind a little. What unusual uses have you found for your kanzashi?

Kansignment Kanzashi

 

Well, it's been a looooooong time since I posted anything.......many apologies, as always! Helen's boss has been in town for the last month, which means lots of working with this group , and after months of recording and editing, Helen has finished a new album with this group . And of course, I've been very busy with my own creative work......finding new places to sleep, new things to play with, you know how it is.

So, Helen has been making consignment items, lately. In a way, this can be liberating, as the pieces can be very colorful. Seems to us that it's a little hard to sell multi-colored pieces online because shoppers often search by color, usually just one color. Is it our imaginations? I don't know, but if any of you would like to comment on it, please feel free......

Also, Helen is honored to have been recently invited to sell her wares in the museum store at the new Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend, WI. So, she had to do a little work over the last few very busy weeks to pull together some old and new items for the both the museum and also the Morning Glory Gallery .

So, here are a few of the consignment things to show you, just for fun. First, some pins.....

 

...and a few snap clip pairs......

 

 

....and an earlier pin that got changed around a little.....

 

 

...and a new linen flower brooch made from fabric that Helen's friend J9 hand-dyed....

 

 

....this star-shaped pin....

 

 

.....this....

 

 

 

.....and finally, a new butterfly.

 

 

So, that's most of it. Helen has an awful lot of things to replace in her Etsy store, now, some of which could use a re-design. And some new ideas for necklaces and bracelets to experiment with. Stay tuned.

 

 

 

Buttrflyz

 

 

Recently, Helen's friend J9 gave her a bunch of fabric remnants, and among them was a brilliantly colored silk faille, with colors that Helen likes for butterflies. Months earlier, Helen had promised her sister a kanzashi pin, and this was the perfect opportunity to make a butterfly brooch. Here's what she came up with.....

 

 

We like the good clean lines of this butterfly, but gosh, it was hard to wrestle the fabric into these petal (wing?) shapes, because it was slippery. Helen was also intrigued by the effect possible from groups of skinny-pointy petals for wings. So, here's her second version from the same fabric....

 

 

In this case, the beads are wired on, which was fun and easy to do! Much easier than sewing them...Let's take a look at other people's kanzashi butterflies.

 

Here's one with clever layering and a button body from Scarlet and Maria on Etsy...

 

 

....and here's an elaborate one with beautiful colors and elegant form from kurikami-kanzashi.deviantart.com ...

 

 

A pale green butterfly with a coiled body is no longer available from an unnamed artist on Etsy, but remains in perpetuity at Google images...

 

 

and some of our favorite butterflies ever can be found in the Kanzashi Boutique Flickr photostream, hereabouts .

 

There are many other ways of making butterflies and other insects in the kanzashi style. Many kanzashi artists also combine butterflies with flowers and leaves to make beautiful compositions, such as this one by Kanzashi Temple on Etsy...

OK, so this is becoming overwhelming, and I think it's time to get back to my nap. Butterflies can be challenging because of the engineering problems of constructing the insect's body. I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

Plum Flower Kanzashi

 

It's February, and things can happen, like furnaces malfunctioning. That happened to us the other day, and the furnace guy said he would return with the part he needed to replace the next day. When it became evident that the temperature was going to drop significantly, Helen asked her friend Rebecca if we could stay at her house, just across the street. Rebecca was very gracious and we all had a fun time socializing in her living room, and of course, I explored the house some. Early the next morning, Rebecca went off to teach, the kids went off to school, Helen went to train with her weightlifting coach, and I went off to have a good nap in one of the secret hiding places I found. Many hours later, the humans were in hysterics because they couldn't find me! When I got up, they acted like it was a big miracle, but instead of welcoming me with squeals of delight and a big bowl of food, Helen crammed me into a cat carrier and hustled me across the street to our house, telling me how worried they all had been. Just what is the big deal?

Anyway, as I was saying, it's February, and that is the month for ume, or plum flower kanzashi. I would say that the ume are perhaps the most iconic of the kanzashi. They have just 5 rounded petals and are so lovely in their simplicity. Let's take a look at some.

Here's one of Helen's snap clip pairs.....simple little silk flowers with onyx bead centers....

Buy 'em here. OK, let's look at a few other artists' use of ume. Lilyashes from Kanzashi Temple on Etsy has made a graceful large assemblage of chirimen silk ume with wonderful leaves and shidari falls.....

Kitty Kanzashi on Etsy illustrates that ume don't have to be small in this beautiful wedding hair piece...

 

....and Random Cat Girl on Etsy demonstrates a kind of colorful layering with this lovely comb...

 

 

....and I can't resist showing an example of the wonderful effect of ume made from printed fabric, as Helen demonstrates with another one of her vintage kimono silk snap clip pairs...

 

 

Buy 'em here . OK, so we could really go on and on, as kanzashi artists are creative people who might well make more ume than anything else. You get the idea. In any case, it's a good way to get through February.

Kanzashi Peony

The kanzashi peony, or botan, seems to have two different forms. Both involve rounded petals, of course, but there are different kinds, you know? Both forms are beautiful, so here are some examples.

First, the more common one, I think. This composition of two flowers and a bud is from Magpie Creations on Etsy. Helen and I love its romance, delicate coloring, layered petals.....

Here's a slightly different interpretation from Polished Kanzashi on Etsy. We love the coloration, the beautiful vintage chirimen silk, and of course the trademark handmade clay stamens....

OK, now for the other form. These gathered-looking petals are made by AtelierKanawa on Etsy. We love the hand-dyed fabric and the very rounded, luxurious petals.....

OK, now for Helen's very first botan. Helen had to spend some months figuring out how to make a gathered-looking, rounded petal. While she clearly did not use the same method as the above peony, the petals are still quite round and broad......

Helen used habutai silk and a yellow jade bead for her peony. It is not yet mounted on any hardware, so it can be a hair accessory or brooch......buy it here!