Paperwork vs. Jane Austen

It’s a little frustrating because this whole week all my allotted creative time has be absorbed by paperwork preparing for reporting my sales tax. The only down side to selling my work. This has of course made me VERY grumpy! I have just two months of paperwork to go and then I am fee again for another year. But your saying Edie why don’t you just do your paperwork every month then you wouldn’t have to go through this again. And to that I say sure I start off every year that way, but slowly a month turns into two then three. Before you know it I haven’t done any in six months. Then it’s just too much to start because I have fifteen different projects I’m working on. So all that paperwork is put in the corner to sob silently until I freak out around May or June. Poor paperwork. But that is ok it is almost done then I am free again! FREE I TELL YOU!

Once I get sprung from this paperwork hell I have a TON of ideas I have to work on. I have one new necklace idea that is simply bursting out of my head to make. So that has to be constructed right away. I am also in the middle of a shrine to Jane Austen that I am particularly proud of. I have always been able to relate in a very real way to her characters. Given the present situation in my life even more so. So a little shrine to her would be just the thing to help me through. All around this post are some process pictures of my little baby. I use to do little shrines, sculptures, and dioramas like this all the time, but jewelry took over my life for the last couple of years. It feels good to get back to that a little bit. I think from now on I will have one that I am working on continually. Since they take much longer to make.

In my research for this piece on Jane I have found that most scholars say there is no definitive portrait of Miss Austen. There are silhouettes of her sister and parents, but none of Jane. So for her image I used a watercolour and pencil sketch, believed to be drawn from life by her sister Cassandra around 1810. Since the drawing is very light I touched it up just a tiny bit so her face could come though and then hand colored it and setting it in a cabachion. Her picture lays on a bed of crimson curly goose feathers to symbolize her country upbringing but the daring of her mind, and determination of her spirit. Rolled up hand written pages are creatiuvly exploding from her prim propper Hanoverian/ Georgian period head. The papers are ornamented like little crowns with bits of ometal elevating the pages to the regal status that we all hold her work in today. The base of the piece is made up of images of her family and glimpses of her past. In there you will she her parents and beloved sister, various homes she lived in including her house in Bath, and Thomas Langlois Lefroy a great love in her life. The very things that formed her reality and made her what she was, to make her the creative spirit that we all love so much. So here is a taste of what it will look like. The finished piece will have an arch around the sculpture, and will be both free standing and wall hanging. Once I get this stupid paperwork done Jane will once again get all my attention, as she should.