Deer Antlers & Mud World

One of the super great things about my job is the wonderful variety of things I get to do and make. One day I might work on the computer designing and another might be up to my eyes in quirky components for making jewellery but I bet you can't guess what I started making yesterday...? No? Well I'm making some deer antlers from paper maché and wire. Why am I doing that? Well, I have a very exciting photo collaboration coming up with Janice Issitt Photography. We are going to take my kids into the deep dark woods and set up an eccentric little world for them to play in, full of cakes and teacups and lots of Van Asch cushions. One of my daughters will sport a pair of antlers, as if nature has started to transform her, and the forest make her it's own. Here's a pic of the work in progress and I'll post up finished pics in the next couple of days.

I started with some wire and made the shape. Then I wound masking tape around the wire and then paper maché. I'm really happy with the shape but all the detailing will happen in the next stages.

Speaking of nature and transformation, there are big changes going on in my neigbourhood. Apparently there used to be an important viking waterway 100's of years ago which has devolved over time to become a small stream. The powers that be have decided to transform the stream into it's former glory and so Mud World was born. There are diggers that are sooo huge it boogles the mind, digging up vast chunks of the countryside, digging out lakes and 'scenic features'.

When they first started this winter, there was just piles of mud everywhere and it all looked like the moon or something but now nature is reclaiming the land and grass is growing over it. Here a big channel has been dug out of the clay which will become part of the new waterway when it gets joined up.

Lots of people in the area seem not to be too happy with all this mud and disruption but I think it is going to be fantastic when it is finished. (putting aside the obvious question of whether tax payers money should be be spent on industrial sized landscape gardening rather than say, more doctors, help for the homeless etc.) Can Sweden really be so perfect they have money left over for making pretty nature even more pretty? Hmmmm....these questions are beyond the scope of this blog or my ability to know. What I do know though, is that it'll make a darn great picnic spot in a few years time.