The Dragonfly Cane

     Ok - it's past time to return to my blog and what I love.  It's been over a year since I last posted and it feels in a lot of ways like I'm starting over…and I guess I am.  And I've learned many lessons, the main one being that no matter how hard you work, if you're not living the life you want - it doesn't help you're sense of self.  And in finding myself again, hopefully I'll find something that you'll enjoy as well.  =)
     I'm going to start out with my Dragonfly Cane.  As you can see from the photo at the right, I sketch out most of my more complicated designs before I start to work. It also makes a great background for my unpacked cane.  This started as an idea in my head when I made my first Butterfly Cane for my left over pieces of one of my Pansy Canes.
     It started out fairly easily.  Each vein in the wing is a small piece of the cane I use for my pansy cane petals.  The dividers between sections are gold wrapped with black with darker sections that are gold darkened with a bit of black and wrapped.  The tail of the body is made from a gold/black Skinner plug divided into sections and wrapped with black. The body itself is different sized sections of gold or darkened gold wrapped in black.  The eyes are lots of small bullseye canes of pearl wrapped in gold, surrounded by black.  That's the cane in a nutshell, but putting it together in the right proportions is much harder.  Eventually after a few more goes at it, I'll put it all into a tutorial for the brave at heart.
    Here is a finished cane wrapped in translucent.  Since I was just experimenting, I only started out with the pre-reduced cane being 1" deep to over 6" wide.  Needless to say it was a challenge to reduce, but I wanted to see how it all came together.  Even so, I love the results and will have to make a few more in different colors and maybe use silver instead of gold as well for a different look.  The results when used together with my Pansies and Butterflies are beautiful!  I'm wanting to try a grayscale pansy and butterfly and I think a dragonfly cane would be a nice addition to a grayscale set.  I think it would be stunning to have an item in grayscale pansies and butterflies with one colored pansy, butterfly, or dragonfly for POP!

Spring Green Mini Stylus Pen w/Dragonflies

     The weather here in the Dallas/Fort Worth area has been odd this year, but then it's been odd all over.  The ice from last week's ice storm is finally melting with yesterday's rain.  It was hard getting around or walking the dog since the ground was like an ice rink.  She was a trooper though and dug her claws in.  I wish I had claws… but I only ended up on my butt once when I made the mistake of wearing tennis shoes rather than something with a heel that will poke into the ice.  In all the years of living in Minnesota and Texas I've never seen anything like this and hopefully this won't be something I see again - at least not anytime soon.  I miss the gentle Minnesota snow showers.
    I'll be back soon!  =)