I adore elephants, just adore them, possibly not as much as bears, but it’s pretty close.
And right now all i want to do is hop on a plane to Sydney and go visit Mr Shuffles at Taronga Park Zoo, which also happens to be my second favourite zoo I’ve ever been to. Number 1 is San Diego Zoo becuase of the polar and panda bears – but lets not have me start on polar bears or i may never stop.
I love elephants enough that the first thing I attempted to create making jewellery with ponoko was an elephant pendant. I can confirm it was a grand failure, mostly it was too realistic but the proportions were also a little off. Despite about 3 more attempts i never got my elephant to a place I was happy with, so she never saw the light of day.
Attempts at an Elephant
Which brings me to the other point of today, (elephants being awesome was the first point in case you missed it) how my jewellery making/designing process happens, or doesn’t happen.
Maybe half of the things i design make it to the light of day on etsy or felt or at a fair. Sometimes they don’t get beyond my head, becuase I don’t have the technical skills. Other times they make it as far as the first prototype – printing them out on a sheet of paper at home. If I’m lucky things get them to a point when I’m ready to get them laser cut, but often it still takes 3-4 tweaking sessions before I’ll even consider showing or selling them to anyone. So when you see a final product from me it’s probaly gone through about 10 different big stages to get where it is.
Those that don’t make it to the light of day get sent to the ever growing cardboard box of failed prototypes. None of which I have the heart to throw away, just in case maybe one day I might go back to them, but the box is starting to get very full so it might be time for a clean out of failed designs.
Sometimes it’s easy to throw your prototypes away like when the Amazing Jeff had a go at elephants. I happily discarded all my prototypes and marked elephants off my list of things i’d like to make one day. Because as far I’m concerned, I could never improve on Elē the baby elephant. Who is extremely adorable and in her Jeff managed to capture the joy and fun of elephants in the perfect pendant.
Elē is a baby elephant
