Shaping a filigree flower

I haven't been feeling very creative lately and energy's been low. For obvious reasons, really. But I thought I'd sit down and do something. Anything. Just to keep some spark alive. And that something was these filigree flowers. For these I've used white (painted) filigrees from a pair of earrings I bought at a sale for the sole purpose of butchering them.



Uhm, yes, sorry for the bad photos by the way. Must invest in some better coloured papers to use as background when I want to get pics of white things. Hope the orange/peach paper isn't too ugly to look at...


But let's return to the flowers. For my first flower I just wired five of the filigrees together. Looks like an old crocheted doily in the colour doesn't it? I wasn't that pleased with the result as it doesn't really look like a flower, which I was aiming for. Maybe it will look better when I bead it, but for now it just look like a doily.


So I had to make a new version and this time I wanted to shape the filigrees before stitching them together. Curving the pieces would perhaps make them more like petals. So I curved each filigree using round-nose pliers and stitched them together. I finished by curving the tip of each petal.

While I still think the shape of the filigrees aren't perfect for petals, I think this second version looks much better: the shape itself makes the design more "flowery" in appearance. Plus, making it more dimensional adds interest to the design.

As for the final design, well, I'm thinking of using light blue beads to the centre. Not so much for the sentiment "something borrowed, something blue" eventhough I envision this as a bridal project, but because the white is of a slightly cold hue. And the colours can look sweet together -- I've seen some very nice white and blue wedding gowns by a finnish designer.