Tsunami Alert

We are waiting to see if, within the next half an hour, a Tsunami will hit the coastline of southern Costa Rica, including a few kilometers from where we live. The alert comes following earthquakes which hit Chile (8.8!) and Japan, in the early hours. Going to eat breakfast now. More later. Trip cancelled. Again!

Indie-pendant #0004 - "N'goa"

Here's the fruit of today's effort. In the end I decided to finish up the accent piece for my latest Indie-pendant, this design is called N'goa



















I'm considering keeping this one for myself. It's a nice size (5.5 x 5.5cm) and it feels good when it's on.

Whilst visiting the Pre-columbian gold museum(!) the last time I was in San Jose, I found and fell in love with this...















... and decided that I would use the color combination myself. Simple inspiration!

You can some of my other Indie-pendant designs here.

The Seals of Time

I have to blog this fabulous book that we picked up at the Central Bank's Pre-Coloumbian gold museum, in San Jose. (Yes... that again! You can expect to be hearing snippets about that for some time to come yet!) It's a book of Pre-columbian seals and I love it! I know, they say you should never judge a book by it's cover, but in this case, you totally can! It cost around $10 and would make a great little gift. (If anybosy wants to order one, i will be back in San Jose the first week of February).















Isn't that lovely?

The book has many wonderful designs inside, and talks about the history, construction, and use of these seals, which were formed from pottery. Some took the form of an actual stamp, whereas others were pottery wheels, which could be rolled over a surface, including over human skin. Infact, if you're familiar with Pre-Columbian artifacts, you'll have noticed that many of the pottery figures, for example, are covered in decorative patterns, which depict the temporary tattoes made by these seals, using plant-based dyes. Like this...



















Maybe not the best example, but it's what I could find at the moment. And here's what the tool itself looked like...



















I photographed this "wheel" seal from the book, and throught it would be fun to play with the image in Photoshop whilst having a coffee...



















Playing with repeat patterns and mirror images.



















Playing with the color palette. Here we have it in tan, and...



















... in "Inuit" blue.



















Playing with Nilo and playing with potatoes!
This is a great effect... all things considered ;>

It's so important to remember to play!

Going for Gold

I have started to upload some of the images I took at the Central Bank's Pre-Columbian Gold Museum, in downtown San Jose, Costa Rica. Feel free to browse the album here















Here are some butterflies. The accommpanying text of this particular exhibit is here on my blog, over in the right-hand column. Interesting!

I am interested in the technique known as repossé (in metal work that is) and just happened to come across this while googling the term. I quite like some of these pieces.