Bat Brooch

Bats are regarded as auspicious creatures in the Chinese culture. The Chinese name of bat is bian fu -- fu being a homophone for good fortune. They also appear in Japanese art and design. I think they make a great motif with their flowing angular shapes and dark colour. I love catching a rare glimpse of bats, they remind me of late summer evenings sitting in the garden at my old house.
With a nod to Halloween I've made a glittery black bat brooch. It's hand cut from plastic and covered in fine black glitter then resin, finished of with little black plastic diamond eyes. It dose kind of look like the batman symbol, but I've tried to avoid that with the more Art Nouveau lines.
Happy Halloween!

Photo help

I've started to take some new product photos yesterday. Luckily as soon as I found my camera, got the setup right and the sun came out from behind the clouds Ed came to help. She dose make the picture super pretty, but is a bit distracting from the necklace....I'm hoping the plainer back ground will help show of my items better. (I also came to the realization that if any item is featured on the front page of etsy or folksy, they usually have plain backgrounds. I'm not sure I have much hope of being on the front anyhow, but maybe this'll help?)

More than anything I wanted to try and get back to my first visualization of 'The Catkin Boutique.' I like fresh Japanese-y images; minimal, graphic with small splashes of colour. I'm very inspired by Japanese craft books, and I think they are the reason I started to make crafts to sell, where as before I just made odd bits and bobs for family and friends.

{An inspiring craft photo}

Illustration