Tribal Beat -Turmi - challenge reveal

    I've signed up for yet another challenge. I'm totally hooked now. I love being able to take a theme and run with it.

    This is a photo inspired challenge. Dini Bruinsma, the hostess of this round, took this picture on a trip to Ethiopia.  The photo is gorgeous. Ripe with inspiration. Here was the real challenge for me.......I live about as urban as you can possibly get. In a building with a 100 units. 10 of these buildings on my street. This is just a small portion of my city block. Based on the volume of people that live in this building alone, I'd have to estimate that there are about 10,000 people living on my city block. If even 10% of them drive, well, you can imagine the parking situation. I live in a major city, that's a suburb of another even larger major city. There are over 10 million people residing here in Los Anegeles county, in an area that covers about 4 thousand square miles. L.A. county is the most populated county in the United States. More populated than 42 other states. That's apartment buildings, and washing machines, and microwave ovens, and buses, and cars, and trains and planes, and T.V.s, and computers, and cell phones, and stereos, and video games, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, piled  atop each other. About as far the other direction you can get from the scene in this photo. In a world of modern conveniences that are mostly taken for granted.

 So the real challenge for me was creating my pieces, with materials I had on hand, to look like it could have been made with materials they'd have on hand in Ethiopia.   I've never made anything even remotely like this before. I'm really pleased with how it turned out. I tried to use a lot of patterns and textures because there is very little color in the photo, yet there is so much going on. I plucked the little bit of rusty red from the henna hair dye. I used natural materials I thought might be readily available in Ethiopia, as well as readily available in my studio. I used feathers, stone,  shell, sea urchins, wooden beads, sea spines, annealed steel wire, heavily oxidized copper wire, coral seed beads, Agate teardrops, heavy cotton thread, and leather cording. A lot of the materials were recycled. I'm thrilled with the results. I love how dramatic the collar and earrings turned out.

A big thank you to our Hostess Dini Bruinsma for the amazing photography that so inspired us all..
You can check out her blog here  http://angazabychanges.blogspot.nl/

Here 's the list of all the challenge participants. Not all have blogs in this challenge, but they can all be located on facebook.

Hostess - Dini Bruinsma

* Sandra McGriff

* Gloria Allen 

* Susan Nelson Bowie

* Dolores Raml

* Robin Reed

* Susie Harris

* Shalini Austin

* Andrea Glick

* Marlene Cupo

* Tania Spivey

* Sam Waghorn

* Sierra Barrett

* Patty Way

* Cheryl Dunham

* Jayashree Parames

* Deanna Cox

* Kelly Hosford Patterson - you are here *

* Lynn Jobber

* Robin Showstack

* Cindy Wimmer Muse

* Valerie Tilghman

* Jenny Kyrlach

You can view all the entries in the album here   http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=oa.556732894351555&type=1

 Now go on and march to the beat of your own drum!