Amulet Project
Stress drawings
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I When I first moved to Dundee I was away from my home and feeling anxious in a new environment. I was tasked with creating an amulet that would help someone. At the time I was stating with someone who was going through a similar situation but she also at the same time was experiencing a more dramatic anxiety and depression which was already medicated for.
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I felt because she was not only my flatmate she had become my friend so seeing her everyday feeling low I wanted to do something about that. The drawing you see here are prints of both her and my emotions we felt on paper, expressing ourselves to get us through our day.
Experimentation
In this exploration I wanted to experiment with colour, shape and form and at them same time maintain the drawings since they expressed alot of emotions.
I used a technique called Sublimation which allowed my drawing to be printed and transferred on aluminium. I found this to work really well as I like the idea of making my own material. I the tried to experiment and paint on the mental using anodised aluminium solution. I felt this was more free but I was already content with the colour already in my sketchbook.
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I also tried to 3d print some shapes and paint ontop of this. At the time I thought this was a good idea but I had no idea how to attach a pin onto this.
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So with this sublimentyed alumnium I tried to create an oval shape that mimicked the fish scale drawing and fly pressed it. I liked the 3d bulge coming out of this as it felt like pebbled and generally satisfying and smooth to touch so I went with using this shape. Cut them out and riveted it together.
Developing a form
Testing
After talking to my friend I asked her what calms her down she said that her mum in the Philippines used to put lavender on her pillow which calmed her down during panic attacks. in this photo she was having a stressful time at university so I encased lavender in the necklace to see if it helped her.
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At the end of the day she enjoyed the colours and constantly inhaled the smell during her time. She said the colours were very calming and reminded her of the sea and eventually home. This made me feel like I had made something that created a difference in someones live which made me think that perhaps jewellery has a more powerful effect than people use it for. So I experimented with this broach idea.
Prototyping
Narrowing down the design I decided to go for this combination as it somehow balance itself with it looking like watercolour on the mental surface and using intense colour on the white. Due to minimal material in my second years of study unfortunately I had to use copper (to save money for 4th year silver) and spray painted it white. Suprisongly this worked out quite nicely and the pain stuck on the metal for a good while so I was pleased with the results of this broach. as well as encapsulating lavender.
Creating the ritual
I then created a guid to use in conjunction with the broach
