Paua - my favorite in colour and shape

I love pauas, big ones, small ones, and I love the colours

paua shells (wikimedia)

Here are some of my things I have done inspired by pauas

I received for this scarf - inspired by pauas - the first entrant award at the 2007 Creative Fibre  Northland Exhibition 

I started with already dyed silk which I bought at Trademe. I span it and the I decided to weave with it. I used it as warp, for the weft I dyed more silk in turquoise and teal, and I used them both together but on separate shuttles. For some 'added interest' I dyed more silk in green shades. All the silk had to be spun after dyeing of course. 

This is a piece I made for Origins Art in the Garden Show 2009. It consists of a felted 'raster' made of Gotland wool. Then I clipped in paua shells and attached everything to an old totara post from my daugthers former lifestyle block. At a second hand shop I found a nice piece of big rope for hanging.

This is a detail of my work for the 2010 Art in the Garden Show, which is shown in the last post.  I had still some big pauas left from last year - it was a trademe bargain - and so I dyed wool from my daughters gotland sheep in paua colours. It was quite tricky to wrap the wool and felt around the pauas.

and while I tried to felt around another paua, the wool came off and suddenly I thought, that stretches very nice and would be ideal for a lacy wrap.  So instead of working on the pauas I made this 'mermaid wrap'

and another scarf

and another one of many in this colours

colour and the koru from the paua end

And finally old paintings..........