Hi, today I'd like to introduce Mary Bu, a botanist/landscape architect/pressed flower jewelry artist from the Urals region of Russia; she has a shop on Etsy: http://www.etsy.com/shop/UralNature
How did you get started in working with pressed flowers and with resin:
Since childhood I attracted to nature, plants, and liked to look at their tiny flowers, so I was educated landscape architect. But in our area is long and very cold winter, and I may work on specialty only 4-5 months a year. And the long winter evenings I can spend on art and search for new hobbies. When I heard about the resin, I thought of those tiny bouquet, which I loved to collect when I was a child and I wanted to try preserve it beauty in a clear resin.
So I tried and very inspired by this and now I have this "strange hobby" where I can use my biological knowledge and skills of collecting herbarium.
For me the major challenges is the short summer, for which are not able to gather enough herbarium, and also the problem of storage and the fragility of plants during the work.
Pressing flowers is very fickle, you can't say exactly how long it will remain it colors and also you can't replicate to a tee what is already done. Although the last is probably not a problem, but rather a virtue - the uniqueness of each work.
Experiment and look for new material looking the world around you.
Nature's microworld actually very beautiful and enigmatic, but usually, people don't notice it. Just try to show them how it is wonderful!
I really want this summer to go round our Perm region, to visit again Visherskii and Basegi reserves, which I visited during my studies at the university and collect herbarium of the endemics of the Urals, and sure save them in resin. And in my dreams of course to go round the whole of Russia and then the whole world and explore all the plants, but I think it's only dreams :)
Thank you, Mary. I love your jewelry, and the identifications of all the plants. I am often unsuccessful in tagging the flowers in my jewelry thoroughly.
Mary's shop on Etsy: Ural Nature: http://www.etsy.com/shop/UralNature
Resin hint of the day:
Allow at least 48 hours after your resin piece is hardened before you allow it to touch another resin piece; It takes 4 to 5 days for most resins to thoroughly cure, before which time they are easily scratched, indented, and bonded to other resin pieces (and shavings--I've learned the hard way, don't sand/shave resin pieces around newly hardened
resin jewelry.)
Thank you for visiting this erstwhile blog! Chris
