Works in progress

Autumn - After much googling and debate with myself I went out and lifted my gladioli corms. I'd never done this before so didn't expect them to look to much different to when I planted them in the spring. As I carefully loosened the dirt and started to lift them out I was very excited to see hundreds of little "pearls" growing around the bottoms (apparently they are called cormels). I took some pics for reference before storing them.

Then I got to thinking about how to recreate them and with what materials and how to get the textures I want........I can spend a lot of time musing over this stuff - when I should be trying to sleep, as soon as I wake up, when I should be listening to important things being related to me by my patient boyfriend.....
  so now I have 4 different bulb type forms with black polished plaster applied in slightly different ways on each of them.

I built up some texture and the one on the right erupted. Then I oil gilded them with moon gold, my favourite leaf, which is a 22ct mix of gold, silver, platinum and palladium.

Next I set about building up the adornment using baroque pearls using larger white flared shape, smaller balls were gilded on the surface, glass dribbles with apearlized finish and some weeny seed pearls in lovely gunmetal and oil colours.

Now I'm searching to find the right gauge of wire for the tendrils.

This is the most abstract one of the bunch (for the moment).........