Inspiration at the Adelaide zoo

A trip to the Adelaide zoo produced some beautiful feathers on the ground - and a close encounter with a very tame Red-tailed Black Cockatoo, one of our native beauties.  This parrot flew close to all visitors and perched next to them until they stroked him.

Birds are such inspirational creatures to me; I have often embroidered them in a traditional manner and now I'm looking at ways to interpret them in a more contemporary fashion.  I have started using the larger and longer feathers that I find as bookmarks, by stitching some strong thread through the quill twice, and sewing the top to the book itself, on the spine, or if a spiral bound journal, attach to the spirals easily enough.

The three middle feathers are Eclectus parrot; the others I don't know

Phoenix - am I obsessed?

How much time do I spend thinking about the phoenix before it is classed as an obsession?  It's been in my head for months though this is only my second (I think) post about it.  When I was working on my Bird Art book for my Visual Arts Cert 4 earlier this year, I wanted to go more into the phoenix but didn't have time right then.  Now I do have time and I've been making sketches, and researching the myths.  I think one of the things that I found quite wonderful was how it used to be believed implicitly that there was such a bird, just that no-one you ever knew had seen one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_(mythology)
This was one of the first sites I found when I started researching.  The symbolism for rebirth and renewal is something that I find fascinating, reflecting as it does my own artistic change from traditional to contemporary, and from set ways of working to being much more open in my attitudes to different approaches to art and craft.  Bookmarks - I have collected them for some time, being an avid reader, mostly they are card rectangles; after finding some online websites for bookmarks exhibitions such as
http://www.miragebookmark.ch/be_0_exhibition.htm
I started experimenting - letting out my Inner Phoenix - and produced this:

Hand Made Silk Paper with Bouganvillea bracts and running stitch in silk floss

Hand Dyed Silk and Organza strips, running stitch in silk floss