Collaboration Reflections

If you haven't done a collaboration already I can highly recommend it. It's a very productive medium. Speaking as a singer in a folk  band (until recently when I retired from it), I find it's like singing harmony duets. There is this similar intuitive potential for knowing what your partner is going to do and to incorporate this with your own proposed intentions, the end result being greater than the sum of its parts.
:devsnazzie-designs: made the whole process easier for me by using her superior computer abilities like a ball of string to guide me through deviantart's labyrinthine corridors. She also did the superb design of my Viking birth signs and transliterated the text into runes.

From

Devsanazzie-designz

This has been my first craft collaboration and an international one at that. Many packages have passed back and forth across the Irish Sea in this wonderful journey of co-creation. The collaboration was not something either of us had initially planned on; it came about through a natural process.

I was inspired by some of the beautiful pieces by aldwarke and commented on them. In his reply the topic of runes came up. He had seen some in my gallery and it went from there. Generally, I don't make runes for people unless they are genuinely interested in them.

We share a common interest in Celtic/Norse culture; working with a like-minded person is a very refreshing and enlightening. We both intuited each other’s next steps. Aldwarke sent me the perfect wood to burn for the lid. This close grained Scandinavian wood (a dream to burn) tied in nicely with the texture of the runes.  Aldwarke matched the copper on the inside lid’s scallops to the copper I had had added to the lid’s outer surface.  The runes themselves are a deeply personal thing for me as the maker of them.  They all come from the same branch of a tree and are specifically made for one person.

It has been a delight from start to finish collaborating on this project with aldwarke. We have brought out the best in each other and I have learned a great deal from aldwarke’s knowledge of wood which he is most generous in sharing. Maybe I taught him a thing or two about copy and paste along the way though.  But the very best things for me are the fun and stories that we shared along the journey and that I have found a new friendship that I think will be as strong and as meaningful as the rune box which started it all.