DIVA CHALLENGE #159 - "TOP 'O THE MORNING"

This week's Diva Challenge #159 is entitled "Top O' the Morning," which is a cute way to say that our mission was to create a piece inspired by St. Patrick's Day.

I'm pretty sure that when the average American thinks about St. Pat's day, they are inundated with visions of shamrocks & leprechauns, rainbows & pots of gold, beer (sometimes green) & a really great reason to party it up.  I won't deny it, that's pretty much where my thoughts went at first.  However, doing a piece to celebrate St. Patrick's Day that was all about the kitsch & commercialized cartoonish vision that, sadly, the day has become... well, I just sorta felt "eh" about it.  Which may be strange.  I have an intense love for the color GREEN, (did you know that green occupies more space within the visible spectrum of light to human eyes?) & hello - RAINBOWS?  YES... rainbows are awesome.  Also, emeralds.  Emerald Isle.  Emeralds emeralds emeralds, I will never love another stone, not even the most flawless diamond, as much as I love emeralds.  (Have you seen the 1958 movie Gigi w/ Leslie Caron & Maurice Chevalier?  Of emeralds, she says "only the most beautiful emeralds contain that miracle of elusive blue.")  ANYWAY - I decided to do a little googling & wikipedia-ing, & try to sort out some of the real essence of the day set aside to celebrate the life of Saint Patrick.

As far as symbolism goes, there's a lot more to choose from than leprechauns & shamrocks.  Also, green, white & orange may be the colors of Ireland today, but long before today's Irish Tricolour was raised during the Easter Rising of 1916 & accepted as the official flag, BLUE was considered to be one of the sacred colors of the country, & there is even a shade of blue associated with St. Patrick - appropriately named St. Patrick's Blue.

I could honestly go on all day about this stuff, but really, who's interested?
So, on to my challenge piece.

tangles used: monaghan

A Blue Irish Cross over a green background tangle.  In this case, Monaghan by Neil Burley, who created the tangle after an inspiring trip to Ireland.  This started life in my sketch book (& actually remains there.)  It wasn't supposed to be my challenge piece, but I'm pretty happy with how it ended up.  It also wasn't intended to be a monotangle, but I think that it worked out well. 

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