#27: Elpis Spider

I could tell you that I was inspired to make a spider that was based on the Greek spirit Elpis, the personification of hope. As the myth goes, Elpis and the other daimones were trapped in a jar by Zeus and entrusted to Pandora, who eventually opened the jar and set all of the spirits free except for Elpis, who remained behind to give hope to mankind.

In part, I did wish to create some type of goddess spider--a goddess of hope. But in my research, I couldn't find any. Elpis comes close, but she is depicted as carrying flowers, which my spider clearly does not. I have some great clay molds for faces, and I wanted to use this peaceful face for a spider, as well as more of my recently acquired radio resistors for her hair. So let's work with the myth of Elpis a bit. Let's just say that she decided to wear the flowers in her hair...just this once. Isn't she beautiful? Even for a spider?

Materials: glass, scrapbook dictionary paper, blue sparkle baking clay, radio resistors, gold and slate gray bugle beads, black seed beads, metallic blue E beads, silver wire