This is the link to my pinterest board with some research and images I have collected which I have used in parts of my sketchbook.

https://uk.pinterest.com/chloemorrisons/pins-and-broaches/

Looking into brooches specifically, I decided to buy a couple from a vintage shop in the North Laines and have a play around with them and try and deconstruct some of them. With this brooch, I tried to break it up with my hands and pick it apart, but all I could do was pull off a bead by undoing the wire, so I decided to smash the brooch with a hammer and see how it would break and spread out. I really like how the brooch broke and the different sizes of the brooch fragments. This brooch was made from a mixture of plastic and glass so the way it broke was actually quite interesting. In my sketchbook I tried to replicate the break with flicks of paint but couldn’t get the right look about it. I also tried imprinting some of the brooches in paint then transferring it into my sketchbook, however the print they left was really faint because of the uneven surface.

To start my project off, I began by going out and buying or photographing different pins and brooches that I saw around Brighton with some of my group and then meeting up with the rest of them to share and discuss what we found. At the start of this, I found it quite hard to find people wearing pins or brooches, so I went to the North Laines to look in the vintage shops to see what I could find. I wanted to find out some of the history behind a few of the brooches I saw but couldn’t get much information as they didn’t have the designers name on them and I didn’t know who had previously owned them, however when I got home and started on my sketchbook, I did a lot of research on brooches in general which helped me start my project off nicely.