I am working on designing arms for my wife, and since everybody here was so helpful with my design process I thought I would elicit your help again. My wife’s name is MaryAnne and her maiden name is Bedtke. I have a few general ideas to get the ball rolling.
Background:
My wife grew up on a diary farm in the bluffs of the Mississippi River valley in southeast Minnesota. Her ancestry is Belgian/German/Italian. She is a high agriculture and math teacher by education, but is currently a stay-at-home mom. She was very active in FFA as a student and as an ag teacher was an FFA Advisor. She is devout Catholic wife and mother. She enjoys gardening, cooking, photography, and crafting.
Qualities I would say describe her are: loyal, faithful, mysterious, fun, hard working, and pure.
Tinctures:
Her favorite color is purple, so I am proposing purpure for the field. For the metal, gold.
Design/Charges:
My wife’s confirmation patron is St. Joan of Arc, so the idea occurred to me to do something that alludes to Joan of Arc’s coat of arms, and since part of her first name is Mary I thought about keeping the fleur de lys from Joan or Arc’s coat of arms, but I am unsure of what to replace the sword and crown with.
An owl of some sort, perhaps a Northern Saw Whet Owl proper. Not sure about posture. The owl is the symbol of the FFA Advisor and so I would like it in the coat of arms somewhere, the crest seeming the most logical. But since I envision her arms displayed either on a lozenge or impaled with my arms maybe her crest won’t be depicted that often so maybe the owl should be a central element on the shield.
That is what I have for thoughts at this point. Any suggestions people have would be much appreciated.
All the best,
Travis
So with all the heraldry in re the little kiddo that’s on his or her way my wife has confided in me that she has never been very satisfied with the shield I made with her several years ago, she felt that is wasn’t "very exciting". Okay, so let’s revisit. I’ve put together some things that she’s more fond of but I was hoping that some of the kind folks here might give their feedback and comments.
Firstly. We pondered on this: Per chevron nebulee rose and vert, issuant from base a tulip slipped and leaved Argent. (please excuse the little clip art artifact… my mistake). She liked it but her response was tepid at best.
Secondly. We tried to mix things up a bit with Per saltire vert and rose a saltire nebulee argent and in pale two tulips slipped and leaved of the second. This one she really liked, but it breaks the rule of tincture. Personally, I’m more inclined to play fast and loose with that particular rule but it was… poorly… received over at reddit’s r/heraldry, they were highly critical of the tincture rule and were moderately against using rose as a tincture at all. She wasn’t a fan of changing to tulips to a metal for purely aesthetic reasons
Which leads us to Per saltire vert and azure a saltire nebulee and in pale two tulips slipped and leaved Or. She definitely likes using rose (or, "pink" as she insists on calling it) but also understands that there are rules in play and definitly likes the green, blue and yellow combination better than green, pink and white/yellow combinations. Incidentally, the saltire looks quite nice on a lozenge.
So what do you folks think?
How does the design look?
Am I blazoning correctly (especially with the use of "slipped and leaved" and "in pale two…")?
How concerned should I be with rule of tincture and the use of rose?
Any and all comments are very appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
]]>Thanks for the help getting my membership straightened out.
Now, onto the fun stuff.
I got some great ideas from the previous thread where I posed some questions about ways to pass on arms to my forthcoming little tyke. Thanks to everyone who contributed. I have, more or less, settled on maintaining the shield and coming up with a unique crest for the youngling. I figure that this method would allow for a unique look for the kiddo while still maintaining the familial ties expressed by a coat of arms.
The wife and I have more or less settled on names for a boy or a girl and I have started coming up with ideas for crests for the boy. I was hoping I could share some here and get some feedback/criticisms/suggestions.
I have two basic motifs I’m thinking.
First, and to be honest not my favorite, is a Griffin holding the crest nebulee from mom’s shield
http://i.imgur.com/t3QI6rp.png
Second, the one that has grown on me, is a saltier nebulee either supported on Wings gules or winged itself. Here are a few variations
2A.
http://i.imgur.com/R5WzB1z.png
2B1.
https://i.imgur.com/hjHWbB8.png
2B2. (would be blazoned the same as above just turned)
https://i.imgur.com/YXK9pPG.png
2C.
http://i.imgur.com/AtYIQoO.png
So. what do you wonderful people think? Any and all feedback would be awesome.
]]>I’m tinkering with adding a chief fretty to my COA that I am designing but really like the look of pale fretty, pushed to the left? Similar to a flag with a pale on the hoist side (think North Carolina, Texas, etc.). Is there a way to blazon that?
Poor drawing: http://i.imgur.com/R3P7YaWh.jpg
]]>I admire their use in crests such as that of the former GG of Canada, Michaƫlle Jean:
http://i.imgur.com/5pkTk7E.jpg
as well as others:
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Attached is what I have for my coat of arms so far.
I was excited, so I showed it to some friends and family. Comments ranged from, "why do you have Baylor’s colors? You should have purple and white for TCU" to "I like it because it has eyes and a mouth" (my 4-year-old). Everyone was most interested in wanting to know the symbolism in the design; does this stand for love, does this stand for family, etc.? I think they were a little disappointed in me when they learned how literal the images were.
I’m considering the following changes, but I value any input from anyone:
Crest: Omitting the flower from the "mad horse’s" mouth. The reasons are to bring more simplicity and because I want to have a 3-D wood carving done and I don’t know how well that would work (or look) with the flower there. Maybe it’s not an issue.
Shield: Switching the places of the grenades enflamed with the bowl and likewise swapping the colors. In other words, two bowls on top and a grenade on the bottom to avoid the mask-like look of it—possibly unavoidable whenever the two charges on top don’t match the one at the bottom. I think I’d also like to have the "wall" on the bottom half of the shield that was formed by the fess embattled be gold rather than green. But I don’t know.
I’m not an expert. So I played around with the image in Paint to see how it would look both ways. I’m interested to know anyone’s thoughts.
Thanks for any input or feedback!
]]>The parish is dedicated to St. Matthew the Apostle, evangelist, ex-tax collector, disciple of Jesus. Traditional symbols for St Matthew are an ax (for his martyrdom) and money pouches (for his tax collector conversion). The city it’s located in is Kansas City, Mo. From what I can determine, KCMO simply uses a stylized logo of fountains as its seal, so I thought perhaps alluding to the fountains of KCMO could be a way of individualizing the arms. Alternatively, the parish is very close to Longview Lake, one of the two big recreational lakes for the metro area.
Thoughts?
]]>I will say I am really torn between designing something purely for myself, something for my family (wife, future children), and my Braddy clan at large.
I’ll talk through some of the designs I’ve sketched up, rationale, and additional thoughts.
1. Larger Braddy family:
When I first started researching family history and coats of arms, I fell prey to the "House of Names", etc. ‘this coat of arms applies to everyone under the surname X" trap. That being said, I was under the assumption that we shared the same CoA as a particular Brady and the below image was also MY CoA, haha.
http://www.araltas.com/features/brady/brady.png
Once I became more knowledgeable about CoAs I started designing a CoA and used the "Brady" CoA as my muse. I kept the same theme with the dexter hand couped pointing, however I changed the sun in splendor with a crescent and centered everything for a more pleasing look, IMO. One of the reasons for the crescent, other than differencing myself from the owner of the "Brady" arms, is for its symbolism for my fraternity which made a significant impact on me in my college days. I like the simplicity of the design and I think it looks pretty clean, my only hangup is if I continue doing extensive family research and come to find out we aren’t even remotely related or even from Ireland. Anyway, below is the initial design I created…
http://www.americanheraldry.org/forums/picture.php?albumid=137&pictureid=2185
Continuing with the this CoA and potentially serving my greater family, I determined that my Crest would serve to better represent me. The crest below is a bear holding a fret. The bear is both a symbol for my father (from New Bern, NC) and my mother (from California), as well as where I was born (California). The fret serves a duel purpose, representing my love of lacrosse as well as a nautical motif (love being on the water).
http://www.americanheraldry.org/forums/picture.php?albumid=137&pictureid=2184
2. My Immediate Family (Wife and future kids):
Recently I have been toying with the idea of my CoAs as something I could pass down and how that design would look. Her maiden name is Long and I am unsure if anyone in her family on either side ever had a CoA, may require more digging. One idea that I tinkered with is our combined monogram is BBB and a friend commented "holy B’s, man!" which lead to a slight bee motif on a belt I had made for our wedding.
That being said, I love George Washington’s CoA and thought about changing out the mullets for bees, and changing the colors.
http://www.americanheraldry.org/pages/uploads/Official/wash.gif
Though, honestly, I think my wife couldn’t care less and feels no real attachment to bees.
3. Totally Personal Arms:
The last idea is that of arms personal to me and are comprised of elements that embody me or that I find visually pleasing. I love Thomas Jefferson’s CoA with the large fret and I also like the idea of a chief fretty.
http://www.americanheraldry.org/pages/uploads/Notable/jefferson3.gif
I value your opinions as some of you are very knowledgeable and have been doing this for quite some time. I look forward to this process and what will become of my CoA! Thank you all for your help!
]]>James Wesley Amidon m. Audrey Ann Farina
James is son of Donald Amidon m. Vivian Morgan
Audrey is daughter of Dan Farina and Rose Dinicola
All of these lived in Erie, PA (James is still alive there)
Apparently James background is French and Audrey’s is Italian.
Any assistance (yes, I know that doesn’t prove descent, but I’d be interested if there are arms within these surnames)
Thanks/Kathy
]]>I’m working on another possible new coat, in the same tradition, for a friend named Henderson that I’d like to share for comments here before proposing them to him. He is a retired USAF reserve officer, LTC IIRC, and now a drummer in a pipe band who sees himself as of Scottish roots though not traced. My goal is to create a design that alludes to the historic Henderson design theme with a color scheme and charges that are both unique and meaningful.
So FWIW, here goes:
Barry pily Argent and Gules on a chief nebuly Azure (or Bleu Celeste? ) a star of five points Argent pierced Gules between two oak leaves bendwise Argent.
The color scheme should be obvious. The nebuly partition line and the star with a red spot are USAF allusions. The two generic white (silver) oak leaves bendwise allude to his highest rank without directly copying the shape of the military rank insignia; his kids, siblings etc., can of course ascribe whatever symbolism they wish, and can vary the chief’s nebuly partition line and/or charges if they wish.
The Barry pily below the chief alludes to the usual Henderson design; one of the coats on Joe’s HHS collection (but only one) uses the same pattern, but in different colors. I picked it to have the field immediate below the chief be white, for visual contest. There is at least one historical coat with a field Argent three piles Gules issuing from the sinister that would accomplish the same contrast, but I wanted to avoid directly copying that existing field. Also, the Barry pily pattern alludes to, but doesn’t duplicate, the stripes on our flag. I should probably specify the number of repetitions - probably three or four; thirteen would be way too busy given the rest of the design.
So whadda y’all think?
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