Friday, December 3, 2010

Challenge of Color

Have you ever participated in a blog hop?  They’re a lot of fun, and I hope you’ll climb aboard and join us for Erin’s Challenge of Color Blog Hop today.

About a month ago, Erin challenged her readers to design jewelry based on a paint chip palette that she selected for each of us.  No two participants received the same palette.  When I e-mailed Erin to join the challenge, I asked her to select a palette for me that’s outside of my comfort zone.  She responded by mailing an earthy paint chip palette to me:


When I first saw the paint chips, I thought that perhaps I had made a mistake when I encouraged Erin to choose colors outside of my comfort zone – this palette isn’t even on the same planet as my comfort zone!  But as luck would have it, I had recently ordered a few ceramic links by Kylie Parry, including a textured coin that is a perfect match for “Fiery Volcano”.  So perhaps Erin’s choice was more fortuitous than I thought at first.

I left the paint chips and ceramic link on my bead table for a couple of weeks, hoping that my muse would guide me somehow.  She must be on strike, though, because inspiration never struck and I finally forced my migraine-riddled bod to sit at the bead table for a couple hours yesterday.  There’s nothing like a looming deadline to get my creative juices flowing.

When I design to a particular palette, I tend to pull out a wide variety of matching beads from my stash without deciding whether I’ll actually use them or not.  It’s sort of like brainstorming, where you write down anything that comes to mind without censoring.  I approach my stash with the same mindset – if the bead will work within the prescribed palette, it lands on my work surface.  It’s a messy way to design, but it works for me!

Among the beads I pulled out are everlasting curly shells that looked something like this before I unstrung them:

Photo from Fire Mountain Gems
Turns out that over the Thanksgiving holiday, my daughter (Christine), my niece (Sarah), and I visited a wonderful little bead shop in Helena, AL, Bead Biz.  Keeping in mind Erin’s palette selection, I found a strand of everlasting shell pendants that immediately caught my eye.  I added a simple antiqued brass wire-wrapped bail to form a pendant:


Once I connected the pendant to the ceramic link with a bit of copper chain, the rest of the necklace seemed to fall into place with little effort:


In addition to the ceramic link and shell pendant that match the “Fiery Volcano” chip, I added freshwater pearls to match “Tumbleweed Tan,” and a dyed jade nugget to add a dash of “Wild Seaweed.”  Antiqued brass and copper chain and wire add depth to the earthy palette.  As luck would have it, I found a gorgeous length of velvety ribbon from Larkspur Funny Farm and Fiber Art Studio.  The ribbon blends all three shades beautifully and adds versatility to the design. 

Finally, since I can’t seem to craft a necklace or bracelet with also designing matching earrings, I scaled down the components for super-simple danglies:


As Erin requested, I’ve named my design in keeping with the paint chip names:  “Fiery Beach.”

Thanks for stopping by today!  I hope you have as much fun hopping the blogs as I did meeting Erin’s challenge.  Now please scroll down for links to the other Challenge of Color participants' blogs.

 
The Challenge of Color Blog Hop, 12/3/2010
Participants:

Lisa Tracy  [You are here]

24 comments:

  1. Good morning Lisa! I am really excited by what you did here. Your color palette was a beauty! I am glad that it challenged you in a good way! I think that you rose to the challenge and surpassed it. I like this very much. Thank you so much for sharing your inspiration with us. I did the exact same thing that you did...pulled out everything I had in the palette to see what stuck! I hope you will join in again.

    Enjoy the day!
    Erin

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  2. Getting ready to post mine as I read this. Ok well I have to take pics still!

    Great work on the palette Lisa and your pieces!

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  3. Your piece is gorgeous. I wish I had know about this challenge--I would have joined for sure. Instead I'll just hop around and see what evetyone did.

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  4. Great work, Lisa! Just been hopping around visiting the blogs of the other participants. So many talented people!

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  5. Lisa, I love the simplicity and elegance of your piece. My muse too was on strike until she came to me in a dream.

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  6. Perfect necklace for the beach. Love the ribbon.

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  7. Beautiful necklace and I do the same exact thing!!! I dump what ever I can grab that is vaguely in the color palette and stare at it! haha sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't but I do like having it all laid out just in case. Happy blog hopping!

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  8. Perfect! I love the shells, ribbon, colors. You did an amazing job. (Isn't this fun??)

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  9. Love it - and the ribbon is delicious!

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  10. I love the simple elegance of this necklace it really speaks beach bonfire to me!

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  11. Beautiful! Wow, I love that ribbon. It really completes your necklace nicely.

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  12. wow - the ribbon ties it all together really nicely. I love the simplicty of your piece.

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  13. This is wonderful! Bravo for going outside your comfort zone - I think the results are amazing. I'm particularly taken with the mix of chains; they look gorgeous and add texture!

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  14. Gorgeous! I adore the ribbon and you've captured the pallette beautifully.

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  15. Great job with the colors! I love the organic, earthy qualities of your work!

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  16. Very interesting, with lots of texture and a unique look! Awesomely done!

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  17. Lovely and the ribbon is a particularly nice touch!

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  18. Lovely - the shell is awesome and I love all the different textures.

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  19. Ohh I love those curly shells, they are so interesting. I love what you have created - the ribbon looks great. Well done!

    Karyn
    Australia

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  20. This looks really easy to wear. It is great how you conbined the different materials/textures into one piece

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  21. Thank you, everyone, for your super-generous compliments! I've been having a blast hopping to the other blogs, still have about 1/3 of them to go. We've gotta do this again soon!!!

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  22. Unusual to the regular look of the pearl your piece looks very amazing.Like the contrast of the pearl white to the volcanic colors.It is a unique creation.

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Thank you for stopping by!