Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Color wonderland

A sample of Design Seed's holiday magic
Thank you, TesoriTrovati, for turning me on to the wonderful website devoted to color called Design Seeds, created by an artist and blogger named Jessica. I'm afraid I don't know much more about her and haven't had time to explore her website in much depth, but I love, love, love the holiday-inspired color palettes of her 11-22 post. My favorite is "holiday lit," which I'm sharing above, but I also like "branching hues" and several others.

In my jewelry designs I've generally stuck to monochromatic color schemes or safe combos such as turquoise and black, but I want to start venturing into more varied palettes, like the one above. It's a little unexpected but feels so dramatically ... right.

I blogged a few months back about Beverly Ash Gilbert's Beaded Colorways, and she uses the same technique of pulling a color palette from a striking photo. Can anyone recommend an app that does this? I believe several exist, but would love to hear from folks with firsthand experience.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

I'm alive, really

I know I only have a smattering of readers, but I apologize to you all for going awol these past several weeks. I hope I did not create the impression with my moribund last post about the death of one of our cats that I was too grief-stricken to write.

The truth is that my job for the past several months had been building to a crescendo that climaxed the last weekend in October. Lots and lots of 12-hour workdays in September and October meant little time for beading or blogging. The past few weeks since then I've using my weekends to get my Life Beyond Work back on track, reacquainting myself with cooking and laundry and my husband. (I still haven't caught up with my blog reading.)

Any spare time I've had in November was devoted to preparing for a crafts show at Mount Vernon Unitarian Church in Alexandria that took place yesterday. All in all, I did pretty well, and it was a very well-run show with lots of gracious volunteers. (Thanks, Patti, for getting me on the list!)

So now I'm in recovery phase #2. There is going to my an informal crafts show on Dec. 2 at my office, but that's not anything I have to knock myself out for.

The pic is of some beaded mouse ornaments I made for the Alexandria crafts show. (I made the snowflake, too, but did not sell them at the crafts fair. ) Lots of people admired my little mice, but I didn't sell a single one. And of course they were the thing I stayed up until 1 in the morning making the previous week, beading those tiny little skirts. (I sure hope the office folk like them; otherwise, my relatives are getting them for Christmas presents!)

P.S. Plans are afoot to bring some new kittens into our lives. The Feline Foundation of Greater Washington, is on the case for us. We adopted our other cats from them, so I can personally vouch that they have the greatest cats in the world.