We’re All Ears: Greenery, the Pantone Colour of the Year!

I meant to post this yesterday but time got away with me, that’s school holidays for you! Anyway, this month’s challenge for the Earrings Everyday blog was to use Pantone’s Colour of the Year, Greenery. Erin helpfully provided a few colour palettes featuring the colour, which is a really lovely spring green, symbolic of new beginnings (and oh how apt that is this weekend!).

Now, you might have seen this pair of earrings in last week’s Muffin Tin Challenge, but here they are again. The charms come from the talented torch of Cathleen Zaring and they are just bursting with green! The lampwork dangle comes from Lesley McIver, and the copper earwires are from The Curious Bead Shop.

If you pop over to the Earrings Everyday blog here, you’ll find the links to the other participants in the challenge. Thanks to Erin for another great challenge, hopefully I’ll do more of them this year!

 

 

Flower Power necklace: Art Bead Scene January challenge

This year I’m really going to make an effort to participate in Art Bead Scene ‘s monthly challenge as often as I can. January‘s art inspiration is a lovely floral textile design by talented American artist Lois Mailou Jones. The colours are soft with the muted blues and greens balancing the brighter yellows, oranges, purples and reds.

Textile Design for Cretonne, 1928?
by Lois Mailou Jones
Tempera on Paper

The focal of the necklace I was inspired to make by this painting is a sweet floral pendant from Natalie Fletcher, aka Peruzi. The soft purple-pink of the flower is close to Radiant Orchid, the 2014 Pantone Colour of the Year, and the pendant is rimmed in a soft aqua blue. I paired it with a variety of Czech beads in blues and pinks, including a deep dark pink flower, as well as some beautiful faceted amazonite beads.

I’ll be linking this blog post up to ABS’s blog tour on 31 Jan, so pop over there to look at everyone’s designs. And I hope to get back to a more regular blogging schedule now that the kids have started school for the year. Stay tuned for more blog hops and some new designs. I might even throw a recipe or two in there!