Colorful Breakfast…

The results of a web contest to design a color scheme inspired by “Good Morning” can be seen here at Zach Dunn’s web design,development and business blog- buildinternet.com It is interesting to see the variety of combinations that the designers submitted.

Here is another option for a “Good Morning” inspiration= a bowl of Fruit Loops. How would you mix the colors of Fruit Loops in polymer clay?  A great starting point would be two custom mixed primaries- red= 1/2 Fuchsia and 1/2 Neon pink, yellow = 1/2 Zinc yellow and 1/2 Neon Yellow - and Cobalt blue.

Colorful Food Stylist…

Currently I am working on the design of a new color workshop that will include five different techniques/approaches towards working with tinted translucent clay with an emphasis on mixing food inspired colors.

 

While my first inclination is to title this  workshop “Fantasy Food Stylist”… as almost daily I find myself styling food- either edible or fantastical polymer clay…

Perhaps “Taming Translucents” would be a better title for the workshop? I received this image of carved watermelons in an email this evening, which was a great reminder to me to re-visit my oriental food carving books.

Have  a grand Spring weekend- style some “food” or  mix some polymer clay colors that have the juicy, delectable, delightful feel of  edible wonder or  experiment with  carving  a  watermelon cane?

ColorWorks Contest…

Step by Step Beads from Interweave Press is sponsoring its first ColorWorks Challenge  and the deadline is May 15th.

 

“The orange-purple-green  triad presents a challenge of bold and striking contrasts. Create a piece of bead jewelry (or a bead in any medium: polymer, beads, glass, etc.) using the triad from the color wheel. Black, white, or clear are welcome, but the predominant colors must be the orange-purple-green triad (any shades of those colors).”

Emotional Color Wheel..

Robert Pulchik was a psychologist that used a color wheel to help categorize intensities of  what he considered to be the eight primary emotions- anger,fear,sadness,disgust,surprise,curiosity, acceptance and joy.

You can read more about this in his book- Emotions and Life or here at Fractal. What is the emotion associated with your favorite color? What is the emotion asscociated with your least favorite color? Would you have assigned each of the emotions another color?

Artful Afterrnoon in Annadale…

There is still room in this weekend’s class in Annadale, Virginia -

Faux Jade Pendant

 

Saturday April 18^th 1-4:30pm

 Learn how to make Lindly’s version of faux jade polymer clay. You will make three different colors of jade that will then be used to fabricate a stacked pyramid pendant and a doughnut pendant. Several options for enhancing and defining the surface finish will be presented along with options for stringing your finished pieces.

Colorful Eggs…

As the software continues to evolve…interactive color “Pickers” and mixing guides are becoming increasingly available for a variety of applications- including Easter Egg dying!

Here is the link to  McCormick”s “Perfect Color Mixing Guide” where you can select a color and find the mixing  recipe for cakes, icings and eggs.

…in addition to the tradition food coloring palette, these dyes are also available as neon colors (purple,green, pink and blue). It is fun to move the slider and what the proportions of each color of the dye change in the recipe. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if someone did this for polymer clay color mixing in each of the different brands?

Textile Inspirations in Boston…

I will be presenting my workshop = Combining  Colors with Confidence  /Textile Inspirations for Bead Designer’s International  in Lexington (Boston) MA, April 25th and 26th. The registration is now open to non-members and the  information is here.  You can see this class in action in NYC at Sculpt.com or view the results of Rita Simm, who took her “homework”  from this workshop very seriously here.

 

Combining Colors with Confidence/Textile Inspirations –two day workshop

  Join Lindly Haunani, a nationally recognized colorist for a fun and illuminating weekend workshop. While you may know just what colors you like, exactly how to mix them (or not), using them in harmonious combinations can be challenging. Learn how to add impact to your work with increased color confidence while learning several valuable skills for working with polymer clay.

Colorful Design Inspiration…

I am so grateful for all of the opportunities that I have to see art jewelry at galleries, museums and home studios while I am travelling. Surprisingly enough, while I live in the Washington DC area, I rarely go to the museums here- but last year I did get to see the Helen Drutt collection at the Renwick Museum. Most intriguing to me was the work of Marjorie Schick- with her large, colorful sculptural paper mache forms. There is an interesting interview of her here and she was featured in the March 2009 issue of Art Jewelry Magazine .

Last month I received a copy of her book as a birthday present = Sculpture to Wear …and am still revelling in all of the 200 plus pages of inspiration- via her forms, outrageous scale and wonderful use of bright saturated color. I can’t help thinking  ” this piece could provide an inspirational launching point for further explorations in conjunction with my own color sensibilities and the possibilities of polymer clay.”

..and I wonder if she has ever worked with polymer clay?

Colorful Kudos…

Congratulations are in order to Elise Winters…she is one of the featured artists in the current issue of Ornament Magazine.-

If you are not familiar with this magazine…it is a ongoing  source of inspiration and information  to artists, collectors and galleries worldwide that are interested in wearable art, jewelry and the history of adornment = highly recommended as a magazine to subscribe to in support/stimulus to artists working in our field. Photo by Hap Sakwa.

Almost Perfect Color Mixing…

I was looking over my blog statistics this evening and was surprised to find that the second most searched for article was last year’s April Fool’s day post!

Last weekend I taught a workshop for the Arizona Designers Craftsmen in Tucson, Arizona… if you live in that area or plan to visit, check out their web site, as they have excellent facilities and host many different kinds of workshops that would be of interest to jewelry designers. For example: last month they hosted Nancy Worden.

Halfway into the workshop I noticed that the stripe blends that I was mixing were getting more and more desaturated…then I realized that when I gave this workshop in Florida my demo colors became brighter and brighter, until they included a yellow that was a mixture of  half cadmium yellow and half neon yellow and the “red” became a mixture of half fuchsia and half neon pink. These two primaries were then tempered with 25% white before making my blends. Last month in Kentucky my demo colors were “softer” and hinted of the beginning of the burgeoningof spring – Cadmium yellow, ultramarine blue and fucshia- with about 10% mud= equal parts of these three primaries.

And in Tucson, I was using these same three primaries with 10% white and almost 20% mud. While this is not my usual palette, I realized on the drive back to my home-stay, I had been mixing the colors seen in the local landscape! Wonder what I will be mixing for my demo in Boston?

Special thanks are in order to my lovely hostess Pat Glover  and Barbara Sosna of the Tucson Polymer Clay Guild- who generously loaned her convection oven to the group for the weekend.