Lindly’s Blog

… perhaps backwards? April’s showers bring May flowers..

April’s flower of the month is the Daisy. Daisies have long been associated with innocence, the  impromptu (and fanciful) daisy chain necklaces and the childhood plucking petals game.As in “he loves me, he loves me not?”(did you ever cheat and pull two petals at once?).

 The large vibrant blooms of the gerbera daisy have made it a favorite among flower lovers Recently I spotted some Daisies  that had been dyed blue and the dipped in glitter, while not exactly my idea of a great contribution to an informal April floral arrangement, pause for thought.

One possibility= a yellow daisy cocktail? Or a taking off point for a polymer clay color combination? Textural exploration or as a starting point for a cane? Bring some of the innocence and playfulness of spring to your studio today…

and Yes! they do come in purple.  

Using “visual similarity” technology Alamy Stock Photos has extracted colors from 3,00,000 images. You can click on up to ten colors to search for images and navigate the collection by color. Please read the FAQS and then have fun! as the eye candy reveals itself….

Suppose you have a specific color that you are inspired to try in your polymer clay work- here is a fast and interesting way to try out different color combinations using their color finder. Just imagine how many possibilities there are for using say- blood orange, ripe mango or passion fruit orange in combination with other colors.

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Bright, beautiful, translucent (and not that tasty) gummy bears have been around for awhile.

“In the 1980s, the German company Haribo introduced the first gummy candies in the United States. Shaped like bears, they quickly spawned legions of generic imitators, as well as an ever-expanding variety of gummy goodies, including frogs, alphabet letters and strands of sugary spaghetti. In September 1985, “Disney’s Adventures of the Gummi Bears” premiered on NBC, followed by a line of books and action figures.
“I’ve always wanted to make something out of gummy bears,” said Chou, 32, who spent two months stringing candy onto mono-filament line to make “Chandelier.” “I think it’s the nostalgia–a lot of 20- and 30-year-olds grew up eating those things.””

YaYa Chou spent several months stringing Gummy Bears on fishing line. But as food for thought= how about the bright, saturated, straight forward colors of artificial food dyes as  a jumping off point for a liquid polymer clay experiment of your own?

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Yes Peepscome in purple and taste exactly just like the yellow ones. I saw some incredible Peep art work on Food TV’s Unwrapped Easter special last night, which lead me to NPR’s Peep show and a Peep Installation at Copia Museum in California, which features food and wine inspired art exhibits.

Have a wonderful Easter week! …and don’t eat too many of those Peeps. Or perhaps you may want to take a peep at the Peep2 slide-show at the Washington Post.

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If I were to ask you to look around the room and name every color you see…would you have a hard time naming them all? The interface between language and color is fascinating. When I say bamboo green or florid orange are we thinking of the same colors? Probably not.

There is an interesting post at Dolores Labs “Where does “Blue” end and “Red” begin.” Using a mechanical Turk, viewers were presented a random set of ten colors and then asked to name them. These color names were then arranged in a color wheel with the name of each color in that color.

This study was based on the same design as the World Color Study that was begun in the late 70’s to explore -

• existence of universal constraints on cross language color naming
• existence  of a partially fixed evolutionary progression according to which languages gain color terms over time

Have some fun today, ask a couple of friends to name the colors you are wearing and vice-versa.

While this on-line quiz doesn’t necessarily make YOU more sensible about color…It is an somewhat unusual  approach to making people feel more confident about making color decisions when choosing paint colors. There is an interesting press release, at The Earth Times  about Porter Paint’s new color tools on their web site. The Voice of Color, quiz asks you to answer seven questions using sliders and drop &  drag preferences rankings and then suggests two color palettes that you might enjoy. They also recommend that you take the quiz often” as moods and preferences change”.

The questions include: your eye color, fantasy vacation, favorite smell and tastes (selected from a range of food pictures). But, yikers! “Morning Rose”  (mid-valued desaturated pink, off olive green and cream) aka something out of a Victorian Bed and Breakfast= I best take this quiz again in the light of day.

It is always interesting  to consider different approaches  to making color decisions. Everyone as their own innate color sense and preferences .When taking a quiz such as this, the discovery of finding the colors “lovely” or “discordant is a lesson in itself.

Way back when…actually 1991 I made my first sushi platter using polymer clay. The sizing was a little exaggerated= 125% of what would be the usual size of each of the elements. My father actually took it with him to his favorite sushi restaurant to the amazement of the sushi chef. Each color was carefully replicated, it took a few trys to get the wasabi right and I finally settled on a mokume gane blend from magenta to golden yellow to capture the glistening magic of the shrimp. Looking back, what amazes me,still, is that each and every piece of rice was hand rolled using translucent clay.

One of my favorite color blogs is COLOURlovers a color + design community that enjoys over 600,00 visits a month. Recently cococello posted after compiling 130 color palettes inspired by sushi. Inspiring to say the least…. perhaps you would enjoy a sushi inspired polymer clay clock ny Noriko Kuwabara  or a a sushi platter pendant by Tatsuko ? There is an abundance of sushi inspired polymer clay, after all the basics of cane construction are very similar to the construction of a sushi roll. And, besides, the colors are luscious, vibrant and inspirational.

 Sushi clock

 Sushi platter pendant

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We’ve all heard the expression “feeling blue” - but perhaps not  to the extreme that some of the Mayan sacrificial victims may have felt after being painted blue? Recently anthropologists believe they have discovered just how the ancient Mayans made this unique blue pigment. “First identified in 1931, this blue pigment known as Maya Blue  has puzzled archaeologists, chemists and material scientists for years because of its unusual chemical stability, composition and persistent color in one of the world’s harshest climates.”

Much has been written and researched about in regards to artists’ pigments in the past several hundred years  and it is fascinating to imagine that the mechanism for creating some of these pigments are just being re-discovered. In polymer clay it is a little easier, as 7 parts Turquoise and one part ultramarine blue yields a convincing replication of the cooler versions of Maya Blue.

Surprisingly enough there were a few responses to “Does it come in Yellow”?…Have you made a polymer clay piece in Maya blue lately?

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Here is another web based “color picker” , I’ve found on-line. To get started, you choose a preferred color using the color picker, and a 6-color matching palette (a “blend”) will be automatically calculated. Using the radio buttons you may switch to Direct Edit mode to tweak or edit individual colors of your blend.

This is a fun way to generate a number of different possible color palettes withing minutes. There are hundreds of examples in the archives for your browsing pleasure…. and hopefully your polymer clay mixing pleasure. Of course the translation will be a little different when you mix these colors from pigment based polymer clay rather than web-based Panatone colors, but it is a lot quicker to experiment with the color blender program for ideas.

It is hard to believe that is was two weeks ago when I was still packing to attend the National Polymer Clay Guild.s  Synergy conference in Baltimore. The conference turned out to be a resounding success, thanks to a large cadre of dedicated and visionary organizers and volunteers. For more on how the whole thing stated see Kim Cavender’s blog post on the Seeds of Synergy. Unfortunately, as I was presenting a seminar, I was unable to attend the seminar on blogging given by Cynthia Tinapple, Susan Lumoto and Alison Lee. I imagine one of their tips was keep your posts short, sweet and include no more than three links? BUT! there is a whole lot of blogging going on…..

• Slides and Notes from Kathleen Dustin’s Presentation can be found on Elise Winter’s  site Polymer  Art Archive
• Further reporting on the conference and Judy Dunn’s presentation “Should I or Shouldn’t I? can be found on her Arteprenuer blog
• Insight on the Artistic Voice discussions can be found on Dalke Dorosow’s Blog Fandango
• There are lots of fun pictures on Donna Kato’s blog- both of Synergy and Cabin Fever
• Iris  Mishey has posted photos and reports of the conference on Her Israel based site
• Martha Aleo the intrepid reporter for the Philadelphia area Guild took over 300 photos and is posting them on her blog Ornamento
• Moon  Room Musing by Amy , some thoughts on preparing for the conference and a thorough reporting on each day of the conference
• Janice Arbanel featured the Synergy Conference in her Marvelous Monday’s post this week
• Jenn  Dorien at Duck Run has comments on the conference and pictures of her knitting
• Libbly Mills, as usual is thoughtful and insightful and has also posted this week on the importance of backing up one’s blog
• On page 427 ! of her  Polka Dot Creations blog Lisa Clarke has posted her observations and experiences
• Barb Fajardo has posted about the conference on her blog
• And in case you would enjoy some tea while you read all these posts on Karen’s site
• You can find another post here at Eugena Topina’s blog
• Melanie West has pictures  of the water slide decals she had at the vendor’s fair  here
• There are some great pictures of the conferenc on Ponsawan Sila’s blog
• Cynthia Blanton has some more pictures and great information on the seminars she attended
• Maureen Carlson posted about Making Choices on her blog- “Whistling through the Cracks” also check out her poem about this theme
• Don’t forget to check out Susan’s site Polymer Clay Notes
• And don’t forget your daily visit to Polymer Clay Daily !!!

If I run lean on posting material for tomorrow’s post…perhaps I can post on “How to tell if you spend too much time surfing/reading blogs?”