Before the last family dinner my sister called and asked me if I'd like some pumpkin soup for a starter. What kind of question is that?? I love pumpkin soup! And I hate cutting pumpkin just for myself!! I really do, you know, so I would never turn down an offer like that.
Yup, pumpkin season is upon us (and pumpkin spice season ;-) although that is not such a big thing here in Germany, so the squabbling between fans and people who hate it leaves me unfazed), so that will be the topic for today's Jewelry Artisans Community Oldies but Goodies Challenge, too.
Not everyone makes actual pumpkin jewelry, though, so pumpkin colors were allowed as well.
1 and 10 Jewelry Art by Dawn
2 and 8 The Crafty Chimp
3 and 5 MC Stoneworks
4 and 6 Cat's Wire
7 and 9 RioRita
Orange is the color of the choice for this week's Oldies but Goodies Challenge at the Jewelry Artisans Community.
I have been wracking my brain for an orange-related story, but all it did was making me crave orange juice which I don't have in the house. In my despair I hopped over to Wikipedia to see what they had to say about the color.
"Orange is the colour of saffron, carrots, pumpkins and apricots." Huh. I have to admit I was surprised to see that orange is obviously not the colour of oranges then?
I went to look up orange as a word.
"The word is derived from a Dravidian language, and it passed through numerous other languages including Sanskrit and Old French
before reaching the English language. The earliest uses of the word in
English refer to the fruit, and the colour was later named after the
fruit. Before the English-speaking world was exposed to the fruit, the
colour was referred to as "yellow-red" (geoluread in Old English) or "red-yellow"."
Phew. Oranges are orange, what a relief.
Before this post is getting any sillier, however, I'll just present what our JAC members had to offer to the discussion. Enjoy.
1 Jewelry Art by Dawn
2 The Crafty Chimp
3 Violetmoon's Corner
4 Galadryl Design
5 Cat's Wire
We had a poll. We decided we'd work with a color, we voted on it ... and orange it was. Orange is not my favorite color, probably because I feel it makes me look sick. Then again I think the same about yellow, and I have always loved yellow. When I was a kid, my yellow crayon was the shortest one by far because I loved to draw suns with lots of long and short rays and smiling faces.
You don't know it yet, but this was a very clever bridge to this month's JAC blog carnival. Not just mentioning the challenge - make something with the color orange - but also mentioning suns.
By the way, even if it has no bearing at all on this post, Buster just had a carrot for his afternoon snack. Carrots are orange. Just saying.
Back to the suns.
I had the choice of different orange beads. Delicas and seed beads in an overpowering silver lined orange variety, irregular carnelian beads, and sweet, tiny carnelian rounds.
As so often when I have no plan at all, I started putting orange beads on my wire, made the first loop, a few chain stitches and then stared at it for a while. That's the part when Mabel is taking over and makes things happen. At first the idea was probably to make an edge from the orange beads, but after a few rows only of silver they wanted to take up more space. After even a few more rows I began to see the sun, and that's when I cut off the wire and added red carnelian to give it just a touch of that color graduated look.
In the end there just had to be something dangling in the center. I chose the bead with the most beautiful color pattern.
An orange neckwire matching the beads perfectly makes the necklace complete.
Voilà, it wasn't as difficult as I had thought after all. Here you go. Orange.
Here are the links to the other posts, more will be added as they follow.
N Valentine Studio
Jewelry Art by Dawn
Ponder the Cat
Quite a while ago I bought half a strand of tiny faceted sapphires in all colors of the fall, orange, yellow, greenish, almost everything but blue. At that time I had no idea what to do with them. Every, now and then I took them out and waited for the muse to tell me what she wanted me to use them for.
You know my muse by now. If she is not in the mood she just stays quiet, and if she is she gets violent easy ;-)
So the last time I took a peek at the stones she told me to put them on the wire and then let her take over (she hates the part of stringing the beads first, I guess it's too boring for her). And boy, did she suddenly take over!
I had had a vague idea when I reached out for the marquise shaped closed form of silver wire and I thought about giving it some sparkle, but suddenly there was sparkle all over.
Then I remembered I still had a silver spool knit necklace and although I hadn't been happy with the last pendant I had teamed it with, in this case it gave just the right extra kick.
Now there were still a few sapphires on the wire, so when I took it out a few days later I wondered about something little that I could do with it.
Here's the result - a fine silver wire ball with polka dots. Not quite what you let your children play with. Also I doubt it'll jump very well.
This is a night picture, I hope you can imagine what it will look like in the light ....
