Merry Go Round - what's your favorite colour and how does it show in your work?

It''s time for another ride on the merry-go-round! Jump on and join a group of 8 artists/crafts-women as they link around the world and tell you a little about their lives in art and craft.

This month's question is : What is your favourite colour and how does it show up in your work?

And my answer is:

LIME GREEN! 

Hugh the Chameleon - "show your true colors

This is a perfectly timed "merry" question for me!  As you know - most of my work to date has been with silver - and silver is not my favorite colour!  I've tried different ways of adding color to silver over the years and while some have worked fine - like "Hugh" -  they haven't been quite "it" and I've still craved bright colours.  But recently I've been working more with coloring anodized aluminum to get that spark of colour in my work, either with aluminum on its own, or combining it with silver.

Fresh leaves

Spring

I just love bright colours and if you've ever been to my home or met me - you'll know that I surround myself with a lot of color...so silver is in that way quite limiting. I started working on anodized aluminum at the beginning of the year...and my success was slow to start with.....but now I'm finding lots of new ways and techniques to work with it.  The colors it produces are so vibrant.

Garden seat

So yes, lime green is bursting out of me! It just always makes me happy when I see it.  I am so attracted to it.  So it is coming through now in my aluminium work...watch this space... you will see more and more...

Bangle  - work in progress

Faux bone bangle bracelet

If you want to learn about the other members of the merry go round and how they use their favorite color, please click on the links below.  We live in all different places around the world, so time differences may impact when we all get our blog post up.

What's your favorite color?

Mitsy at ArtMind - http://artmind-etcetera.blogspot.com
Kim at Vilt a la Kim - http://viltalakim.blogspot.com
Sara at Crafts of Texture - http://sarastexturecrafts.blogspot.com  
Fabienne at Easterya Jewellery Creations - http://easterya.blogspot.com
Mariana at Florcita - http://www.florcita.eu/
Agathe at Le Bar du Vent - http://lebarduvent.blogspot.com
Lily at Lily Pang Art and Design - http://lilypangart.blogspot.com

Keep Flowering - Faux bone ring variation

You may recall that for my latest Master Muse challenge, one of the rings I made was an interchangeable flower ring where you could make different parts of the flower and swap them in and out with different colors.

The ring shown here is the same design and this time, instead of having different pieces to change out, I just colored them a different color on each side so you just  unscrew the ring, turn the pieces over and screw them back together when you want a different splash of color!

The ring is bold - so I colored it boldly too!  I find I am wearing  a lot of coral, peach, orange colors - and my favorite sweater has some purple in it - so you can see where these color combinations came from!

Robert Dancik has just joined the team of Master Muse and his Faux Bone ring project is shown today.  He is actually the originator of Faux Bone so has used it extensively. Hope you'll go and check his out.

Master Muse Challenge 3 - Faux bone rings with metal clay

My third Master Muse challenge is up on Tonya Davidson's blog for Whole Lotta Whimsy today.

Our challenge was to combine metal clay with a faux bone ring blank.  I've had some faux bone sat in my drawer now for probably a couple of years - never touched - so this challenge finally got me to give it a try.  I really enjoyed it - apart from cleaning up after sawing it as it does generate lots of little tiny white bits!!

As Tonya's blog described, I did the challenge in the run up to the wedding at our home.  During that time we were just hoping that all our flowers would keep flowering and stay looking good for the wedding - and so I made two flowerings - (flower-rings) for this project - ones that would keep flowering!

The first one is an interchangeable ring - where you can make multiple components and swap them in and out as you choose.

A lot of the fauxbone things you see, utilize the "bone" like coloring, adding browns and blacks etc to create the look of an "aged" piece - but if there is one color I avoid and don't like, it's brown!!!  So I decided to brighten up the faux bone with some pretty colors!

 
Yes - it is a large ring! Here are some variations:

The second ring I made for the challenge was a flowerpot!

Each flower is "planted" into the flowerpot and left to grow! 

Happy rings that I hope will encourage the wearer to "keep flowering"!

Tonya's blog shows a brief synopsis of how to create the flowerpot ring.  Full step by step instructions with around 70 photos will be available from Whole Lotta Whimsy shortly. I hope these will inspire you to give faux bone a try! I'm certainly glad mine finally came out of the drawer!! 

Every Wednesday Tonya posts another Master Muse challenge on her blog - and the next few are all faux bone rings - so pop by and see how others interpreted the challenge.

One flower is not enough!

I decided to add some more flowers to the bracelet I showed you yesterday! One just didn't seem enough.

So I added two smaller flowers on the other side - so whether you are the wearer or the observer - you will see some flowers!

The small flowers also spin - so it makes it "toy" like - and fun to play with as you wear it!  Always good to have entertaining jewelry - don't you think?