PINK!!!, puke and shattered ice - A love story in retrospect
Two years ago
"Uhmmmmmmmm... Uhmmmmmmmm... Uhmmmmmmmm..."
Uhm... Just to be clear: The former was not an ancient Tibetan meditation exercise. You see, I had purchased some jewelry tools from Facebook Marketplace for $100. Quite a deal! The condition of purchasing those tools was I also take a two boxes of other jewelry stuff that the seller was trying to get rid of.
Opening these boxes revealed that my 'deal' was closer to highway robbery. I proceeded to drool over my findings, a massive treasure trove of beads, late into the night, only to stop around 3 AM lest I drown. This was the origin of The Hoard of Doom™.
However, there was a segment which, when I laid my eyes upon it, caused my saliva river to halt. It was plastic container full of beads but unlike the bulk of the hoard with the nice neat symmetrical shapes, these beads were *gag* chips with odd jarring angles which, when I looked at them for too long, made me feel like they were going to hop out of the box and jab my eyes.
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I'm sure some of you are looking at the above contents, identifying the lovely unakite, labradorite, citrine, a number of colours of quartz and more and rolling your distinctly unjabbed eyes at me. There's clearly nice stuff there and, with it, I could make equally nice stuff. So why was I complaining?
Well, I looked at the cherry quartz and thought PINK!!! - the sort of pink which makes you think of tween girls and ultimately ends up with you being buried under unicorns, boy bands and bubblegum - not inherently bad but those weren't my style even when I was a tween girl. Additionally the various shades of green chips made me think of chunks of puke. The blue-dyed quartz didn't offend my colour sense. I also have a Thing about symmetry and order when it comes to the jewelry I wear and this comes out when I design. While I could just mimic someone else's design, using up he chips then sell the result, I have another Thing about making stuff that I myself don't like. So for the past year, every time I would be hunting through The Hoard of Doom™ looking for inspiration for something new, I'd stumble across the chips, try to come up with ideas on how to use them and thus: "Uhmmmmmmmm... Uhmmmmmmmm... Uhmmmmmmmm..." would ring through my apartment.
* Please note that cherry quartz isn't actually quartz but glass.
Inspiration
Since then, I have been a hop, skip and jump away from either selling, giving away or throwing away the chip beads. The first of these fell through as no one was interested in buying them, the second I never got around to and the third never happened as I hate wasting things.
This was a good thing. I've grown since then as a designer. I attribute this largely to due to working with things that drive me bats. It was the designing necklace 'A Reflection on Asymmetry' that ultimately proved the most helpful. It had used up some lumpy jasper beads (really labradorite as I later found out) which had put my symmetry-obsessed brain into a spiral. I ultimately positioned beads of relatively similar size and texture so they 'reflected' each other so to give the feeling of symmetry rather than the reality.
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'A Reflection on Asymmetry'
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One day, I was doing my regular bead sorting and the necklace popped into my mind and I wondered what if I implemented symmetry purely in colour? I had lovely creamy blue amazonite at hand and this wasn't so different in colour to the blue-dyed quartz chips.
'Shattered Glass' or learning to work with inconsistent beads
I find when implying symmetry, having a distinct line of symmetry between the two makes it work better. This wasn't necessary for a larger piece like 'Reflections on Asymmetry' as shape of the necklace did it for me. However, I was bent on a bracelet, and having the chips and the amazonite so close together, it wouldn't work so well. So I fished out some black, white and grey network agate beads out of The Hoard™ and used a pewter 1-to-3 connector links to hold them together and act as an attachment point for the clasp.'
Sounds easy? Design over. Yes and no. The idea was there but it required a bit of tinkering.
Firstly, the larger the beads, the more the strand connecting them shows. This is particularly problematic in cuboid beads. Now if you put considerably smaller beads in between them, this mitigates most of the problem. Secondly, nugget beads are inconsistent in size and I needed its strand to be as long as the other two. network agate strand. The quartz chips being quite thin weren't a problem as it was much easier to make their strand longer or short but the network agate were consistent in size; thus, I had to try different combinations of nuggets to get the strands to line up.
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When working with items that go around something like a necklace or bracelet, cuboid sides, unlike spherical ones, press against each other exposing the wire or thread used to string them.
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The result I absolutely loved, partially because I made something which I thought was beautiful but mainly because I had passed a mental hurdle to do so. Later on, I'd love them even more as it provided the basis for the next two bracelets that I will be mentioning.
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'Shattered Ice'
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'Sun upon moss' or no they don't look like puke
I later returned to try to replicate the previous success with an array of smokey quartz beads in place of the amazonite ones. As for what to take the place of the blue quartz chips, my eyes strayed to the array of yellow and green-shaded ones. Mixed together they'd make a brownish colour. Not exactly the mirror effect from before but akin to it.
First impressions can be difficult to fight and ones that are related to a certain substance being forcefully vacated are more so. , the array of green and yellow chips were hard to stomach. So, I decided to logic my association into submission.
So they look green and yellow? Plenty of things have those colours. Yellow is found in corn, sunshine and daisies. Green are found in the ocean and in grass and leaves and...
Eccentric!Me: Mold!
Sensible!Me: Uh, yes.
Eccentric!Me: Mold can be yellow too!
That...is true but I am trying to step away from such associations.
Eccentric!Me: Bacteria can be those colours too when you grow it in petri dish.
Sensible!Me: *sigh* True but I don't want ugly associations.
Eccentric!Me: But mold and bacteria can be pretty! *presents photos*
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BacArt, created by Maria Peñil Cobo in the Berkmen laboratory. These things are alive by the way.
Fungi photographs by Alison Pollack
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Sensible-but-also-somewhat-eccentric!Me: Ooooh! Yes, they can be.
Eccentric!Me: Toldya!
I had found pretty if, er, unconventional things to associate with those colours and help me over my road block. From here things when easy enough. I also took advantage of the brown and yellow shades in the beds to find a use for some of my gold-plated beads in the centre stand. If they remained gold, they'd match the rest of the bracelet and if they turned brown, they still would.
I made one more noteworthy decision with this bracelet. I went with 'moss' in its name instead of 'mold' or 'bacteria' despite them being inspiration. I want to attract potential customers opposed to sending them running. Sure, you readers know but you got past the word 'puke' in the title; I figure if that didn't scare you off, nothing will.
Eccentric!Me: Coward!
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'Sun on moss' picture
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'Copper and Cherries' or taking PINK!!! down to pink
At this point, I had become an old pro at this. For my cherry quartz chips, I didn't have any obvious choices as to what beads to use for their 'reflection'. Ultimately, I landed on just buying some cherry quartz beads.
This didn't solve the problem of the overblown pinkness. In fact, it made it worse. I tried pairing it with cooler shades of beads but all that did was take it from PINK!!! to PINK!!!!!! by contrasting them.
So I put the pink beads next to a number of different colours to 'audition' the combination and found that copper of all things went well with them. I am not sure as to why. Perhaps because both the copper and the cherry quartz have red in them and the copper is more sedate a colour than the quartz, the latter helps transition the former from tween land into the land of sanity? Maybe I'm reading to much into it.
Whatever. I made it. liked it. What more do I want?
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'Copper and Cherries'
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Success and sadness
I like to incorporate second-hand beads into my work. However even shopping new, I often cannot replace certain beads. This means that for some pieces like, I can only make a couple of them. It can be a frustrating finale to a design. Due to these bracelets, I am quickly burning through my chip beads and soon the problem will crop up. However, I take comfort that like 'Reflections' inspired 'Shattered Glass' and it inspired this bracelets, they too will live on in my later works.
