Colours of darkness (Jewelry Making Mojo Challenge)

Wow, it get's late too fast when you're working on the computer! I should soon get ready for bed, but I have to blog about this first of I'll forget. You see, I've participated in the Jewelry Making Mojo Challenge this week again.

The challenge of the week was to be inspired poem, quote or song. I chose the latter and more specifically a song by Laleh called, simply, Colors. Now, you might ask why I chose it, but I don't have a good answer. I'm a fan of Laleh so it's not a random choice, not something picked just off the radio, but it isn't my favourite song by her. It's one heard on the radio almost as often as Stars Align right now and usually I like to be inspired by something I haven't heard that often and that recently. Anyway, regardless of why, I picked it.

As the focus felt like it was on words it's nothing like e.g. this challenge where I was inspired by the sound of the instruments and the melody. Here, focus was more on the lyrics -- and my very literal inspiration. First it was the age old idea of light-dark that I wanted to do something with, but in the end it was the chorus that stuck: "just because it's black in the darkdoesn't mean there's no color". And I made two, as I said very literal, creations based on that.

First literal interpretation focused on darkness and colours -- dark colours. In certain lights the beads look almost black even though they do have colour: dark bronze and montana burgundy luster respectively. For the bracelet, I was also inspired by the many delicate, simple bead bracelets I've been fond of for some time. This could be more delicate, but I still like it. The idea is to use it as part of a bunch of stackable bracelets, but it can also be used on its own.

Now, for the second piece I focused more on darkness AND colour. In a way, there's also light as you need light for the colours in the darkness of the stone to flash. Initially I wanted use just labradorite, but my light grey labradorite beads doesn't really convey darkness at all. So I picked up a larvikite bead -- it, too, has a schiller effect, but sadly it isn't very visible in my bead so it had to be paired with one of the labradorite beads. (First I added a second lab. bead over the larvikite bead, but it didn't look right so I took it off.) It's strung on three rows of medium braided silk cord hand-dyed in shades of grey and black.

The photo above gives a good idea of the colours of the stone, but not the lovely labradorescence. So I took the pendant out in the sun for this shot:

Colours very much hidden in the darkness (well, light grey can feel dark if it's, say, the grey of a sunless november day), but which needs just a little flash of light to reveal itself in all its glory.


These are two simple pieces, but I still hope you enjoyed seeing them.