Accidental soundtracks

Do you ever do something while listening to the radio and it keeps repeating one song so much it sort of becomes your personal soundtrack for a specific thing. I associate the online/computer game Peggle with Fullmetal Alchemist and more precisely with the third intro (featuring the song Undo by Cool Joke) as I was watching the anime -- fell so in love with it! -- while being hooked on Peggle. Send someone away by José Gonzales feat. Embee is a song that makes me thing of another little online game I got addicted to (but can no longer find). Many of the current top hits are something I associate with a theme or activity online. And right now, somehow, the song Counting Stars (by One Republic) is repeated so often on P3 Star that it's become the soundtrack for my research/wanderings into mori kei. There's no objective reason to link the two, really, but in my mind the two are for ever intertwined now.

Sometimes the only stars you can count are the ones you put up yourself indoors. Though my string lights doesn't feel that romantic or mori (in my mind, I'm no mori kei expert). I'd like something like below in the window -- cute, simple and poetic. But then I remember the cats...

More dreamy lights from my Candlelight and light ideas pinboard:

What can I say? I love string lights...

Snow wave

Finally, the winds died down. Of cause that meant going for a walk with the camera in hand. Now, unfortunately, I'm watching the handball game which starts in less than an hour so there's no time to show many pics. But I just had to show this, a wave of snow sculpted by the wind.

The yellow colour is due to the low sun shining directly on the snowdrift.

Tiny bottles, please!

One thing about wanting to dabble with paints is that you get more and more interested in different medium that you keep finding. The problem is that these media are usually made for artists and come in big jars. Not big for someone who wants to cover a couple of canvases, but very big for someone who want to use them in mixed media jewellery. Some media/paints can be found in smaller bottles, especially in samplers like this one or the lumiere paint in the pic above, but as for most of the products that interest me I have yet to find smaller bottles. That goes for e.g. tar gel, modelling paste, crackeling paste, sand mortar, clear granular gel etc.

It's of cause a money issue: I don't want to spend a lot of money on supplies I'm not sure if I will use often or not. But it's also about my not wanting to buy something that might get too old before I even get halfway through the jar. It feels so unnecessary.

I have found a few DIY recipes for e.g. modelling paste that might be cheaper than buying a big jar of it and you can make as much or as little as you think you need. And some stuff, like glass bead gel, feels like something I could do using the micro beads I already have in my stash.

Unfortunately, I don't know an artist who uses these media and paints or one option would be to ask to get (buy) little quantities from his/her jars. With the black gesso, my sis and I bought it together, but she isn't as interested in media as I right now. And even if she were it'd still be expensive with all the different media I want to try. So all I can do is really make do, try one thing at the time when I find it for a good price -- and hope to win a lot of money on a scratch ticket soon so I can buy all the supplies I want!

Digital doodles

Just having some fun with one of the pics in the previous post. Since they're pretty dull, what ever you do to them is an improvement, really... 

Original photo:

It's cold outside

Well, I can't complain, I got snow just like I wanted (instead of all the rain we've had so far). Unfortunately, we also got wind. Rather a lot of wind, making it less than ideal to go out and take beautiful photos of a snowclad landscape. It doesn't really look like that now, rather it's just snow coming both from above and drifting from one place to another. In some places you can still see the grass and in other places there's real snowdrifts now.

The cats? Well, now they're getting a bit used to it being winter again, but the first day of snow (day before yesterday), I spent what felt like an eternity standing in the door -- in a t-shirt! -- whilst the cats tried to decide if they were going out -- no, in -- no, out -- no, in -- no, just stopping on the threshold. Ubbi says it's fine, being the only semi-longhair he's the best insulated one. Wish I had some footage of the cats going out when the blizzard-like weather had just started. How they crouched, blinking into the wind and seems almost offended by the weather. Several of them have been doing u-turns these last couple of days: "I want out, let me out! Yay, I'm out!... Oh no, changed my mind -- don't close that door, I'm going in!"

You can't really see the snow drifting and big snowflakes coming down from the sky and brushing of the roofs in those pics (nor can you gauge how much it's been snowing). Here's one where you get more of a feel of the wind and snow:

Brrr! So I'm trying not to complain -- and I don't mind the snow as I don't have to go anywhere, I can stay indoor with some hot cocoa and a warm blanket. But I'd love it if the winds would calm down a bit, both so I can go out for a photo walk and so it'd stop blowing straight through the old house. No more noise would be a welcome relief too.

January bead soup palette

Thanks to a very generous an unexpected christmas gift, I spent the holidays playing with swarovski crystal pearls -- and drooling over the blackberry pearls, which I then finally got to see IRL. I decided early on to use some of the pearls for the january palette and here it finally is -- or, well, I couldn't choose so there's two variations and three pics for this month's bead mix.

The last one is the same colours as the first palette, but using different beads and chain.


You can also go with just one of the colours plus black (matte metal or shiny faux pearls):

Radiant Orchid

No one's missed that Pantone made Radiant Orchid the color of the year 2014. And that means I have the first colour challenge for the year sorted out. Time to get the beads and supplies out to challenge myself to create something in this colour. Which shouldn't be too hard seeing how I love purple. But that doesn't mean there hasn't been problems.

The first problem was defining the new colour. For some time I thought -- and I wasn't the only one to think so -- that Radiant Orchid was the colour seen in the picture on the Pantone website, the one with orchids that you can see below. Problem is, it's not. It's the the warmer hue I've inserted in the bottom left corner that's Radiant Orchid, according to Pantone's color formulas & guides page. Or is it?

When playing around with the spring/summer palette I used an eye drop tool to copy the colours from their images of the palette. Doing that I got a Radiant Orchid that's closer to the background colour than the square based on their own html colour code... That's the colour you can see below to the left.

Now, of cause, those details doesn't really matter that much. It's just a shade of colour some company want to hype in order to make money and gain PR. But it's the principle (and, yes, in my head I said that as "Det är principen, Månsson"). I can't help it, I want things to be correct. Even if it is silly little things, I'll take the time to investigate it.

Also, I didn't care much for the colder purple I first thought was Radiant Orchid. It was a bit boring, not having the same wow factor as, say, the men's equivalent to it, Magenta Purple (see above, right). But Radiant Orchid according to the Pantone colour forumla is yummier. In fact, I have a top in pretty much that exact shade. A little darker, but the same type of colour.

But what colours do I have in Radiant Orchid? What do I have available for my personal colour challenge? Even after defining what the colour looked like, I was so uncertain about which bead colours would be the closest match. The main issue was the fact I didn't have the computer near the beads nor do I have a physical  swatch so I had to try and remember what it looked like when rummaging through the bead stash.

First I looked at my swaros. I don't have many, but of cause a third of the stash is purples. My first thought when seeing Radiant Orchid was Cyclamen opal. Unfortunately, I only have a tiny rivoli pendant in that Swarovski colour so I still don't know if that's the best match. Some bead shops suggests light amethyst, but to me it feels way too pale.

In the picture above you can see light amethyst (big big), cyclamen opal satin (bicones, too purple in sunlight to match), cyclamen opal (left pendant) and -- I think -- antique pink. Of cause, it's hard to get all the hues precisely right if you're an amateur photographer like me, but I hope the frame below makes it easier to compare the colours to Radiant Orchid.

 Yeah, my swaros are ok, but not the best match. I feel like radiant orchid beads should be opaque or frosted, not transparent, to really be at its best. Opal are ok, but they often have a range of hues in them so while cyclamen opal feels like a good match one second, it looks too pink or too violet the next. If I am to buy new colours for this challenge of mine, it won't include cyclamen opal, I'm afraid.

Seed beads then? Surely I should have a lot of purple seeds? Well, actually not as many as you'd think, at least not many rosy purples. The three closest matching colours I found were opaque berry pearl matte (Preciosa Ornela) and  Gilt Lined Permanent Finish Lavender Toho). The first feels like the better match, but it does feel too red/ dark rose -- I really want that dark lilac tone you can see in Radiant Orchid. Yeah, Goldilocks here...

I did a couple of pics with the beads framed with Radiant Orchid (using Pantone's colour code, b163a3) to make it easier to compare the colours. Of cause, it's still a photo so the bead colours might not show up exactly the same hue as in real life, but it does make it a little easier to compare colours.

That's my top, mentioned above, that I used for yet another colour comparison. The colour of the plastic rosebud beads is, according to one bead shop I saw them in, simple called purple (or more precisely, lila).

Fire-polished beads then? Well, the closest match has to be my chalk alexandrite purple luster beads. Which I forgot to take a photo of so I did it now, indoors and in relatively poor light that might not show its true colours. In fact, I haven't even compared it with the other beads in daylight. Bear with me, I'll add a better photo later, but until then I hope this will make due.

But the best match I've found in my stash so far isn't even a bead colour, it's a bottle of acrylic paint in the colour Blackberry and a square of chalk. Unfortunately, I can't really get the chalk to show its real colour, it comes out very pale and matte in the photos. It's much more vibrant IRL.

Comparing with my top (above) and the matte berry pearl seeds (below).

And then it was the blackberry paint.

There might be some yarn too. Haven't actually gone through the yarn bag as I didn't think that far. Closest matches -- and now I'm just going though the stash in my head -- are probably these two:

You can see more of that fluffy yarn Anna in this post. Dont' have much left, though, after finishing the scarf so it might not be enough for a Radiant Orchid project. Maybe I need to buy more despite my shopping ban, but I don't even know if it's still in stock. That last pic is of a rolled up pom-pom fringe/trim if you didn't see that -- check out this post for more about that. Darker and more rose coloured than the Anna yarn above. It's closer to the berry pearl seed beads than the purple yarn (from Rusta) in colour.

So that's what I've got to work with right now. No idea where to go from this point, but at least I have something to play with even without buying beads particularly for this personal challenge. Though in the end, I'll probably used the colour of the year as an excuse to buy more seed beads...