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.

Challenge of Music 2014

A belated welcome to my stop on the Challenge of Music blog hop! After what seemed like an eternity of knotting (126 knots to be precise), I finally have a challenge piece to show. It's green, but not so much in anticipation of spring. The colour is in many ways the central component of this story and challenge creation and it all begins in the year 2000.

My studentmössa, "student cap", from the graduation in June 2000.

The year 2000 started, in a way, rather anticlimactic for many after the much ado about nothing 1999 new year's eve. No world ending, no civilization crushing Y2K computer bug, no epic end-of-a-millenium party. But for me and everyone else my age in this country it was the beginning of a very important time. It was our last semester at gymnasiet, the three years following the mandatory nine years of schools, and it was time to choose our path in life. As the year transcended into the Year of the Dragon, many of us were really to send in our university applications. I was one of them, the first one (and so far the only one) in the family to aim for higher education.

This is the first meaning of the green colour as I, during the last year studying at the social science - business administration programme (samhälle ekonomisk), had gotten fed up with what I thought was my path in life, marketing. The more we studied, the less it felt creative and challenging and the more it felt like just learning about how to manipulate people. Business administration felt hollow, without real meaning and importance even though I still sort of loved the dynamic world of business. And having become more and more interested in environmental issues as well as human rights, contrasting marketing with the important issues in the world, money making felt soulless. The solution came one day when our class teacher handed us a list of business admin and economics programmes at the universities and högskolor in Sweden. After looking through the list, one line stood out. It said the Ecological Economics Programme. Not knowing much about all the existing disciplines, this felt like striking gold: I could combine my interest in economics/business admin with my passion for environmental issues! I knew straight away what I wanted to study after the summer. Now it was just a matter of finishing the last courses, get my grades and my student cap and then pursue my new passion in life.

In the summer I got the papers saying I got in and in late August I moved to a student flat in Västerås, a place I couldn't even pinpoint on a map of Sweden I'm embarrassed to say...

This is where the music part of this challenge comes in. Choosing a year was easy, the year 2000 was so extremely important in my life, but choosing a song wasn't much harder. We only had the basic channels on telly (plus the danish as we're on the verge of the area where you can get their broadcasts), but in my flat I got cable, which meant getting two (then) music channnels, MTV and ZTV. I still remember two songs from that year, one mainly from the telly (Overload with the Sugabages) and one from the telly and the clubs I visited with my new class mates that autumn. This is the second song I remember from that year:

The one thing I remember from the actual music video I saw on my telly was -- yes, you guessed it, the colour green.

But there's even more green associated with the year 2000 for me. Not just the green from the song I remember so well from the dance floors and videos on telly, not just the symbolic green of my choice of studies (apart from Ecological Economics, it included all sorts of green disciplines, from environmental sciences and green technology to eco sociology and environmental history). The one thing I remember best from my first -- and so far, only -- flat was not the inside, but what was outside. A country girl moving to the big city, I still felt close to nature: on the back of the student apartment building there was a lawn and a small exposed cliff with bushes and trees. You could at times see many rabbits and on occasions even a roe or two. At the centre of it all was a big linden tree. Every time I looked out my windows, I saw that beautiful tree, it filled up the window frame.

So that my challenge piece was to be green was the one thing I knew right from the start when signing up. Now it was "just" a matter of design and finding the right components. In the end, I settled for a simple (but somewhat time consuming design) that focused mainly on colour. The colour of the music video and the colour of my memories of the year of the dragon 2000.

In a way it's also a reference to home: the paired dagger beads reminds me of bamboo leaves, like from the bamboo bushes dad planted in the gardens. I spotted that while making the necklaces so it wasn't a symbol I intended originally.

As for more references to the music, it's a song that make you want to move -- dance or just jump up and down -- and I can just imagine the necklace and the beads bouncing and moving with the person wearing it.

The necklaces is made using medium braided silk thread and small dagger beads in a very simple pattern, knotting them two and two with spaces in between. Thought about varying it a bit, knotting some daggers in groups of three or one, but in the end I kept it like this --probably because of them reminding me of our beloved bamboo. At first it was intended as a lariat without clasp, but as it tangles easily I felt it was probably better to add a clasp -- none can be seen in the pics as I want a green one to match the beads -- wear it like a multi-strand rather than wrapping it around the neck.

It's very simple, but I like it. It'd be easy add a removable pendant or little beads on headpins if I ever felt like varying it a bit.

And that's it, my challenge creation and my story of an important year in my life. It's my life -- a fragment of it captured in glass beads and silk cord. For many more stories and creations, please visit our challenge creator and blog hop host Erin's challenge reveal post for her creations and for links to the rest of the participants. Enjoy!

How I discovered FMA by chance

FMA means Fullmetal Alchemist, a popular, award-winning manga and anime by Hiromu Arakawa. A fab story that I happened upon by chance -- and that's thanks to my beading, actually!

To connect the dots, we need to travel some years back in time when there was still a channel called ZTV in Sweden. It was pretty much dying at the time and one of the few things they aired was a whole bunch of anime series late at night. At the time I was spending many late nights in the beading room, often with a kitten in my lap, and in order to dispel the darkness and quiet I had the telly on. For some reason I one day zapped through the few channels available to me until finding anime on it, something relatively unusual in swedish channels and something I liked (albeit never seen much of as I've always been more of a manga person and anime wasn't widely available for me to get interested in). Some days I watched a few minutes before continuing to zap, but other days I stopped at ZTV for the whole night. As it was in the middle of all the three or four series aired in a row, I didn't pay that much attention. It was probably not even the best or most action packed episodes that I first stumbled upon and sometimes a protagonist does something mid-series that you find hard to sympathize with unless you know the background. But somehow I kept "bumping into" these two young guys called Ed and Al. And I got hooked, totally sucked into the story. Even when not understanding many of the things happening or persons referred to. The other animes were ok, I began following one of the others too, but nothing was as good as FMA. I became an instant fan and watched it more or less religiously to the end -- after which they put the series on a loop so I could watch it again, this time from the beginning.

Serendipity is perhaps what english-speaking people would call it. I knew nothing of FMA, found it by chance -- and was enthralled. I would sit in the dark with a sleeping cat as my only company and watch it. Night after night, just getting more and more hooked.

*

The above video is of the "outro" used in the episodes where I began watching. The song is Motherland by Crystal Kay. This was the song that ended the first episodes of FMA I watched so for me it's synonymous with the series -- and the same goes for this opening, Undo by Cool Joke. Everytime I hear just the intro of the song, I can see the scenes inside my head. You can a longer version of it here. The reason I didn't include that video here is that it shows images from Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and I haven't seen that, nor have I got as far in the manga (due to various reasons). Haven't seen the movie(s) either, by the way -- and I still count myself as a huge fan... Anyway, while I have of cause stumbled onto many spoilers by now, I try to avoid them if I can. Even small ones.

Funny footnote regarding the video: were I began watching the anime, Winry isn't in the story so I never really understood who she -- and Den (the dog) -- was. It just seemed like silly (albeit pretty innocent) fanservice at first due to some parts of it. Once you see the story from the beginning, this ending used for episodes 26-41 makes so much more sense.

God, how that song makes we wish I could buy the soundtrack (for the original anime series) and the boxed set of the manga right now!

*

So what am I trying to say with this blog post? Other than how much I want the soundtrack and full set of the manga, that is. Well, most of all it's a story of how one can just by chance stumbled upon something one will fall completely in love with. It could just as well had been that I opted to listen to music instead of turning on the telly. Or that I settled for another channel. The probability of my never seeing even one episode of FMA was so much bigger than the probability that I would. And to think I would've missed out on such an amazing thing... It was so close. I almost missed out on a fab story. It's almost with horror that I think of how close it was that I never would've gotten to know Ed, Roy, Riza and all the others.

Of cause, that's life: we accidentally stumble onto things that have the potential to change something in our lives, but we never know what we might have stumbled onto had things been just slightly different. We don't miss those things that we didn't encounter or that didn't happen to us because we never were aware of them so we don't need to mourn the missed things. They aren't like opportunities missed because we didn't take the chance or were forced to decline them. If we miss one thing, there's another probably just as exciting around the corner. But once you do stumble over something, you can't imagine life without it as it was such a treat. Perhaps it sparked inspiration, made you reflect over your life or just change in some other way, maybe it was just something that made just happy or fill up with strong emotions. If just every so slightly, it added to or changed something in your life, your lifestyle/interests or your memory. I'm so thankful and happy that FMA was one of the things I stumbled over by chance and which left a beautiful impression in me!

I hope that I can perhaps pass this little nugget on to someone else who isn't familiar with anime and therefore haven't heard of it before. Maybe you'll be the next FMA fan?

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...

Challenge of Music 2013 -- the reveal

The tricky part about the Challenge of Music is to pick just one piece of music. One piece, out of all the great music in the world. This time the theme was instrumental music, but it doesn't really narrow it down very much as I enjoy instrumental music of all kinds, from classical to contemporary electronica. In the end I settled for one thing, a specific sound I adore. The sound of an instrument that goes plink.

I love instruments that go plink, be it a celesta (that lovely instrument you can hear e.g. in Tjajkovskij's The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy), glockenspiel, music box, harp, clock or synth. There's a little bit of magic in that sound. Like a beam of moonlight, a lone star shining in the evening sky, dewdrops shimmering on a spider web or gentle snowfall at night (you know the kind that is silent, but still makes that unmistakable sound). Or the "true" magic you find in the more poetic fantasy stories I read.

Now, The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy is lovely, but it was ruled out as so many associate it with Fantasia (which I've never seen by the way). So what could I find instead? Wintergatan. I actually discovered this group after signing up for the challenge and starting to look around for my challenge piece. I began to think about my favourite instrumental music, both old and new, when Detektivbyrån popped up in my head. Sadly, the band dissolved in 2010, but listening to one of their songs on YouTube I read a comment mentioning on of the band member's new project -- and thus I found Wintergatan. And my chosen piece of music, Sommarfågel (= Summer Bird).

Wintergatan, which means the Milky Way in swedish, is a new band by Martin Molin. This time he's joined by David Zandén, Evelina Hägglund och Marcus Sjöberg. They use instruments like glockenspiel, analog synthesizer, music box, vibraphone, drums, accordion, theremin, vibraphone and many more. Their first album will be out in May so at the moment you can only listen to/buy their double single Sommarfågel & Starmachine2000. You can read more about on their website.

Below, I've also added the video for the second piece of the double single, Starmachine2000. Not for the song, though nice, but because you can see how the music box and the punched cards with the melodies were made after the end of the song.

That's my inspiration. So where did I go with it? Well, first I have to admit that it turned out to be trickier than I thought to make something inspired by Sommarfågel. Maybe it was my trying to hard, maybe it was the fact that the song has several passages, that differ somewhat from each other. In the end, the part that actually captured me the most was the more serene music box melody after the song and introduction of the band (you didn't stop listening when Martin started talking, did you?). I also focused on the sound of the music box, which is at the heart of the melody in Sommarfågel, even when the other instruments take over.

I wish I had the supplies to make something of the first idea that popped into my head -- and that might also be the part that made the challenge hard, having to abandon something I felt immediately -- as it was all about the mechanical motions, clockwork parts and old-fashioned handicraft that's behind music boxes and musical automata like the Peacock Clock at the Ermitage or the Silver Swan. Or a simple modern dancing ballerina jewellery box for that matter.

Alas, my focus had to change and instead I kept focusing on that idea of magic that I find in the type of instruments mentioned initially. Be it real fairytale magic or illusions to create a sense of magic in everyday life. Magic and starlight.

As the challenge was not only about creating jewellery, I thought of other things to do and at first it resulted in a series of digital art doodles:

The I made one more yesterday.

For the last image I used a picture of a frozen brook with a few added stars from the software, but the "stars" in the other pictures are actually grit on a greenhouse window pane. If you're a follower of my blog you know I love my moody greenhouse window photos.

I also made a bracelet last minute, after scrapping several ideas. Not the piece I'm most proud of -- wanted to use other materials, like matte blackened wire, but had to make due with what I had -- and it's going to be redone later, but I wanted to create something a bit more hands-on. Not that the challenge demanded it, but because that's what I wanted to do from the beginning. And that means showing you something I'm not pleased with -- or maybe I should say something I'm not finished with. Because I do think it could be the base of something good. It's not a bad piece of finished jewellery, it's a WIP that can show it's full potential yet.

Here, the feeling of magic and starlight is to be found in the (on the photo hard-to-spot) light rose satin crystals and silver-lined transprent grey mini drops nestled among the peacock keshi pearls and aubergine silk cord, which represent the faster passages and the other instruments.

Funny how I throughout settled for dark colours when I don't actually perceive the music as dark. I find Sommarfågel to be a positive, upbeat piece of music. Maybe the darkness is just a way to make the glimmering shards (i.e. the music box melody) emerge more clearly. Maybe the fast pace of some of the passages felt heavy and that translated into darkness, eventhough it doesn't sound that dark.

~*~

If you've managed to get through this verbose post -- thank you for doing that! -- then you might also want to check out the rest of the challenge participants:

Erin Prais-Hintz -- Hostess
Alenka Obid
Ali McCarthy
Alicia Marinache
Amy Severino
Amy Grass
Carolyn Lawson
Cece Cormier
Cynthia Riggs
 Ema Kilroy (bowed out)
Emanda Johnson
 Emma Todd
Erin Kenny
Evelyn Shelby
Evie and Beth McCord
 Gerd Andersson
Holly Westfall
 Jennifer Justman
 Jenny Davies-Reazor
 Jess Green
Judy Campbell
 Karla Morgan
Kay Thomerson (bowed out)
Kristina Johansson   -- you are here!
Lola Surwillo
Lynn White (bowed out)
Malin de Koning
Mallory Hoffman
Mary K McGraw
Melissa Meman (bowed out)
Melissa Trudinger
 Michelle Escano
Michelle Bourbonniere
Michelle Heim (bowed out)
Michelle Mach
 Molly Alexander
Molly Schaller (bowed out)
Monique Urquhart
Niky Sayers
Pam Farren
Rebecca Anderson
 Sally Russick
Sharon Palac (bowed out)
Sharon Driscoll
Susan Kennedy
Tari Kahrs
Tracy Stillman (bowed out)
Veralynne Malone
 
PS! If the links don't work, you will find a list (with direct links to the reveal posts as Erin visits each blog) at Erin's blog post.

Challenge of Music

Thank you for stopping by!

Today is the day, time to reveal what we've made for Erin's Challenge of Music. I can't begin to tell you the problems I've had getting this done these last few days (on top of having been in a bit of a rut lately, creatively and otherwise), but at last I've got something to show.

It took a long time to choose which song to work with. Should I go with the 80's music I grew up with on the radio? The early 90's music I've partially forgotten until they pop up on VH1? The songs from school that I've sung hundreds of times and mark the excitement of summer break or longing for christmas break? Or some of the bands and singers I listen to now, perhaps choosing someone I don't think that many (at least outside Scandinavia) knows of?

In the end, I settled for another type of nostalgia as my sis and I one evening (once more) searched YouTube for intros to all the tv shows we remembered from childhood. After looking trough a dozen or so videos we stumbled upon the serene intro and outro to Skymningssagor, "Twilight fairy tales". Skymningssagor was a children's television series that aired October 1988 through March 1990.


Intro

Outro

I wanted to capture the atmosphere; the simple melody, the lightness, the colours of dusk, the serenity. At first I was working on a totally different idea, but it had to be scrapped yesterday when I couldn't find a good way to finish the design. Frustration. What to do? So little time, so little materials that seemed to work with the images that popped into my mind. Went through half my stash and in the end settled for some thin (7 mm wide) silk ribbons in periwinkle blue and a variegated rose-purple. But what more? Some ideas had to be scrapped due to the fast approaching deadline. After a while I instead started to focus on a focal.

I found a matte transparent violet plastic flower button (38 mm) and looking for something to layer it with found a pink MOP flower button that I had sprayed with a matte lacquer. Finally something that could work as an eye-catcher! I like how the mother-of-pearl gives a subtle glow to the plastic (a bit like the Polaris Polsweet beads I showed a week or two ago). A brooch back was attached to the layered flower so it can be used as both a pendant and a brooch.

For this image I added the silk ribbons to turn the brooch into a necklace. Don't know how the pic looks -- it was tricky trying to get the right colours in both the flower and silk in the photo... Not too happy with the look right now so it'll have to be altered a bit later.I'm also thinking of adding some seed beads to the centre of the flower, a nice detail that I totally forgot in my haste to finish in time. Hopefully it doesn't look too bad though.

And so... That's it, my contribution to the Challenge of Music and my -- somewhat sidetracked -- interpretation of a song that brings back memories of childhood, children's books and beadtime stories to me. I hope you like it and be sure to visit all the other participants too -- of cause including the fab hostess, Erin of TresoriTrovati.

1. Erin Prais-Hintz (hostess)
2. Marcie Abney
3. Christine Altmiller
4. Elisabeth Auld
5. LJ B
6. Lori Bowring Michaud
7. Shannon Chomanczuk
8. Cece Cormier
9. Jenny Davies-Reazor
10. Malin de Koning
11. Beth Emery
12. Michelle Escano-Caballero
13. Erin Fickert-Rowland
14. Therese Frank
15. Amy Freeland
16. Tanya Goodwin
17. Stephani Gorman
18. Amy Grass
19. Beth Hemmila
20. Kristina Johansson (YOU ARE HERE)
21. Jennifer Justman
22. Tari Kahrs
23. Susan Kennedy
24. Ema Kilroy
25. Kathleen Lange Klik
26. Kirsi Luostarinen
27. Paige Maxim
28. Beth McCord
29. Natalie McKenna
30. Alice Peterson
31. Cat Pruitt
32. Bobbie Rafferty
33. Johanna Rhodes
34. Cynthia Riggs
35. Sally Russick
36. Sarah Sequins
37. Amy Severino
38. Staci Smith
39. Kristen Stevens
40. Lola Surwillo
41. Stefanie Teufel
42. Sandi Volpe
43. Holly Westfall
44. Shaiha Williams

~*~