ABS Editors Take the Challenge

 “Fall has always been my favorite season. The time when everything bursts with its last beauty,
as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale.”
~ Lauren DeStefano, Wither

I remember when I was just a follower of the Art Bead Scene. I would eagerly await the next month's inspiration painting and rush to see if I had any art beads that would work. I took it as a personal quest to see if I could make something every month, even if the pieces I made were not that successful, and often times I didn't have any art beads that I could use. At least I would keep being inspired. And I built up my art bead stash along the way.

Now as an editor of the Art Bead Scene, I find that my time is so much more limited. I would love to join in the challenges each month, but I don't always have the time, even if I certainly have a dragon's hoard of amazing art beads (seriously, I have an addiction! It is like an art bead museum down here!). Making my Simple Truths each month based on the Art Bead Scene challenge is a great way for me to keep on making things that are connected to the inspiration. I hope my Simple Truths Sampler Club members agree! (There are current openings in the Club in case you are interested... or are looking for a great gift for your favorite beader for Christmas!)

Autumn, 1944 by Milton Avery

This month I am much more on the ball and inspiration came knocking early. I have a goal of getting the pieces sent out by the first full week of the month, but I don't always get that much advance warning of what the image is, so I am struggling to find the right look along with the rest of you!

This month the color really grabbed me and slapped me upside the head. This takes the fiesta that is Autumn to the next level, don't you agree? I have to say that at first the palette felt very dissonant, as if all the colors were beating up on one another. It just felt that raw and wild. I also didn't know if I really liked that big tree, all bleached out and naked, dominating the scene. I wasn't quite sure how I would incorporate such a large portion of white that seemed ghostly to me. 

But then I did something that I do when I am stumped:

I turned it upside down.

Here is what I wrote to my Club members (by the way... I write them a little letter every month detailing what inspired me and what I created)...

Don’t you just love Autumn? The air is crisp, the trees explode with color, the world seems so vivid to me. That is why I was stoked when I saw the colorful primitive artwork by Milton Avery called Autumn, 1944 for October on the Art Bead Scene.

People have called me a ‘color addict’ and I wouldn’t disagree. I love all colors! I will admit that there are some that are harder for me to work with than others, yellow in particular, and this painting has an awful lot of yellow in it! I was wracking my brain to figure out what to make when I started looking at this painting upside down (go ahead and turn it around, I’ll wait!).

When I am stuck on where to go I will often do this, look at things from a different perspective. What I noticed is that these wide swaths of color were very much like a sedimentary rock. Of course, the colors are unlike any sedimentary rocks that I have ever seen!

I don’t normally work in colored clay, but that is one thing that I am trying to change. So for this month’s Simple Truths Sampler, I broke out all the colors that I could find in the painting: gold, rust, black, cream, blue and magenta. I mixed colors to get just the right shades. I decided that I would make a sedimentary pendant that looked like layers of (fantastical) rock. But when I got done with each (and they are each different!), I didn’t like them at all. That yellow-phobia was kicking in, even though I used a safer golden color. Now what? I think that what I didn’t like was how flat it all looked. So I grabbed some silver and variegated gold leaf and carefully added that. I coated each with a bit of resin for durability, shine and to enhance the shimmer effect.

I am calling this “Sedimentary, My Dear”. Since I got this done quickly enough, I think that I, too, will add my work to the Art Bead Scene monthly challenge. We give away great prizes on the site (this month there are three!) and I would love to have you join me!

Since the ABS editors decided to play in a blog hop to get in on the action, I thought that I should join them, and I had exactly one pendant left. 

I decided to make a necklace using waxed linen in light rust, agates, frosted cracked quartz, pink and purple dyed jade and tumbled faux sea glass nuggets in a brilliant shade of blue. I like that each of the colors is sort of like layers of rocks, in striations built upon one another. This pendant seems to glow from within like a party is happening in an alternate world, one that is only rivaled by the view outside my window.

Please go and take a look at what the other editors of Art Bead Scene did with this inspiration. There is still time to join in the fun! Grab your beads and this crazy cool palette and join us!

Humblebeads :: Heather Powers

Tari Sasser:: Creative Impressions in Clay

Mary Harding Jewelry

Something to Do with Your Hands :: Claire Lockwood