Thursday 30 April 2015

Purple Prose



Purple is a combination of red and blue, energy and stability. It is the color best associated with royalty, power, ambition and wealth, which makes sense as you would like your leaders and those in power to be energetic enough to move you forward and stable enough not to collapse during the momentum of moving forward.
Purple is associated with independence, creativity, wealth, luxury and dignity.
Purple is a rare color in nature.  
It is a color that most pre-adolescent (age between 9 and 13) children prefer. Two of my three daughters went through a stage of liking purple, one went so far as to refuse to wear any other color! All three prefer purple to pink. 
Bright purple would therefore be a great color for promoting kids toys and products. I wonder if that is why Barney the dinosaur is purple?
Light purple on the other hand is perfect for promoting goods for women.

Light Purple is romantic and nostalgic
Dark Purple is gloomy and sad. I can also cause frustration.

There are three main shades of purple - Violet and Purple (which to me look the same) and Magenta.
 Violet is spirituality and introspection.

The difference between violet and purple is that violet appears in the visible light spectrum, or rainbow, whereas purple is simply a mix of red and blue.
Violet is more representative of the future, the imagination and dreams, while spiritually calming the emotions, and supports activities like meditation.
The color violet relates to the fantasy world, and a need to escape from the practicalities of life. 


Here are some purple creations in my shop Adiesdesigns on Etsy.










Monday 27 April 2015

21 Today


 Today is Freedom Day in South Africa. It is the 21st anniversary of the very first Democratic elections held in this country in 1994 in which ALL citizens could vote, not just the white people. Sadly at the moment some South Africans have forgotten those other African countries who helped during the struggle for this freedom and our beautiful country has been racked with terrible Xenophobic attacks against black foreigners living and working here.

So I feel that today I want to focus on a Zulu lady, Duduzile, a security guard at a hospital, who in her spare time does beautiful traditional beading and who is using her talent and profits along with other  women to help teach unemployed and handicapped women how to bead and supplying them with the beads and tools to do this, in order to uplift her community.  The money to do this comes from the profit  she and others make from their sales.

 All Dudu's bead work is done by hand, she does not use a beading loom. She also asked not to have her photo taken when I told her it was going to be on the internet. She is too shy.
Bead work is a skill many women in Africa have as traditional clothing is often decorated with it.

Here are some traditional South African wedding dresses. All of the beadwork will have been done by hand. 




Here is some of Dudu's work, which I sell for her on Etsy.  The title photo is one of her bracelets which has already been sold.
Beaded necklace 

Beaded collar necklace

plastic beaded handbag

seed bead mens tie

beaded trim for the base a shirt or skirt or even the waist band 

Black and white beaded necklace and bracelet set
 Duduzile mean console- I pray that those who have lost loved ones in all the violence affecting Africa find consolation and peace.
I send condolences also to the people of Napal after their devestating earthquakes this last week.




Thursday 23 April 2015

Into the Blue



Blue, sometimes the color of the sea and sky. It symbolizes trust, loyalty stability, faith, wisdom and intelligence among other associations. One of these associations is the saying "blue Monday" which apparently originates because bosses were sad on Mondays as the workers who were paid on Saturday's had drunk themselves into a stupor and were still not able to work well on Monday so they did not get much work done. Another reason is said to be that Monday was laundry day and women were depressed at having to spend so much time in the laundry room, in fact the first ever washing machine to be advertised used this as there slogan "no more blue Mondays" this was about 1907.

Blue is a color that supposedly slows down your metabolism and calms people, it is a tranquil color. In heraldry blue is used to represent piety and sincerity. Blue is found on 102 world flags, it is the 3rd most popular flag color.
According to some studies blue is a masculine color, we continue to use blue for boys and pink for girls.
Dark blue is often used in the corporate world to denote depth, expertise and stability.  Apparently it is the preferred color for corporate America.

Light Blue represents health, healing, tranquility, understanding and softness.
Dark blue is associated with knowledge, power, integrity and seriousness.

Here are some blue things available in my shop.





Have a good week everyone.





Monday 20 April 2015

Finding old friends

I am in the process of moving my work area as I would like to start working on tutorials and I need to be able to find my equipment. While shifting and sorting my stock around I found some old friends, pieces I had made when I first started, that somehow never made it into my Etsy shop.

When I first started making the watches I bought as many as I could in all different styles especially the pendant types, unfortunately the supplier I use no longer brings in the watches so everything is practically exclusive. A lot of the watches were sold or used as gifts for friends but I found this one that I had made into a necklace, the other moon I used for a nurses watch, which sold almost immediately. That sale gave me a huge boost in confidence.
I also turned some of these watches into rings.


These rings look like ordinary stones, but when you open them they reveal a watch. 
Then I found an experimental necklace in red and silvertone which I won't be doing again as I remember it took too long to string the bugle beads.
I also made another necklace this weekend as I loved the one I did last weekend, this one Asian inspired with grey mottled glass beads.

I think that cleaning out your work space every once in a while especially if you are not a spectacularly organised person (which I definitely am not) is a great way to discover what you have, it almost feels like it is your birthday with all these wonderful surprises.

Have a great week all.


Thursday 16 April 2015

Not a Greenhorn anymore



When we call someone a greenhorn we are saying they are a novice, and while I am no expert after a year blogging I do feel I am no longer a greenhorn, especially with so many amazing people passing on my blog to their friends. Thank you everyone, you help keep me motivated.

As you have probably realized today's blog is on the color green. The word green in modern English originates from the word 'grene', which is an Anglo-Saxon word with Germanic roots from the words grass and grow. 
Green is the color of nature, which is probably why the conservation groups such as Greenpeace use it in their names, also when a company wishes to show that they are an environmentally conscious company or that their products are environmentally friendly they will use the word green in their campaigns and slogans.
Green symbolizes all things growing, harmonious, fresh and it also symbolizes fertility. Dark green is usually linked with money.

Green is said to have healing power and is restful to the human eye. The color also suggests stability and staying power.
In heraldry green is used to indicate growth and hope. There are 87 countries that use the color green in their flags.
Green is the opposite of red, signifying safety, for example in traffic lights green means it is safe to go, where red means stop. Red is used for cautionary signs and green usually indicates the way to safety as in fire exits and assembly points during evacuation.

Dark green - can be ambition, greed, jealousy
Yellow/green- often indicates sickness, cowardice, discord and jealousy
Aqua- a beautiful color for emotional healing and protection
Olive green- often representing Peace

Here is some greenery from my shop.






If there is topic that you would like me to cover, please let me know, I love new ideas.


Monday 13 April 2015

How Time Flies


This weekend went by very quickly indeed and Monday has arrived. I managed to make quite a bit of jewelry this weekend,

Nursing is something close to my heart and I have been a qualified nurse since 1989, part of our uniform is always a pin watch or nurses watch, but I don't see why they have to be boring and standardized.
I experimented with some macrame, to make this nurses watch. I also made these two other watches.



I have plans for some more watches, ones that would suit male nurses as this is a professional that is often forgotten or overlooked.
Then I made some two more bangles on glitzy fabric cord this one in red.

 This one in black.


Then I moved on to make this very chic 26" (68cm) length black and white crystal necklace with a black tassle.


All these are available in my shop Adiesdesigns. I am hopeing to remain productive like this for the rest of the year.

Thursday 9 April 2015

Yellow Summer


My favorite color is yellow, it reminds me of my favorite season, Summer.

Yellow is the color of sunshine. It's associated with joy, happiness, intellect, and energy.
It makes you feel warm, cheerful, stimulates mental activity, and generates muscle energy. It is often associated with food. Bright, pure yellow is an attention grabber, which is the reason taxicabs in America and some in England are painted this color, in South Africa they are not.

Believe it or not babies tend to cry in bright yellow rooms as too much yellow can be disturbing.
In presentations and advertising yellow is noticed before other colors when placed against black; it is one of the reasons that black and yellow are often used in warning signs

In heraldry, yellow indicates honor and loyalty. 89 flags have the color yellow/gold in them and most are Pan African countries and Islands off the African continent.
It was only much later that yellow became associated with cowardice.
Use yellow to evoke pleasant, cheerful feelings. You can choose yellow to promote children's products and items related to leisure. Yellow is very effective for attracting attention, so use it to highlight the most important elements of your design. Men usually perceive yellow as a very lighthearted, 'childish' color, so it is not recommended to use yellow when selling prestigious, expensive products to men – nobody will buy a yellow business suit or a yellow Mercedes (maybe a man won't but I would). 

Yellow is an unstable and spontaneous color, so avoid using yellow if you want to suggest stability and safety. Light yellow tends to disappear into white, so it usually needs a dark color to highlight it. Shades of yellow are visually unappealing because they loose cheerfulness and become dingy.

Dull (dingy) yellow represents caution, decay, sickness, and jealousy.
Light yellow is associated with intellect, freshness, and joy.

I usually include yellow items from my shop, Adiesdesigns, here, but I could only find these with yellow in them, which I made for my daughter to sell at her entrepreneurs day at school.  Yellow jewelry is not very popular.




Monday 6 April 2015

Waste not Want not

Hope those who celebrate Easter had a meaningful weekend and lots of chocolate. To my fellow Jews and anyone else who celebrates Passover, this time next week we will be able to have out toasted sandwiches and pizza!

About six months ago I blogged about not spending anymore money on beads, as I have a huge collection going to waste, and I have stuck to this except for custom orders.

So here are some of the new bracelets I have made this week, using sparkly round cord ,some faux suede cord and large round glass beads. I have to admit that I did buy the magnetic closings for the bracelets.





The faux suede multi-strand was a little tricky as I could not get all the strands in at first. I do think they turned out well. I tried making necklaces in the lilac, black and white, however, they do not lie well, so I have taped them down straight in the hope of getting rid of the curve developed while it was rolled up.

Have a good week all, and thanks for reading.