Falling in Love

Help! I need an assistant..or maybe a long vacation. The past ten days have been madness.In a fit of stupidity I ordered a couple of three door wardrobes to replace a less-than- adequate dresser and a very small armoire. Only after placing the order did I remember that the bedroom they're to go in needed to be repainted before we could set up the wardrobes. Uh oh. So I made a mad dash to the paint store. Ever tried to repaint a bedroom with no way to remove the furniture from it because there's NO ROOM in the rest of the house? I can tell you, it's no fun. I've shoved, pulled and slid more furniture around  this past week than I have in my entire life. But oh, the heavenly new color of the walls has made all the grunting and pulled muscles almost worth it.

It's a Benjamin Moore color called Silver Cloud. The palest whisper of gray with a slightly bluish undertone, it's soft, serene and so calming it makes my blood pressure plummet just looking at it. It makes artwork placed on it look fantastic. It also has made such a difference in the appearance of that room as the light changes throughout the day; the pale green we used to have didn't look drab to me until I started brushing on the Silver Cloud. Suddenly those green walls looked lifeless and tired. They just sucked the life and light right out of the room.

What a treat now to see the bedroom flooded with light at all times of the day. It's so true that the colors around us affect our moods. I never thought I'd care for a room painted gray, but I'm in love with this gray. It's anything but gloomy. Maybe I'll just keep on painting until the whole house is ... whoops, there are too many tasks yet to be finished before I go nuts with the paint. Like setting those wardrobes into place, and filling them with all the clothes, shoes and other stuff we can't live without. Painting the trimwork. Hanging curtains and artwork. Getting rid of stuff. Etc. etc. etc. Silver Cloud.......oh, the possibilities!

Up with Downsizing!

The Great Mosaic Opus -- a 19x40 inch tabletop with "tiles" made from hand painted heavy watercolor paper -- was finally finished after months of hand painting, cutting, fitting and gluing down what seemed like ten million paper tiles. (See my two previous posts for the actual how-to information.)

Now what? Where should my next creative exploration take me? Contemplating this question, I realized I didn't want to move on to some other medium. I wanted to continue working in mosaics, but I was not up for taking on another project as extensive as the table top.

The answer came when my friend Karen invited me to her house to see some pendants she had made. Mosaic pendants! I took one look at them and was smitten. I've made lots of jewelry, but I had never made anything like these little treasures. Glass tiles in rich hues gleamed, "popping" against the black grout, while an array of carefully placed beads and baubles completed her designs, all set into attractive bezels. I was itching to learn how to make them. When Karen generously offered to teach me her process, I jumped at it.

So my mosaic addiction has now shifted in scale, from large projects to small ones. This has allowed me even more freedom to indulge ... Immersion might describe it more accurately. It has become my obsession. I can't get enough of it.
Here are two pendants I've made recently. You can see others on my web site, www.lynnedwardsart.com

Text, images and pendant designs ©2019 Lynn Edwards