Monday 2 April 2012

B - Blogging from A to Z - Challenge - 2nd April 2012


The Letter 'B'

It's the second day of 'Blogging from A to Z' and I have three themes, first 'B is for BOOKS', then 'B is for Blue', and lastly, 'B is for Baltic Amber', which probably should have been featured yesterday more like 'A is for Amber'. But the word 'Baltic' is important, because it isn't just any kind of amber, but amber from the Baltic sea area.
So here are my finds for today:



I love reading and books. For my birthday, I bought for myself a couple of interesting books about colour and jewels by Victoria Finlay, Colour, Travels Through the Paintbox (2003) and Jewels, A Secret History (2007).

Victoria Finlay's book about colour is a walk through the rainbow. There are several chapters about different kinds of blue: Ultramarine (made from the stone Lapis Lazuli), Indigo (made from plants) and Cobolt. Here is a collection of blue items from different Etsy shops:



Victoria Finlay's book about jewels is structured by Moh's scale of relative hardness. Moh's scale is based upon how hard different materials are, and whether they can scratch or not be scratched by other materials. Diamonds score a perfect ten, four times as hard as rubies or sapphires. Victoria's first chapter is about Amber, which is soft, scoring only a 2 to 2½ on Moh's scale, and is neither a crystal nor a gemstone, but a fossil resin.





Amber comes in a number of colors, from white to different shades of yellow and golden to darker shades of reddish brown. It can be transparent, milky or opaque. It can have intrusions and sometimes includes insects from milions of years ago! (Remember the movie Eurassic Park? But Amber is not really as old as the dinosauers, so the movie is really fictional.)

I have never worked with amber, and am amazed at the beautiful pieces of amber-jewellery that are available on Etsy. I'll have to try working with amber one day.

Enjoy!

When it comes to making treasuries I know that I am breaking one of the Etsy rules, the one about only having one item from each shop. I am featuring more than one item from some shops because they had such good examples of what amber is.

Best wishes,
Anna



First Commenter:
American in Norway


5 comments:

Unknown said...

I love the Baltic Amber. Nice to "meet" you! good luck with the challenge. :-)

Aurora said...

Your amber gallery is so pretty, I really need to wear more amber. I don't think you should worry about the unspoken treasury rule, as long as the pieces are pretty and speak to you I'd say go for it!


Aurora Celeste
yasff.blogspot.com
dramaticthreads.com

Unknown said...

Thank you for the link up.. have no idea how all of this works..

Tanya. said...

Hi Anna...this is great...I never knew they got Amber from the Baltic sea. The Amber that preserved the insects comes form the say of tress which has hardened...I don't know whether it is technically 'Amber' but it is a way that insects were preserved from millions of years ago...I kind of doubt that they can extract DNA from them though to create new dinosaurs...however i did love the movie!!

The Poet said...

Hello Anna.
I love jewelry, but tend to wear it sparsely so as not to look like a pimp! (LOL) You have a very good eye with these selections. Very nice. Thanks for sharing.

Day 2: Born To Love You

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