C - Blogging from A to Z - Challenge - 3rd April 2012

The Letter 'C'

It's Tuesday today and the letter C: 'C is for Cheese' and 'C is for Cats'!







Best wishes,
Anna



First Commenter:

Adura Ojo



of

Adura's Eyes

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

A - Blogging from A to Z - Challenge - 1st April 2012

Letter 'A'

Welcome to Anna's Adornments, which is a blog about jewellery-making by hand and anything else that either helps or hinders my creative process. 'Anna's Adornments' also happens to fit the first letter of the alphabet - A is for 'Anna's Adornments', as well as for April! But A is also about some other things.

For Blogging From A to Z in April I will be showing Etsy treasuries that I have curated myself.

For those who are not familiar with Etsy, a treasury is a list of items from different Etsy shops that any Etsy member can pick and make a photo-collage. The rules are simple: choose a theme, but only take one item from each store and do not include your own items! 'Spread the love!' So there are none of my own pieces included here. But I will be showing my own work on later posts.

For the letter 'A' I have chosen two themes: 'Amythest' and 'Apple'. 'Amythest' is a gemstone, the birthstone for the month of February, and 'Apple' is a delicious and versitile fruit, that grows on trees.

To show my treasuries for this blogfest, I am using treasury-widgets supplied by Craftcult.

Here are today's treasuries: 'A is for Amythest' and 'A is for Apples':

Best wishes,
Anna



First Commenter:

LindaK



of

Excuse Me While I Note That Down