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

A Centennial Centus! - Mrs. Jenny Matlock's Saturday Centus Week ONE HUNDRED

Welcome to Mrs. Jenny Matlock's Saturday Centus, Week One Hundred. (Can you believe it? One hundred!) Saturday Centus is a writing challenge that requires participants to write their own text to a given prompt using 100 words plus a prompt. This week's prompt is 53 words: My untied shoelace changed my life. As I leaned down to re-tie it, I kicked away a few leaves. When I turned my head slightly to look where the leaves had been, I was astonished to see a rubber-banded wad of hundred dollar bills nestled in a little indention in the muddy ground.

Here is my text:
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Shoe strings can be very important to a man who walks a lot. They were to me, when I was a travelling-man; or a tramp, as some people might have called me. I wandered penniless, dirty and hungry, from place to place, without hope, until one day, my untied shoelace changed my life. As I leaned down to re-tie it, I kicked away a few leaves. When I turned my head slightly to look where the leaves had been, I was astonished to see a rubber-banded wad of hundred dollar bills nestled in a little indention in the muddy ground.

This money turned my life around. I had been homeless and out of work for a long time. Thanks to that unexpected find, I could get myself cleaned up, seek employment and find a home. I was no longer a hobo, thanks to what I picked up out of a pile of leaves.

[Text copyright 2012 Christina Wigren. All Rights Reserved.]

Word count according to WordCalc: 100 plus 53 = 153 words
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Best wishes,
Anna



P.S.
This is a completely fictional story from a male point of view. I was inspired by Preston Sturgess' film Sullivan's Travels. The voice I heard in my head telling me this tale was Humphry Bogart's Charlie Allnut, from the film, The African Queen.

First Commenter:

anitamombanita



of

Lovin' Life

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Here are Mrs. Jenny Matlock's instructions:
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Welcome to week ONE HUNDRED of Saturday Centus.

One hundred.

Holy my goodness.

Is that possible?

I wanted to make my blog explode with fireworks and send you all cupcakes to celebrate this crazy cool event! I wanted to write a mushy speech and thank you all for enriching my life and blah, blah... (which is quite true...I love reading these and I love our little SC community) ... but I'm sick again and will get all maudlin and emotional ...

AND...

I'm not that good at blog programming...


AND...

I figured the icing would melt on the cupcakes...


So...

I thought it might be fun to go back to where this little meme started.

For old times sake, let's use the first prompt...EVER!

Here's a link to the first SC ever...be prepared to drop your jaw at the lengthy first prompt I came up with!

The prompt this week is: My untied shoelace changed my life. As I leaned down to re-tie it, I kicked away a few leaves. When I turned my head slightly to look where the leaves had been, I was astonished to see a rubber-banded wad of hundred dollar bills nestled in a little indention in the muddy ground.

Number of words: 100 plus the 53 words of the prompt. Geez, I was wordy with the prompts back then!
Style of writing: Any
Pictures: As many extra pictures as you like

The regular restrictions apply: PG, no splitting of the prompt, play nicely and visit the other entries, any style or genre of writing you prefer.

Please display my link button or just a hyper-link back to Saturday Centus. Be careful to link your SC URL to the Linky and not just link to your main blog.

E-mail me directly with ???'s or ask your question in a comment and I will do my best to get back to you as soon as possible.

Feel free to link up anytime between now and next Saturday!