Category: Orange Tuesdays
Bursting with Orange and Ones: Harmonious House Number
I am grateful there are people who desire red, orange and yellow house numbers. This one went to Berkeley, CA. Their number is gifted with the numeral one in three out of four of the digits. Ones are both simple to surround in glass, and difficult to join up with neighboring numbers. The clients queried us because they had a vision for spacing the ones, so they weren’t as gawky and lonely, and I appreciated this concern. It can seem as if ones and fives are numbers from different planets.
Commission your house number at Nutmeg Designs.
Aldora: Orange Butterfly Winged Gift of Hope
Stratoz sums up his butterfly impulse:
My school only closed once for snow the winter of 2014-15 and it wasn’t till March. What was a biology and horticulture teacher to do. Design a new butterfly suncatcher to bring some hope for spring blooms and their pollinators. Aldora means “winged Gift.”
He had an “If then, then that” statement formulated the night before, “If the school cancels, then I will make butterflies.” What a lovely sequence!
This photo captures a sign of hope in addition to the butterfly: the dormers of three of the houses across the street which were rebuilt after a fire. It has been 5 years since that night of flames, and I still am grateful to see my neighbors back in their homes.
Do You Dream in Orange?
Stratoz shared an image of this Dream sign, and one of our clients said she dreams in orange. I chose blue backgrounds for our previous Dream signs, and I loved the evocation of the sky as part of our dreaming. But when Stratoz handed over the lettering this time, I wanted orange. Some readers might remember the ubiquitous career book, What Color is Your Parachute? I was baffled by the title, in how it related to career choices, but just as a question, it is poetic.
Dose of Orange to Keep Your Levels Up
Getting to Orange: Round Rainbow Mirror in Progress
It’s awesome when clients commission something inspired by my previous work, and taking it even further. This mirror is 20 inches across, and I started gradating the colors in June, and worked on it a bit at a time, for Christmas delivery. When I got to orange, I had this vision of it taking over half the mirror, but I pulled myself back. More photos to come.
Drawing as Meditation
This orange notebook is my reward for getting my tax organizer to the accountant. I love the way the cover picks up different shades. In 2004, I took a drawing class at the community college, as part of my year of experimenting with different mediums, on my way to making mosaics. I was one of those “I can’t draw” people until I read Betty Edwards Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, and that book gave me the courage to take a class.
I slowly stopped drawing as I became engrossed with mosaics, but I came across a book on Urban Sketching at the library, and suddenly I was ready to draw again. Then I heard Danny Gregory on NPR’s Here and Now, talking about drawing as a way to connect with your own creativity, and the present moment of your life in his book Art a Before Breakfast.
I have been sketching each day, and for those moments, I am practicing seeing what my subjects look like, not what I assume them to look like. I find my mind races ahead with judgements like, “Those wheels are perfectly round because wheels are round” or “This is too hard to draw.” It is a relief to go back to looking at what I am sketching, and follow the contours.
Escape Routes Quilt by Marie du Toit
Based on the Block of the Month Solstice Quilt by Jinny Beyer.
Mosaic Pendant Basking in Orange
The Same Trees
These leaves remind me of stained glass with colors revealed in detail when the light shines through. Stratoz took this photo on an autumn walk to the Norristown Farm Park, and it is a wonder that the same tree will go from orange to brown, to bare and then to green and orange again. Melancholy latches onto winter starkness, and yet there are colors sheltered within.