Monday 22 February 2010

Earrings in progress...

One of my favourite parts of the earring making process is when all the stitching is finished, and the felt pieces have spent a while under a pile of books getting nice and securely fixed on to their metal tags.  I carefully take them out and delicately check them over, front back and edges - it's like a little surprise to see them again and to remember it was me who made them!
This is my latest collection - Turmeric (orange), Levant (burgundy), Lupin (multicolour) and Carduus (purple).

Choosing names for my pieces is another favourite part of the process.  I love my thesaurus, and the internet (particularly Google images) is also an invaluable resource.  Sometimes I go for simpler, or more complicated, colour names (it gets more and more difficult... finding new names for purple shades these days is giving me a big challenge!), and other times something more abstract or that sums up what the piece reminds me of.  I also use quite a few Elvish names for the more nature-like pieces - I find Tolkien's invented language to be beautiful, and there are such evocative descriptions of nature in his writings.

4 comments:

Playing by the book said...

These look lovely Kate. What about using words in other languages (other than Elvish I mean) - like purple in (let's choose a random language shall we....) Hungarian? I'm sure you could find words that sounded/felt nice and had a sense of mystery about them. Or plant names with flowers/leaves in a similar colour?

Chris Gray said...

..beautiful, pieces of miniature art!...

...and good suggestion from "Playing by the book"....

..I've always found foreign words so romantic :-)

Kate said...

Thanks both of you - and yes using other languages too is a good idea. I use quite a few Japanese names, and other languages I'm a little familiar with... but I have to be careful (particularly with selling the pieces internationally on Etsy) - I nearly used a name for a piece a couple of weeks ago that I found out just in time had a very rude alternative meaning in Finnish!!

Clare Wassermann said...

Hmmmm nice. Carduus Marinarus - good for the liver - did you know?