One Color Crayon Challenge: My Purple Went Exotic

Here she is...my little tribute to the purple crayon:

I think it looks like some sort of tile or carpet from an exotic land.  I created a kaleidoscope image in Photoshop Elements using an original painting and a Kim Klassen texture.Here's a little background on the hop...~Sally Russick decided to host a little monochromatic challenge on her Studio Sublime blog.

~ She invited 65 of us to pick one of eight basic crayon colors:  red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown or black.

~ Then, we had to create a monochromatic design with the color we picked...focusing on a few or a lot of that color's hues.

~ The cool part is that it's not just about jewelry...she opened it up to any medium!  That's what got me started thinking about painting and mixed media

I pulled out everything I have in my arts and crafts supplies that could be anything close to purple.  I posted about that earlier this week.  I spent lot of time with ink and acrylics coming up with some cool designs.  My favorite ended up being this one:

After studying it and thinking about using it as the background of a collage, I decided to go down a different path and try something I've been wanting to do for a while:  make a kaleidoscope image.  I used this tutorial from the Scrapper's Guide that I found a few months ago.  I was scared to try it, but it ended up being pretty easy and I'm tickled with the end result.

There are 64 other blogs to check out today...see how many took the deep dive into just one color!

hosted by: Sally Russick  http://thestudiosublime.com Purple Tracy Mok   http://bumblebeadsdesigns.blogspot.com Jennifer Judd Velasquez http://jenjuddrocks.blogspot.com Marti Conrad  http://marticsclay.blogspot.com Lori Anderson  http://prettythingsblog.com Donna Bradley  http://strandedbeads.blogspot.com Courtney Breul  http://beadsbybreul.blogspot.com Linda Younkman   http://lindysdesigns.blogspot.com Susan Kennedy  http://www.suebeads.blogspot.com Lisa Liddy   http://Lisaliddy.wordpress.com Tracy Stillman  http://www.tracystillmandesigns.com Dawn Doucette  http://designsbydawnmarie.blogspot.com Red Therese Frank  http://theresestreasures59.blogspot.com Rochelle Brisson  http://acreativechelle.blogspot.com Lisa Lodge   http://pineridgetreasures.blogspot.com Malin de Koning  http://beadingbymalindekoning.blogspot.com Bobbie Rafferty   http://beadsong.blogspot.com Orange Linda Landig  http://LindasBeadBlog.com Cherrie Fick  http://designsinthelight.com Beth McLarnan http://threetrees-art.blogspot.com Cece Cormier  http://thebeadingyogini.com Renetha Stanziano   http://lamplightcrafts.blogspot.com Tanya Goodwin  http://pixiloo.blogspot.com Jean Welles  http://jeanawells.blogspot.com Amy Severino   http://amybeads.blogspot.com Rebekah Payne   http://treewingsstudio.com Lola Surwillo  http://.beadlolabead.blogspot.com Judy Turner   http://silver-rains.blogspot.com  Yellow Jennifer Justman  http://soulsfiredesigns.blogspot.com Rose Brisson    http://ahteesblog.blogspot.com Kim Bender  http://www.kimmykats.com/ Heather Powers   http://humblebeads.blogspot.com Shelly Joyce  http://www.aujourlejour-shelly.blogspot.com Blue Cherie Reed  http://creativedesignsbycheri.blogspot.com Rebecca Anderson  http://songbeads.blogspot.com Hope Smitherman  http://craftyhope.blogspot.com Patti Vanderbloemen  http://myaddictionshandcrafted.blogspot.com Michelle Buettner  http://MiShelDesigns.blogspot.com Alicia Marinache  http://allprettythings.ca Charissa Sloper   http://blog.obsidiansoda.com Sonya Stille  http://dreaminofbeads.blogspot.com Maria Grimes  http://mariagrimes.blogspot.com Nancy Saccoccio  http://risingdesigns.blogspot.com Sandi Volpe   http://sandivolpe.com Joanne Tinley  http://daisychaindesignsjewellery.blogspot.com Catherine Pruitt  http://boobeads.blogspot.com  Green Mary Harding  http://maryhardingjewelrybeadblog.blogspot.com Karin Gilman http://www.qaygee.blogspot.com/ Jayne Capps   http://mamasgottodoodle.blogspot.com Lorelei Eurto  http://lorelei1141.blogspot.com Melissa Meman http://melissameman.blogspot.com Alice Peterson  http://alice-dreaming.blogspot.com Jenny Davies Reazor   http://www.jdaviesreazor.com Cynthia Machata    http://antiquitytravelers.blogspot.com Melissa Essenburg  http://chinookdesigns.blogspot.com Regina Santerre  http://reginaswritings.blogspot.com Lauren Streets  http://ornthoughts.wordpress.com Elizabeth Auld  http://beadsforbusygals.com Brown Diana Ptaszynski   http://suburbangirlstudio.com Shannon Chomanczuk  http://formysweetdaughter.blogspot.com/ Janice Everett   http://JLynnJewels.blogspot.com Karen Williams  http://Baublicious.blogspot.com Black Kashmira Patel  http://sadafulee.blogspot.com Heidi Post  http://expostfactojewelry.blogspot.com/ Birgitta Lejonklou  http://lejonklou.blogspot.com/ Holly Westfall  http://silverrosedesigns.blogspot.com/ Karin Slaton  http://backstorybeads.blogspot.com

One Purple Crayon Preparation

Purple.  I like it.  It's a good color.  I picked it as my "one crayon" in Sally R.'s challenge that's due to post on Saturday.  So, for the last several weeks, I've been focused on purple.  I want to go mixed media...not just jewelry.  So, I started with some painting.

I actually had a ton of liquid media in purple--ink, markers, and dye.  But, alas, I needed an excuse to run to Michael's late on a Saturday night so I decided to try some acrylics and bought about a dozen different hues of purple.  I then went to town with some experiments on several different surfaces.  Determined that I'm a bigger fan of paper and watercolor-y-inky styles than acrylics.  But, that being said, I have some kinda cool effects to use as backgrounds that I was able to come up with on some wood pieces.  Now I just have to figure out where to go from here.

I made a few sketches and then went shopping in my second-bedroom/craft-disaster-room for anything I could find that's some version of purple.  I was able to come up with a pretty significant stack of goodness which, of course, has been piled up on my kitchen counter now for two weeks.  Apparently if I look at it 50 times a day it will inspire me more.  Uh, not exactly.  

 Instead I just take pictures of the pile and dust around it.  All those round shapes and soft yard and ribbon edges make me want to do something linear.  Is that strange?  I found that while I was in my collage class at Art & Soul a few weeks ago that I tend to put things in straight lines.  I guess it's a throwback (or throwover, since it's still there) to my military side.  We tend to line things up in straight lines.  Or, for those of us who've been around a while, we used to...nowadays the youngsters aren't quite so straight and narrow.  haaaaaaaaaa  Now that I'm over 20 years, I can talk like that. 

 Anyway, I'm excited to sit down with this mishmashmosh of goodies and see what comes out.  Think amethyst rocks, bright purple coils, and a delicious painted background.  Will it work?