Color - It’s all About Proportion

seelensturm via Flickr

This post is not for the faint of heart, the vanilla crowd or anyone afraid of color.  It is clearly for the more spirited reader - the ones that are fearless in the face of color!

Inspiration Board  

Cameron Diaz / Estate Necklace / Interiors by Angele Perlange

Designers conceptualize designs from many different sources and much of the time, my jewelry designs are inspired from beautiful interiors since that was my career for many years.  However, my latest design was inspired from several sources - a beautifully designed room, a stunning  estate necklace and a celebrity.  All three converged to lead me down the path to a daring color combination of aqua and hot pink.  If you study the images above you will see that all three have the same color combination, but used in different ways.  Most importantly, what you see is a complementary color scheme using either aqua or hot pink as the primary focus with smaller accents of the opposing color.  Complimentary color schemes are probably the most difficult to pull off successfully.  Much of that difficulty lies in knowing exactly what proportion of the opposing color to use without becoming a garish combination. 

Abelle Necklace

Stunning Peruvian Opal smooth rondelles and pink sapphires are hand-linked to create this beautiful Spring / Summer necklace.  This cacophony of color terminates with an antique Georgian Silver Paste Locket  replete with a little gold vermeil bow.  This precious heirloom features an adorable gold vermeil Napoleonic bee floating amongst approximately 2 carats of minuscule rubies.  As most of these lockets are a combination of silver and gold (925 silver & 9ct gold), that combination also extends to the hand linked chain to allow the owners to wear it with either preference. The apt name for this necklace is Abelle, which signifies “bee” in French.

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Paris in Spring

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Palmer Weiss

Designers, interior or otherwise, get their inspirations from many places.  The nexus of my blog has been how my background as an interior designer for 25+ years, has influenced my jewelry designs.

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Source Unknown

I have had some gorgeous natural pink sapphire slices for quite some time, but just recently decided with Valentine’s Day and Spring on the horizon - it might be a good time to put them to good use.  I went to my ideas file and found a folder entitled “Pink”.  Within that folder were some stunning rooms that incorporated raspberry pink, frequently married to some type of green.  

Paris au Printemps Necklace
Garden Photo via Flickr

Although these rooms were all very pretty and would have made a great jumping off point for the necklace design, there was something missing.  On a whim, I went to Flickr and typed in Paris gardens, and immediately found the perfect match. 

Notice the cute little carved Peridot leaves

The Paris au Printemps Necklace is composed of beautiful natural pink sapphire slices nestled within little frills of carved peridot leaves, black spinel rondelles, onyx buttons, rock crystal briolette pears and rubellite garnet rondelles.  Two hexagon vermeil beads separate the center focal area and segue to the smaller pink sapphires alternating with rock crystal rondelles that lead to the complimenting rectangular vermeil clasp.

Paris au Printemps Necklace

The perfect little “Pop of Color” for spring and summer.

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When Life Hands You Lemon Quartz – Make a Necklace

Even after living in the deserts of Scottsdale for almost four years, I still miss almost everything from my former life in Boston (24 years is a long time). However there is one thing (possibly more) that I do love about Arizona. . .

t-shirts & sandals in March (unthinkable in Boston)! In our very small but, very pretty back yard, the former owners had the good sense to plan a small grove of citrus trees. It is at this time of the year when they are most delightful. After most of the fruit has been picked, eaten, juiced and given away; the grapefruit, orange and lemon trees explode with a profusion of beautiful white blossoms and the headiest perfumed fragrance you can imagine. Too bad we still do not have “smell-a-vision”. Suffice to say, I leave the doors open as much as possible to drink in the ambrosia bouquet.
Apparently, that lemon tree has really been on my mind. I just completed a gorgeous necklace of aquamarine, green phantom quartz, aqua chalcedony with softly colored lemon quartz nuggets and smooth lemon chiffon freshwater pearls. It reminds me of a cool glass of lemonade by the sparkling aqua water of the pool.

With my hubby working this week-end, I snuck off to a small gem & jewelry show here in Scottsdale. . .shh, don’t tell him! I am pretty certain I am not alone in this but, he is really befuddled by my need to have all those shoes and gemstones! As you can see, that lemon tree was whispering in my ear to buy those exquisite lemon quartz faceted briolettes. I am not certain exactly what “recipe” I will use them in but, I am certain something yummy will come to mind! These gem shows are going to be the end of me because I always seem to find some new stones that I just cannot seem to live without. This time, in addition to the lemon quartz brios, it was the blue tourmaline, pink topaz nuggets and the pink sapphires. I just can’t wait to sit down with them and see what combinations I can come up with.

While attending the gem show, I was testing out a new necklace that I have dubbed as “Safari Sashay”. With the summer fashion “must haves” of everything safari, everyone from the vendors (one of them wanted me to sell it to him – for resale of course) to the fashionable attendees, wanted to know about this necklace. This chunky statement necklace (very in-style this season) is comprised of ammonite, horn, banded agate, coffee quartz, wood & freshwater baroque pearls. It would look fabulous with the white shirtwaist dress & brown belt I have dog eared in my Bloomingdale’s catalogue!

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