Shots of Color for the "Coloraholic"

I used some old preschool puzzle pieces that I picked up at a thrift shop, glued vintage photos or magazine pictures and then painted and stamped over them. A few I crackled with a crackle product and inked afterwards.

 These were a little more muted.

I like the bottom one with the barbed wire.

Even stamps that have text can make a  nice design if you randomly stamp it. (upper piece)

From an old Family Circle ad.

I was surprised how many rubber stamps I had collected. I've never used them much.

This one I bought when I was a dump truck driver.

You can see the ghost images of the vintage photos I used over the pre-school puzzle pieces.

Magazine images worked better because they didn't warp the puzzle pieces at all. The vintage photos were of such good quality paper they held the moisture longer so it warped them.

This one has a case of eczema form the crackle and ink treatment I gave it.

I'm learning from experimenting.

This big headed guy has appeared in a few of my pieces. I had been saving him from my Thai aspirin packages from my first visit in 1998. I've bought more just for the packages since then.

Sometimes I wonder what the captions should be on these.

Bold background and vintage images.

The composition of this original photo was so unbalanced I wanted to take advantage of it.

I used  some of the background of the admiral picture here but you have to look carefully to see it.

This baby's face was floating in the middle of the original photo. It needed some flair... and tea!

Sometimes things just don't need that much embellishment to speak.

I was reading Corrines' Dosfishes blog about her love of color. She and another blogger, Lorna of Artymess have dubbed themselves "coloraholics".  I've come to realize that my colors with beadmaking and jewelry designing tend to run toward more muted combinations. 

When I first started out my lampworking  (glass bead making for those unfamiliar with that term) my business name was going to be "Binga Beads". 

Binga was a name that my little sister had given me when she couldn't pronounce Kim. ( My brother Brian was "Wungie"!)

 The first handmade lampwork beads I had ever seen were those of Isis Ray  of Seattle who was doing whimsical bold and brightly colored beads that she would combine to make Space Needles and other fun combinations.

Somehow as I put more time into my beads they seemed to take on another persona, more ethereal and organic and the Binga Beads just didn't seem to fit right. 

I had been taking some Jungian dreamwork classes and they used the word "Numinous" to describe a sacred attraction, something imbued with meaning as in a numinous dream that speaks to your soul.

I was walking downtown in my first attempt to peddle my wares and was so new at the process I didn't have a business name or even cards for my earrings. The gal I showed my work to gave me the advice on how to better present my work for shops and galleries. When I walked out of the shop I spotted my Jungian Dream teacher and the name *Numinosity* jumped into my head.

Hmmm, I thought I was going to talk about color here- I guess that little story needed to come out!

I was inspired to use my new papers that I just received from my colored paper swap at LaWendula's of Woven letters Blog and the materials I got from Laura at Found Memories Art so here are my new shots of color that I created in the studio yesterday.