Digitalis Purpurea Palette | Premo Colors Vol-075-B

1-B: Digitalis
2-B: Foxy
3-B: Speckled Throat
4–B: Purpurea

For last month’s B-Series color recipe post about the Vol-074 Lupine Palette, I shared a story about the wild Lupines that were growing wild on our mountain property near Hope, British Columbia. Well… that story can almost be swapped out word for word, with today’s Foxglove Palette (Digitalis Purpurea for all of you scientific people). These Foxgloves grew in the very same fields, and alongside the same roads as the Lupines. Friendly companions!

Back when we were living on that property in Hope, during our trout farming days, another job that I took on was working at a huge greenhouse facility in Chilliwack, BC. It was such a different experience from raising fish.

With trout… it meant long laborious hours wearing chest waders in icy cold water… handling many smelly buckets of fish guts as we prepared the product for market… and numb fingers from the freezing ice we used to pack everything before and during shipping.

The greenhouse on the other hand, was still long hours and heavy physical labor. But this time it was warm and smelled like flowers and fresh soil… pure heaven in comparison to fish farming alternative.

Any way… my boss at the greenhouse not only grew and sold several varieties of potted plants and flowers, but he also would buy cut flowers at the flower auction to add to his plant orders for his customers. I told him about the acres of Foxgloves growing on my property, and he suggested I pick some that he could take to the auction and sell. Greenhouse grown Foxgloves were selling for about $5 a stem and he said we could make some good money with them… which sounded great to me!

Well… I got up super early one morning, and picked literally hundreds of stems from one of our fields. Gorgeous armfuls of Wild Foxgloves in all the colors. Creamy yellow, white, pink, and purple (like this one that Doug photographed for today’s post). I placed them in the square auction buckets, and brought them in to work.

But… the next day when I came in, the buckets were all set aside in a makeshift quarantined area. They never made it to market. As it turned out, my boss had seen a bug on one of the flowers, and it dawned on him that since they were wild, there was too much risk of spreading unwanted pests to other growers.

Man, did I wish he would have thought of that BEFORE I picked all those flowers! On the bright side though, our little house trailer sure looked pretty for a while… filled to the rafters with long stemmed Foxgloves!! :)

So… along with today’s story, please enjoy this photo and the colors inspired by it for this August 2014 Vol-075 B-series Palette!

Everyone who is subscribed to our Polymer Clay Guest List will be able to download the following recipes free, one per week on Friday mornings during the month of August 2014:

• Digitalis (Recipe 075-1B)
• Foxy (Recipe 075-2B)
• Speckled Throat (Recipe 075-3B)
• Purpurea (Recipe 075-4B)

[wp_ad_camp_1]…Digitalis is the scientific name for foxgloves and also the name for the stunning fuchsia based purple of this gorgeous foxglove. Foxy is the name I gave the awesome pink color of the stamen. Speckled Throat is the deep wine color of the speckles in the throat of the foxglove blossom. And Purpurea the Latin name for this particular species of Digitalis, is the perfect name for the light purple color that wicks out around the darker specks inside the flower.

The recipes described above are from the Volume-075 B-Series Palette. They are free to download for everyone subscribed to the Polymer Clay Guest List, Friday Email Newsletter.

If you want to see the Volume-075 A-Series Color Palette that paid library members will also receive during the month of August then click here: Dodge Pickup Palette

I enjoy color mixing and am delighted to have these free recipes you send each week! ~Gail-H

Just found you on Youtube – just getting into polymer clay – love your colour mixing tips and have joined your mailing list. Many many thanks, and I look forward to receiving some of your free colour mixes – thanks again. ~Ann-A

Love this idea about the recipe cards… also since you have been doing this a lot longer than most of us… any additional tips such as resources would be wonderful as well. Can’t wait to see all of this available… I am learning so much from your videos and your beginners course!!!! Hugz Cindy. ~Pamela-C

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If you would like more information about the Members Library, here are some direct links:

Library Member Benefits and What Others Are Saying
Order Page for Color Recipe and Video Back Issue Packages
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