1A: Porcelain Cup
2A: Wineberry
3A: Foxgloves
4A: Stamen
I am crazy about Foxgloves! I love their tall lanky stems with the spotted blossoms… and how the older blooms are always larger and lower on the stem, as if there to support the younger smaller ones just above.
I also love the folklore behind the name of the foxglove. Legend has it that the scoop shaped flowers are perfectly formed little gloves for foxes. I can just picture the momma fox slipping a pair of these flower mittens onto her babies’ paws to keep them warm on a cold chilly morn.
Back in the late 80’s when Doug and I lived in Laidlaw (a tiny little community at the foot of the Mountains North East of Vancouver), I developed a fondness for Foxgloves.
The tall, nodding blooms of these wildflowers would grow in the rockiest most inhospitable soil, and blow in unison across our windy fields. They were mostly a white and pink variety up at the mountain property… quite spectacular to behold when they sprouted up a thousand strong.
I’d once seen Foxgloves in a flower shop for $5 a stem. So when they were in bloom I would fill large enamel containers, and feel like a gazzilionaire!
Eventually, Doug and I moved closer into civilization, where we ended up settling at our current house in the burbs. And to my delight, there were already a few Foxgloves standing proud in the English-Style Country Garden out behind our new home.
By the way, due to a lack of time these days, my quaint little English Garden is now more of a “survivial-of-the-fittest” place where only the hardiest plants are able to make a go of it LOL.
Any way, the above Foxglove color palette photo, shows a particular strain that has survived and even thrived, in spite of my temporary garden neglect. Thanks to some fancy cross breeding, compliments of the local bees, it has an unusually beautiful mix of Creamy Yellow, Wine, Violet and Rusty Orange.
I’m learning from you Cindy how to look at something and pick out the colors. At the moment I have this huge bouquet (Valentine’s Day) with these gorgeous flowers and the colors are so beautiful. ~Cheryl-H
I just started making the colour recipe chips and find them invaluable. There is nothing more frustrating then starting a project and wanting to add a specific colour to it and at that point having to start from scratch to figure out how to mix it. My collection is small, and I can’t wait to learn how to better organize it and utilize all the prepackaged colours to provide colourific inspiration. ~Janet-R
Well, I decided to give polymer clay a try again. Got sidetracked with other things but recently started reading the blog and watching all the videos again. I was just going to start to make the color recipes and like so many here, Cindy’s recent color mixing video will now make that task easier. ~Catherine-R
Inspired by the amazingly rich shades of the Foxglove photo taken by Doug in our garden last Summer, the recipes for this color palette will be added to the Polymer Clay Members Library during the month of April-2011 in Vol-035 [A-Series]:
- Porcelain Cup (Recipe 035-1A)
- Wineberry (Recipe 035-2A)
- Foxgloves (Recipe 035-3A)
- Stamen (Recipe 035-4A)
Porcelain Cup is the soft creamy yellow, found at the base of the stamens, surrounding the spots and along the outer rims of the Foxglove blossoms. Wineberry is the deep rich Berry Wine color of the darkest spots on the flowers. Foxgloves is the bright Pink Violet hue, that appears to be sprayed with an airbrush inside the throats of the flower heads. And Stamen is the Rusty Orange found on the pollen coated stamens of the blooms, giving this palette an interesting balance of warm and cool colors.
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If you would like more information about the Members Library, here are some direct links:
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Love the history and your stories with this one. I have always loved them too. Now that I have a little more time I can look into their horticulture for this Spring.
Very pretty colors. I have never seen a foxglove flower, they are pretty. The inside dots on the flower look like they came from an extruder cane!! I also like the stories you share with us. You always make my day. XXX
Quite the interesting palette! I love your stories, and this one about foxgloves is no exception. Seeing them blowing across the fields must’ve been a glorious sight! Your ‘very hardy’ breed is beautiful, and makes for a cool polymer clay palette. Thanks so much for the recipes, and for all of your inspiration (as always!) Cindy & Doug, you ROCK!
Cindy I to love Foxgloves, I cant wait for the first to show their beautiful heads in spring. our wild variety are a light purplish and much nicer than the ones grown from seed. I always have to pick one vase full although I don’t like to pick wild flowers they look better in nature but they are a cheer for anyone in spring. but so is the color palette, you have scored again Cindy and Doug. By the way did you no that Foxgloves are poison but I still love them. Ritzs.
Hey, Cindy, your garden sounds like mine! In need a good and consistant gardener!! LOL! Now with two dogs and the littlest one wanting “mark” his spot – usually on my best flowering bushes! I may not have a nice garden this year.
@Thanks, Ritzs, about telling us the Foxglove is a poisonious flower! I guess I won’t be able to add these to my garden. (Unless, I could get the rabbits to eat them instead of my flowers!! :)
Maybe Cindy can come up with a Foxglove tute for us!! This way we can make our own!! (Hint, hint!)
Thanks guys! I really do love Foxgloves. I can already see them coming up in the front garden. It will be interesting to see what colors the bees came up with this year!
@Ritzs: Yes I knew they were poisonous. I do believe it is the root and leaves that are toxic, and not the flower so much though. But I would wash my hands after picking them, just to be safe. It is known as Digitalis and it is used in tiny amounts as a treatment for heart disease, I think. (It figures that often the cure is something poisonous. I sure wouldn’t want to be the ‘guinea pig’ for those herbal remedies. I wonder how many people suffered before they figured out just the right dose? Yikes!) The cool thing about these flowers is the millions of seeds they produce. When I pick one, the lower older pods have usually already gone to seed and dried, so I shake the seeds over the area, before taking the flowers in. That way I know there will be more flowers in the coming years.
@Catalina: I didn’t get a chance to mention it before, but that was real neat of your boss to source those Katiedids for you. Does that mean Michaels won’t be carrying them anymore? That wasn’t very long on the market. People obviously don’t get how cool they are. As far as a Foxglove tute, I’ve got a lesson on making Grape Hyacinth Canes, coming up soon. You’ll be able to adapt it to look like a Foxgloves if you like… more of a stylized version, not one with the spots, but cool none the less. Some day I would like to do a true Foxglove cane, as well as maybe a foxglove shaped bead. I think it would be really awesome!
@Cindy Lietz from Katiedids Bezels Tutorial: That sounds great! A Grape Hyacinth Cane would be cool! I just love flowers, real, silk, clay you name it!!
Yes, I guess since the Katiedids went clearance we will not be carrying them :( But, they could come back. Michaels is planning on adding over 8,000 new merchandise this year! Some of it has to be clay/jewelry related, right? It better!! Maybe if we all contact Michaels and ask them to put them back on the shelves they might listen. I might just do that especially since I want to know when we will be carrying the new Premo colors!!
I just finished, well almost finished, a treasure box, for my niece for her baby shower, with the new colors!! I’ll post the pics when completed.
@Catalina: I just re-read this…dear Cat, are you saying you’d prefer to poison the bunnies than have them eat your flowers? That’s one heck of a protective gardener!
I’m just kidding, of course! ;D
@Phaedrakat: Yeah, you read right! Sorry, I do like rabbits but not when they eat my flowers. But, have a feeling that Bubby will be chasing them away. He is already getting “rid” of the birds that fly in the yard! But, so far I see a lot of holes and I hope they are not rabbit holes but squirrel holes looking for treasures.
Maybe I could get my neighbors to plant some Foxgloves! They don’t have any pets. :)
Foxgloves are so beautiful. While on a working trip to a house in the country ( Idaho) I went for a walk in the countryside before my appointment, found the most beautiful flower and picked it. When I went to my appointment I took the flower with me to see if the lady could tell me what it was – a Foxglove. Then I got a lecture about it and that they were poisonous to her livestock and I should take that noxious weed as far away from her home as I could, she was very unhappy that I brought it with me. That was over twenty years ago and each time I see a foxglove I think of her, though I have long forgotten her name. The flower is beautiful. Thank you for the memories and the beautiful color palette.
@Karon C: I’ve done some research again, the formal name of Foxglove is Digitalis and it is toxic to all livestock, poultry, cats and dogs. It is used to treat heart conditions like congestive heart failure. Karon, it was your story that got me thinking (hence looking the info up), and my grandmother (a very long time ago) was on the medication derived from this plant.
Cindy, beautiful color palette BTW.
Way too much useless info stored in my head! :)
Ken, perhaps we can figure out (hint, Cindy) how to make this beautiful flower out of clay so that we can have it around us and my livestock and it will cause no harm. They are pretty but I never fail to remember that lady when I see them and know that I cannot grow them here. Some things leave an impression and knowing that they cause harm to my animals does not allow me to plant them.
Oh, I love this color palette………beautiful!
Question for everyone: I have been into making clay covered pens, I’ve mostly used beautiful flower, leaf and kaleidescope canes. I’ve been giving them as gifts and everyone loves them. My son thought they were really cool and said I should do some in ‘camo’ colors for the guys…so, I’ve nailed the colors down, but am trying to get the pattern worked out. I actually used Cindy’s technique for the memorial beads by whipping the clay around in the food processor…it turned out pretty good, but it is more blended than I would like. I was thinking if I put bigger chunks of clay in and only processed it for a few seconds that it would give me larger chunks of color. I also tried to make a cane and it was, well…….ugly and didn’t look right when I sliced it and put it on the pen. Anyone ever tried this? Any ideas? I also did the clamo colors in pink, dark pink, gray and black and it is pretty cool looking as well :)
Hope this is the right place to pos this question. Thanks for any input…
@Laura R.: I stumbled across a camouflage pattern tutorial at Parole de Pate a while ago. It should work with pens… and I agree, they would be cool! (For non-girly girls too. :D)
The link to the original article is:
paroledepate.canalblog.com/archives/2008/06/28/index.html
And this link should give you a Google translation:
translate.google.com.au/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fparoledepate.canalblog.com%2Farchives%2F2008%2F06%2F28%2Findex.html&sl=fr&tl=en
I think the approach could be adapted to create a decent camouflage cane too. You’d just need to avoid non-squiggly edges between adjacent cane slices for it to look right, maybe by using incomplete slices of the cane, or by creating a cane with a complex/squiggly shape (reduce it with the playdough backgroundless technique).
@Laura R.: The modern patterns are made up of little squares, like a pixleated image, maybe you could use one of the little square dies on either the Makins or WH clay extruders and assemble the pattern that way, they moved away from the pattern that looks like little blobs several years ago now.
What about using Cindy’s animal print canes, such as zebra, with olive greens, greys or whatever colours you want, instead of black and white, or the pink leopard.
Also you could make a few different canes and jumble the cane slices on the pens. With this “new” pattern being used it might make it easier to merge the edges of the cane slices.
You know, I’ve never liked foxgloves. When I was very small my parents had some growing in the garden and I remember my mum telling me not to touch them because they are poisonous. Obviously it scared me a bit, because I still hate them and wouldn’t dream of deliberately growing them in my garden (but if they happen to grow in my “wild area” by themselves then I guess that’s okay).
I do like the colours though!
AGAIN, what a pretty palette ! Unfortunately, in hot dry Tucson, they won’t grow well, sigh. But it would be NICE to have a tute,(hint,hint), so that all of us could enjoy their nodding heads…..smile……….
Thanks Sue, Jan, Ken and everyone on the input on the camo technique…headed to the work area to try out your thoughts…I’ll keep you posted…thanks for taking the time to share your insight! Much appreciated!
Laura
As Always Cindy a geat Tute!!
This is my fav finish for clay, and if you sand and buff, you will die with how beautiful.
@Jocelyn: I’m confused! (What else is new, LOL!) What finish did you mean, Jocelyn? So many topics going on here, I can’t tell…
Oops, sorry Kat, missed this one too! Started with a Dutch made cannuba wax my Dad had in his workshop a way long time ago. Recently switched to using a can of Johnson Paste Wax, paid about 4 bucks for the 1 lb can a few years ago at Walmart. Love the smell of it. I know. My bad. LOL!!!