Abalone is the newest member of the Opals family and we had plenty of oohs and aahs at Melbourne Paperific a couple of weekends ago for its release. It is a pretty cream (with interference qualities), paler than Sandstone and more luminescent. A good way to describe Abalone is Pearl – it has that soft delicate sheen of good pearls – you almost want to rub it across your teeth to see if it is gritty!!! As a result it will do things that the others will not.
1. Being finer, means that its cover is not so solid for going over pictures. Hence you get that wax over picture look. It gives the appearance of computer enhancing on the photo but I really like it for softening the image
2. Even though it is fine, however, it covers things like chipboard and plywood much better than other light colours. However, we suggest that most of the lighter colours – like Mango, Fool’s gold, Lemonthyme, Tarkine, Blue gum, Wineglass and oddly, Waratah – work better when you use a white pad to put the Opals on rather than the Versamark. The effect is more solid colour. One of our design team (thanks Leanne - take a bow) came up with the idea of adding the stick on sparkles and I think they really make those pieces look very Christmassy.
3. Speaking of using the white as a background, I used white to put the Abalone Opals onto glass. I love strawberry fantasy film over this, but some pieces I did today using the Sunkissed is just like mother of pearl. It is a great foil for the pieces that we do with Currawong as the base. I am sure a jewellery piece using two pieces of glass - one black base and one Abalone – would look fabo. Must have a try when Uni exams finish on Saturday.
4. I love the look of the Abalone with metallics – so the foil lattice works really well for me. I demoed using the foil lattice in Melbourne a few weekends ago and someone watching could not believe that we had created in a few minutes what she had just paid an arm and a leg for at a jewellers. Mwahahahaha – that will teach them!
5. I have also played with the darker colours (like Lady Baron) and then putting the Abalone over the top. It gives a kind of crackle effect which I really like too. Something else to play with in my ‘free’ haha time.
6. Finally we made some lovely Christmas baubles at Melbourne Paperific using snowflakes dipped into glitter. It gives a lovely soft effect - I think it's better than the Snow Gum and much more delicate! If you got a chance to come along and do a make and take you will know the project I am talking about.
Okay so that's a whole pile of ideas to do with the newest Opals colour - I will try to get some photos taken over the weekend (post Management Accounting exam - Saturday 1 p.m. urrgh!) and post them next week so that you can see what I have been wombling about.
