Kolam 2.0 collection of jewellery

Lately I have been caught up in too many tangles.  With college, a new curriculum, research work, and travel taking up all my mind space, things have been slow on the blog front. You see, I almost forgot to post about my recent Kolam 2.0 collection as well. So here it is a snapshot of my Pre-festive 2018 collection. Learning from market demands during the end of last year, I thought of doing a rangoli or Kolam based collection, this year too  While I planned for a massive 50 piece collection as a part of Sayuri’s 10th Anniversary, I have managed to do only 12. But then I did sell them all. So that is a small victory I guess.

Kolam 2.0 collection

Kolam 2.0 collection is a new and interesting way of looking at the transient art of kolams. Whenever I look at a beautiful piece of kolam or rangoli drawn on the ground, I wish there was a way to frame it and make it permanent. This urge of mine gave raise to a Kolam range for Diwali & Margazhi. I did 10 pieces which were instantly sold off. It was frankly a one time thing at that moment. But I got repeated enquiries which I couldn’t fulfil as I was busy with Parampare.  Then a friend of a friend suggested that I could make an annual kolam range for the festive season. I took her idea seriously and thus was born Kolam 2.0 collection.

Kolam 2.0 Pulli Kolam Jewellery

You might ask how the 2.0 or the second gen is different from the first. While I began with the same kolam artwork I had used for the first range, the colours are different. The 2.0 range has basic colours like red, green, blue violet and maroon to begin with. These are colours that every Indian woman would have in her wardrobe.  While they can be worn as festive wear, they work well with dressy casual attire too. Out of the four necklaces, three use the same kolam. The designs are the same as the first Kolam collection and are drawn based on the patterns shown in Kamalascorner. All four pieces are sold.

I used both Pulli Kolam and Rangoli designs for this range. Pulli Kolam (kolam using dots) can be knots or any geometrical pattern arranged in a grid. It is usually drawn with white chalk powder on the ground. Rangoli refers to both grid based composition and free hand sketches that are colored. See Kolam examples here.

Maroon Pulli Kolam necklace

This is this the first necklace I made in this collection as maroon and offwhite is the traditional kolam colour combination. In addition to the glass and fabric beads, I used dyed agates  as well in this piece.

Green Pulli Kolam

This is a necklace in emerald green with glass beads of various shapes like football, round, puffed square, teardrop, and rounded bicone . The dark green of the fabric beads complement the green of the pendant. They extend a sense of rhythm to the piece. I have coloured both the earring studs and clasps in green patina.

Bright Red Pulli Kolam necklace

Red and gold is a classic colour combination. With that in mind, I kept this set simple. I strung together red dyed agates, some gold nuggets, and glass beads. I used square studs for hte earrings to match the square rhinestone embedded pendant. Initially I made the earrings as asymmetrical. However, I changed them to a symmetrical pair before I sold them to my client as it was meant for everyday wear.

Blue Violet Pulli Kolam necklace

This is a necklace that came together very easily. It uses blue violet glass nuggets and glass beads of various shapes in shades of blue. I have used fabric beads with pink and gold colours for contrast.

These are the first four pieces in this collection. While creating the rest, something interesting with regard to the colours. I will share more details on it, in the next post. Stay tuned.

I hope you find it interesting
Cheers