Familiar Shape, New Colour Scheme

I am back working on a triangular piece at the moment whilst I ponder some recent beading experiments.


I love using black but unfortunately it doesn't always photograph too well- it's hard to show detail- but I couldn't resist a lot of black for this piece.

I very rarely use blue in my work- plain blue that is. I use teal, turquoise, aqua etc but rarely plain old "blue" so I thought I would try it in this piece.

Of course I can't cope with just plain old blue so I set out looking for a colour scheme which would incorporate it along with colours I do actually like!

I returned to an old favourite- the Colour Scheme Designer and chose an "analogic" scheme which gave me this (with a bit of tweeking of the boundaries from me of course)

I really liked the scheme and began this bangle back in December but when I returned to it today I felt there was something missing- typical me!

So, back to the scheme designer and this time I chose an "Accented Analogic" scheme and got this. I love the addition of the orange/ ywllow/ mustard (or gold which is what I will mainly use) and began using it right away.


Color by COLOURlovers

Dagger schemes

I'm still working on my "Faux Crochet" technique and have made these two reversible bangles which use quite similar schemes- lots of browns, pinks and golds.

The first one uses gold dagger beads which also have hints if pinks and purples on them. I teamed these with brown hex beads in shiny and matte.


My second one uses pink daggers beads which have swirls of other colours running through them. I teamed these with seed beads in pinks and browns.



Keeping to the same colour scheme I have also beaded this bangle using pearls in lost of shades of chocolate brown, pinks and greens.

Flocking

I spent the day with the lovely and talented Julie Smallwood of Natty Jewels and had lots of fun playing around with colour and flock.

The item we were flocking was an old table with a distinctive texture. At first the plan was to section it all off into small squares but we soon realised this was beyond our level of patience and skill so we moved onto using the tiles as natural barriers between each colour.


Next was making the colour choices- there were lots of lovely colours to choose from.
I'm glad it wasn't my decsion, I would have had trouble choosing!

We began by Julie narrowing down her choices to her favourite colours.


As there were 9 squares she narrowed them down further to 9 colours.


We soon realised though that choosing 9 which were different enough without there being too much of a bias towards one colour wasn't going to be easy. She wanted it to look balanced with no one colour or variant of that colour featuring too much.

So we changed plan and instead went for purples, lilacs and pinks which all seemed to work together nicely.


And we were off!

Flocking is time consuimg and messy and a few hours later we'd run out of background paint, were covered in fluff and tired and the table still wasn't finished.
Oh well- off we went to dinner and I left Julie to finish the table on her own....

Reverse Chilli Bead

I have now beaded a new version of my Chilli Beaded Bead- but this time swapped around the orange and purple beads and used purple crystals instead of orange.

I was interested to see how different they looked and although it's a simple colour swap it really does make a different.

The bead with more orange looks a lot larger- this is because the lighter colour 'expands' it visually. That's why people tell you to wear black if you want to look slimmer!

A similar effect is apparent in my piece Geometric 3-4-4.
3-4-4a looks a lot larger than 3-4-4b as the use of colour in the 'valleys' makes them visually expand and when the two bracelets are put next to each other it is hard to believe they are exactly the same- just the use of black is swapped.

Another visual difference is that the green on the 'purple' bead looks a lot darker than it does on the 'orange' one. On the orange it is a lot 'springier'.


I am teaching these beaded beads in New York in November.

Chilli Bead

A new beaded bead today- I'm loving making these at the moment!
I need to move onto red soon but I'm away and didn't realy pack any red beads with me so am sticking with orange instead.

The colour scheme for this one was inspired by a plant I saw on my recent trip to Arundel Castle.


I loved the mix of green red/ orange and purple and couldn't resist translating that into a simple colour scheme.



The original photo/ plant had more green in it but as I'm working with orange I upped the use of that colour instead.

Inspiring Orange

A visit to Arundel Castle and its gardens again today.

Last time I was looking for yellow but this time it was orange I was seeking out.



Also loved the texture of this bobbly plant


Great orange chillis


Loved this scheme- red, orange and yellow are to be expected but the added bonus of purple is fab!


A close up of the mixed scheme.


Purple and green- will file away for future use!

A day in Paris

I am in Paris, the sun is shining, I have no-one else to think about and no time to be home by. Could this day get any better?
Well okay, I could have found beads but that's a minor complaint!

It seemed that all around me today was colour. From the food I ate, to the museum pieces I saw, even down to the building works I walked by.

My mind was especially focused on looking for oranges as that is the colour I'm now working with, but that didn't limit the photos I took.

My trip to Paris began with lunch and this great colour combo of melon gazpacho- some sort of sweet sorbet (the taste bud explosion wiped out my memory of what it was) and yellow bread (not nice to eat but set the colour combo off great!)


My next stop was a visit to the Museum of Decorative Arts.

This cabinet of a dark oak with a strip of cobalt blue took my breathe away and I wish I had a picture that captured it better. I will definitely come back to this combo when I work in blue!


I love glass in many forms and this arrangement of mixed colours and shapes looked fabulous.


This piece of glassware with its two different 'blues' was interesting.


These multi-coloured works which used pink, blue, green and purple were, inspiring.


On the look out for orange combinations which appealed, I found this chair with its use of orange, white, yellow and a navy blue. I like the idea of the blue as I think black would have been too 'garish' or 'warning sign' if that makes sense- the blue definitely works to bring the sharpness down. Blue is orange's complementary colour.


More orange- here is orange, white and black- although I like this combination in the plastic I do think using navy- such as in the photo above- would have been nice and altered how the orange looked.


Here orange is mixed with a khaki green- I like this and would never have thought of it.


Once I'd finished in the musuem I was off to wander and take more photos.

I came across these wonderful blue doors and couldn't resist a photo- I think the redish-gold door furniture subtly makes this colour work so well.


Green and grey- who knew?


In a shop, looking for beads, I came across this range of jewellery focused on orange and pink- I think this is my favourite way to use orange!