Even More Yellow And Violet

Ok, I admit it- I am in love with this colour scheme!

I needed to finish a bangle, make another bangle and also some more little beaded beads for a new pattern which will be available to purchase soon.

I had already made the bangle in violet with some yellow so just added extra yellow to that to finish the outside edge off.

Then what colour to do the other bangle in?
Well, obviously yellow was what came to mind!



This one I wanted to bead in an analogous colour scheme so used yellow, orange and brown which is much subtler than pairing yellow with violet.

The beads I am using are firepolished with some being a lot sparklier than others which gives extra interest to the finished pieces.

Yet More Yellow And Violet

I have finished my three bangles and as I said last time I went back to working with yellow and mixed it with violet for one of my favourite colour combinations.

I used size 8 seed beads mixed with yellow lentil beads in two different patterns.
To add extra interest to the seed beads I mixed two different finishes: a metallic and a plain dyed.

13 Months Of Colour

Ok, I admit it, time has just slipped by and I haven't been able to keep up with the challenge.

Life got in the way.

I originally planned to spent a year looking at 6 different colours (yellow, orange, red, violet, blue and green) dedicating two months to each colour.

I did ok with yellow, orange, red and even managed to squeeze in some violet but by the end of 2009 life got a lot more hectic.

Add in travelling a lot for work, Christmas and the magazine I was working for upping the number of issues by 33% and I barely found much time for beading and any I did do was often dictated by other factors and I wasn't able to devote the time to it I wanted.

So, I have decided to wind it all back in and go back to the start and change the parameters.

So, rather than dictate a set amount of time to each colour, I want to work with each one until I personally feel I have learnt all I can about it.

This will hopefuly stop me rushing through a colour, as I felt I did with yellow, to meet the schedule when I would rather play with it more.

So, in celebration of this I have gone back to yellow and violet!

These are two colours and a scheme I fell in love with all the way back at the start which surprised me.

I am in the middle of beading a set of three banngles which use each colour to different amounts.

More Violet and Yellow

I can't help it- I love this colour combination!


I recently began making this new sea urchin in violet and yellow but wasn't happy with the size of the seed beads with the daggers so it sat around waiting for me to decide whether to cut it up.

Then when I made that decision I needed to find the beads as I'd managed to mislay them.

So, once all that was done it was back to beading and this didn't take me long at all.

I made my first of these back in 2003 and have meant ever since then to make another one. Once I had decided to do it- in yellow and violet of course- it then was just matter of tracking down enough yellow dagger beads- not an easy task.

But I got there in the end and am delighted with it- the set of them make a very colouful display.

More Violet

After using violet in more subtle way in my beaded beads I couldn't resist adding a touch of "zing" and pairing it with yellow in this bangle and beaded bead.

I first fell in love with the yellow/ violet combination right at the start of this colour challenge when I used it in one of my geometric bracelets and it's one I've returned to again and again since.



I love the way the yellow combines well with the violet but really lifts it up and stops it becoming a "blur of violet" which I think a lot of work in this colour becomes.

If I get nothing else out of this challenge I at least got one of my favourite colour combos!

Sparkly Crystal Wheels

I'm working on series of beaded beads for Bead magazine and these sparkly ones will be the first published.
I began making them in lots of different colours but then ordered some violet crystals just for them to fit in with my new colour in the colour challenge- finally I am on violet (just 2 months behind now!)

I matched them with a lovely grey to keep them toned down. My previous use of violet was at the start of this challenge when I was working with yellow so I was looking for a subtler way of using it.

Back To Beading

I first made these "Sea Urchins" when Carol Perrenoud visited the UK back in 2003 and have always meant to bead another one.

As soon as I started this colour challenge I was itching to bead one with yellow dagger beads and violet seed beads. Which of course are each others complementaries and a combination I have fallen in love with!

Unfortunately I found it hard to track down large, solid-yellow dagger beads in the UK in the quantity I needed- 135.

I did manage to find 20 small ones in a solid bright yellow and some large ones in a transparent yellow but neither were what I wanted.

But last night I raided my bead stash and found these transparent yellow small ones so thought I'd give it a go with them.

But now I've started I'm not sure.

I still used size 8 seed beads but think I should use size 11 instead so the daggers/ spikes are still the same scale as they are on the others.

But can I bear to start again?

Yet more red

I'm still working on my series of herringbone ropes for the red months in my Colour Challenge and have almost completed the red+ mixed colours version. It just needs its hidden clasp added.

I've now started to bead my all reds version and as soon as this one is done I'll be beading one in red and its complementary colour- green.

I began this red version planning to just use reds but found that you could nto see any distinction between them as the rope grew so I went back to the drawing board and added in pinks and red-violets so you could actually see some of the work I was putting in!

No Rest For The Wicked

I'm on a roll now- after months of not feeling very creative, this colour challenge has had the desired effect and I'm itching to create at any opportunity!

I'm currently working on a new herringbone rope necklace. I have made a couple of these before, see here and here.

This one will be like the second one and will have a hidden clasp.

To fit in with my colour challenge I'm going to make a couple of these based on red colour schemes.

My first one matches reds with greens, blues, violets, oranges, pinks, yellows and golds- in fact every colour on the colour wheel and every shade inbetween!

An analogous colour scheme is where you use colours next to each other on the colour wheel.
Previously when using red in an analogous scheme I have matched it with yellow and orange- but this time I'm matching it with every colour but using red as the dominant colour.

The reds I am using go from bright "red, red" to pink, to violet and to orangy-reds. Click on the photo for a larger view.


The contrast colours I'm using go from blue, to green, to violet, to gold, to orange, to yellow and just about everything in between- I just grabbed tubes and tubes of beads and went for it! Click on the photo for a larger view.

This will appear as a project in a future issue of Bead magazine.

Geometric 3-1-1

I finally finished my new set of beaded beads all done in reds with bright colours to match which I have been working on for a few weeks.

I decided I wanted to make these nice and bright so added in yellow, orange, blue, green, teal and purple.


You can wear them all threaded onto a bangle at once or indivually- or any combination inbetween.

Colourful Temari

I had a busy day today temari-ing- something I've been itching to do for a while. I love using threads and of course they're just another excuse to play with colour!

The first one I made was a Rose Garden design and, as I'm still working away using reds, I used an analogous scheme with red, orange and yellow.

The second was more complicated, and probably the most complicated one I have made, and uses an "interlinked pentagon" design.

Again to keep in with the challenge I used 12 different reds. Right from orangy-red, through pinky-reds and violet-reds, and teamed them with a green as the contrast colour.

As I made this one I used pins to help me see where I needed to work and planned to add another embellishement to the centre of each pentagon at the end.

But once I had finished I decided I liked the look of them so may leave them in, at least until I decide what else to do.

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!

Yellow Lover Beads

After realising one of my favourite outfits was yellow based I knew I had to create something directly inspired by it.

So, out came the polymer clay:

I rolled snakes, chopped then up and combined them into a larger snake:

Into my extrduer they went and voila- long, dull grey tubes:

but ye of little faith- look at the ends of them- how fab are they?!?!?

A bit of playing around and I make some flat and pillow beads to add to my ever growing colelction of beads waiting to be strung.

You can learn how to make these beads in Donna Kato's canes book.

Donna Kato bracelet

So when I last wrote about my bracelet it was waiting to be lined and decorated.
Today I got to complete it- it now just needs sanding etc to get it nice and shiny.

I began by lining it using the same violet I had mixed for the zipper cane. Next I mixed what was left of the violet with yellow, of course:

This I used to make some skinner blend bullseye canes:

I surrounded the canes with what was left of my zipper cane:

A few baking later and my bracelet is done all bar the sanding:

Khaki green

If someone asked you how to make khaki green what would be your guess?

Mine would never have been to mix violet and yellow- but that seems to work- well if my polymer clay experiments are anything to go by!

As I've been mixing clays to finish my bracelet and using the complemtary colours of yellow and violet it becomes apaprent that when mixed they make a khaki green (to my eyes- you may call it something different)

This may explain why the colour scheme I chose for my latest geometric piece works so well combining yellow and violet with khaki to tone it all down.

To work with this discovery I decided to play some more with mixing yellow and violet and make some simple, flat, clay beads.

I began by mixing piece of yellow, violet and black (which also makes green when a little is mixed in with yellow) and forming into a sausage to put in my clay extruder:

All extruded- and you can see the khaki already:

Joined into a rough shape and surrounded by more black:

Neatening up the block (I learnt a lot about making square canes by doing this!):

I decided to cut my beads at an angle for a different look:

The finished beads- to add to my pile of things waiting to be strung!

Playing with polymer clay - day 3- part 2

The last afternoon here at PolyClay days and the class I have been waiting for- Donna Kato and her fabulous bracelets- so exciting.
I'll start by posting some of Donna's own bracelets so you can see what we're aiming for. Her use of colour is wonderful.



We begin by making the bases of our bracelets- in black- and then a zipper cane. We were given black and white clays but I already had an idea of the colour scheme for my finished bracelet- yellow and violet- so mixed up a clay using violet, white and grey to get a nice, subtle colour which I'll use again as the bracelet lining and for decorative canes.


After our bases were formed and baked we added our canes and cooked again- this is how mine is at the end of the day- hopefully I'll get some time soon to work on it a bit more.

Playing with polymer clay - day 2- part 2

The afternoon of my second day at EuroClay carnival was spent with Sylvie Peraud doing her project based in in-filling colour into baked polymer clay.

Once again the clay was provided and by the time I chose it was pretty much yellow left- fate huh?

But as I knew we were potentially combining it with black I once again couldn't bring myself to use the "warning colour sheme" so made a Skinner blend with some white and brown added- which of course completely altered the yellow.

After I had baked my pieces I began to carve into them to add patterns.


I decided to in-fill my two pieces using colour theory- so one one piece I added brown to create more of an analogous colour scheme.


On the second piece I added a violet for a complementary scheme- I used a "soft" violet so it wasn't so bold.

Playing with polymer clay - day 2- part 1

My second day at The EuroClay Carnival and two new classes today.

The first one I was looking forward but had no hope I would actually be able to do it as I don't think I can work intricately. Ok, I know I do intricate work with beads but I think that's different- the holes tell me where to go and there's no hope of me squashing it all as there is with clay!

Our teacher for the morning was Iris Mishly (and here) and our project was flower canes.

As you can see I got on ok with these in the end!

We began by choosing 6 colours- hmm- looks like only 5 in the photo!

For some reason the violet just wanted to appear exactly the same as the blue. So I messed around with a few setting on my camera and managed to get a photo which looked a bit nearer the reality.

A bit more fiddling on my computer and the colours I really chose were these. I have no idea why this happened and have put this top of my list to look into on my colour investigations!

Anyway, I didn't like the garishness of the orange so decided to alter it by adding blue and brown- the colour I started with is on the right and the resulting mix is on the left. I ended up adding roughly double the quantities of the blobs of blue and brown you see in the photo.

The two main things I have discovered about the advantages of working with clay over beads are:
1- Colour mixing- what a joy to be able to come up with your own colours and as long as you have the basic colours of clay, the colour world is your oyster!
2- Speed- I can't believe how quick it is to make thing using clay- such a change over my beadwork.

I next needed to come up with a Skinner Blend using a colour and white and decided to choose my violet clay. Note the speckles in my white clay- it was impossible to keep clean!

Skinner blends are wonderful things and enable you to come up with so many shades within minutes- imagine trying to track down all those shades of bead to get a blend like that- impossible!

If you want to work out a colour scheme that blends from one colour to another than this useful online tool will help

Lastly I made a striped stack to use for the centre of my flower canes.

This was rolled with white to make a cane and here's a close up of my sheet so you can see the tiny stripes.

The next part of the class was assembling all we had made into flower canes and this was great fun and I was better at it than I thought I'd be- but my no means any good at it compared to anyone else- one of my flowers just looks like slices of an orange!

The last part of the class was spent layering our canes onto a sheet of backing clay. I struggled with just my flowers at first as the pink/ violet ones didn't go well with the orange ones but by putting slices of the flower centre canes they all came together- just a shame i didn't like it- it was all too bright for me- and I can't get over thinking it now looks like slices of oranges and strawberries- still better luck next time.

I used my sheet to make pillow beads- another first - and bracelet sections- and am hoping that if I string them with dark purple beads inbetween they'll stop looking so "citrussy"

God- how much did I make?!?!? doing all of that in seed beads would have taken me weeks or months- this polymer clay stuff is growing on me by the second!

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