St Valery Sur Somme

I'm over in France and I don't know if it''s a combination of the sunshine, rest and good food and drink but this town oozes colour!
I seemed to spend the day coming across unexpected dashes of strong colour amidst all the natural schemes.

I have spent the day taking photos which I hope will provide colour inspiration for future projects.The sky before we set off:



The view over the water:




Some colourful shutters:




Garge doors:



Painted bricks and shutters:




Some irises:




More painted brickwork and shutters:



Color by COLOURlovers

Tiles:




Bright shutters:



A boat on the water:

Subtle shades

I don't usually use subtle colours so this scheme is a bit of a change for me!

To create this pendant I used cream tiny beads combined with gold/copper/ brown beads and a copper chain.



Color by COLOURlovers

Onye 5

I'm busy working away on my 5th version of my Onye design.
This one uses some light mint green vintage buttons I was given and I have teamed them with some gold and turquoise seed beads.



Color by COLOURlovers

Metallics And Mint

I seem to only be working with metallics at the moment- specifically silver.

I normally try and involve this in beads as I am so wary of the galvanised finish. All that work for the colour to just rub off- I hate it!

But some guidelines I decided to try and work to specified the following colours: "Gold, silver, pale blues, sweet mauve, gunmetal, hint of mint green"
So I headed to my silver beads and have found it hard to leave them every since!
First up is my Miriam Bangle which I first beaded using silver, gunmetal and these lovely violet Swarovski rivolis.




Color by COLOURlovers

I have previously written (nearly 4 years ago- yikes!) about making sure you mix matte with shiny and that still applies and the gunmetal beads perfrom that task in this piece.

Next up was another version of the bangle and this time I took inspired from the mint green mentioned in the brief.
I matched the green up with a dark forest green and a crystal that is mainly clear.

Color by COLOURlovers

After beginning with the silver on my bangle I continued it for these crystal interlocking pieces. I have combined them with olivine green crystals which I absolutely love.



Color by COLOURlovers

Crystal Balls (Primary and Secondary)

Phew- it's been a while!

I haven't done much beading recently and what I did I was either keeping secret or making in silvers which didn't seem very colourful.

Anyway- here is one of my latest pieces which uses colours based on the colour wheel- but nice and sparkly.

You can see more about the actual project here.

The colours I used for the crystals rotate through the colour wheel and use the primary and secondary colours (red- orange- yellow- green- blue- violet- red).

My first choice when beading this was the colour of the seed beads.
This I wanted to be a "neutral" colour i.e. one that would compliment the crystals but not to be too strong to take over.

The most commonly used neutrals are black and white- but I wanted neither. I hate using white and black is a nightmare to photograph and show detail with so they were out for those reasons.
My next choice would have been grey (I love this as a neutral and used it in my "Freeform Cuffs"
But I didn't have just the right shade of grey I wanted- they were either too silver, too dark or too matte.

So I rummaged through all my bead boxes (I have a few...) and came up with a lovely copper colour.

This is not a colour I have used as a neutral before but when I put it with the crystals I wanted to use it went with all of them perfectly so I may use it again.

It was just the right shade and finish- it was reflective so took on the colours of all the crystals, it was quite clear and shiny so didn't absorb light or distract from the crystal- just perfect.

Egg Shell Shades

Today I'm playing around with polymer clay and using one of the colour resources I now am lucky enough to own- these great ready-made colour samples (I previously recommended them on one of my resources posts).

I was experimenting with an idea I had a few years ago and had yet to actually sit down and play with: using egg shells to add a mosaic look to the clay.

I knew I wanted a beige colour as the background but had no idea how to mix it- so my new toy turned out to be a great help.
I flicked through all the sections and chose a colour that I liked and learnt that I needed 2 parts white to 1 part each of yellow and brown.


I cut these amounts, chopped them up and began mixing...


and conditioning.


Soon I had the perfect colour to be the background for my shell pieces without having to sit there and spend ages adding colours and getting it wrong.


This will appear as a project in issue 24 of Bead magazine- out 21st July 2010.

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....

Colour In Paris

A quick trip to Paris where just like my previous trips (here, here and here) I find lots of colour inspiration.
A walk through the city brings me upon a statue (I'm not sure if it had a purpose) in emerald green.
The green got lighter towards the bottom and it stood out as an unusual colour to use.




Later in the day we visited Montmarte and on the way found the most amazing lighting shop.
They only sold one type of light-shade- but it was enough!




They were simple balls which fitted over strings of lights and you could buy them already made in colour themes of mix and match to make your perfect combination.

It ws the most mesmerising sight to come across- and we weren't the only ones who found it so. The shop ws a magnet for people to stop and look at the colours.

Unfortunately we were travelling light but there's always another time...

The next day we came across these wonderful mosaic on the metro- very inspiring.

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.

Colour Of The Year

Pantone have chosen turquoise as their colour of the year- which is great for me as I love it!
My first item using it in 2010 are these simple wirework and mixed bead earrings.

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.

Bit Of A Catch-Up

Ooops where did the time go?!?!?

Life and time rushed by and I hadn't realised it had been such a long time since I last posted here. Unfortunately that also means I hadn't got much beading done.

Well, I did make one lovely set of bangles but as they weren't in red (which I'm meant to be using) I didn't mention them.



But I'm back and finishing off using red- and my last project is my 3rd in my red series of what I'm currently calling my "Stunning, secret samplers"

This last one is red and green which is not my favouite colour combination but by mixing up the reds and greens I used, rather than just sticking to the "Christmas versions" I really like the finished result. Unfortunately I left my fully red version in the office ao you can't see it here but as soon as I get a chance I'll photograph them all together

Colour sayings

After I posted with the titles "red and green should never be seen", which is the version of the saying I grew up with, I have had a couple of emails from people with the ones they know.
After much googling it seems there are lots of variations on this saying - I wonder why on earth people felt the need for them all?
Actually looking at them now they all seem to feature green- I wonder if it's just because more words rhyme with it?

But it also seems that not only are there variations on the saying, there are lots of different ending- you can mix and match to your pleasure!

Some I have found are:
Red and green should never be seen...
Blue and green should never be seen...
Pink and green should never be seen...

Some of the possible additions are:
...except on an Irish queen/ colleen
...without something inbetween
...without yellow inbetween
...except on fools and flowers (the only non-rhyming one?)

Other non-related sayinsg I found wee:
Never wear brown in town
Fawn should not be worn
Only wear yellow if you are mellow

I think the theory that these rules are just based on rhyming words does seem to fit.

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?