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Excerpt from Instant Holiday Glam: Color Palettes of Splendor. Available as a downloadable PDF.
©iStockphoto.com/Luis_A_Pena
Were you taught the crazy idea that one should never mix metals when wearing or making jewelry? I was. It took me a long time to shake the feeling that I was breaking the law when I combined copper, silver, and gold. But this is a “law” worth breaking! And it is all the rage now: look at any jewelry or clothing catalogue.
Metals form the core of holiday glam: shiny, reflective, and dazzling. Their rich glimmer elevates anything! Work consciously with metals’ warm or cool undertones: gold is related to yellow, a warm color; silver is cool because it has a bluish cast, or is void of color and warmth.
So many metals, so little time!
True metallic finishes like hematite, copper, and bronze add richness and depth. Muted in color, their non-distracting reflectivity lends an air of traditional elegance. Mix them with more brilliant golds.
• when mixing metals, choose one to dominate the overall color scheme
• try clear facted crystal accents with metallic palettes
• work with different metallic textures, such as filigree, brushed, matte, etched, and patterned
• texture, texture, texture! (see the photo to the left)
• add chains anywhere possible!
• vitrail finishes emulate the luxurious look colored metals because of a rainbow finish over a silver coating
Try these suggested palettes of mixed metals:
Copper, Bronze, Gold
Hematite, Pearl, Black, Gold
Silver, Black, Gold
Silver, Galvanized Copper, Gold
Suggested Delicas in Metal and Metallic finishes
I bought this fun necklace for an annual holiday party. It was almost perfect, but lacked one thing: drops of red. So I added them. Now it will match my red velvet top with the long bell sleeves.
by Margie Deeb
excerpt from Margie’s Muse, September 2010
excerpt from Margie’s Muse, September 2010
I’m often asked how to use the colorwheel. That question takes considerable time to answer (it took me four years and 144 pages to answer to it thoroughly in The Beader’s Guide to Color). But it’s a question that deserves an answer short enough to introduce you to the most valuable color tool I know.
I now have a shorter answer for you: the Instant Color Wheel Guide, a PDF download for $3.95. I’ve designed this digital publication so that in 10 minutes or less you’ll understand the basics of using the color wheel, and you’ll no longer be confused or intimidated by it. It’s easy to understand, and full of examples.
Let’s me tell you about my approach to using color. Then we’ll explore one of my favorite color schemes using some of the material from the Instant Color Wheel Guide.
Before I make any color decisions I always ask myself (and answer myself) these kinds of questions:
What impact do I want my finished color scheme to have?
How do I want the viewer to feel when they see it?
What am I trying to convey?
The color scheme you choose to work with will depend on the answers to these most critical questions. The descriptive words at the top of each page of the guide will help you answer the questions; they give a broad view of nature of the color scheme.
For example, let’s say you want a color scheme that is evocative, poetic, harmonious, and easy to work with. That fits the description of the analogous color scheme. Let’s look at it…
Highpoints of analogous color schemes:
- 2 or more colors adjacent to each other on the wheel (including pure hues, shades, and tints)
- they create gentle movement because the colors are similar
- they are temperature specific, leaning toward warm or cool
- to maintain the overall mood use no more than 4 analogous colors
Because of their proximity, adjacent colors are intrinsically harmonious, making them easy to combine successfully.
Analogous schemes fill our world: the iridescence of peacock feathers, the changing blues and greens under the ocean, and the yellow-to-pink gradations of a lotus blossom.
The analogous palette has a mellifluous quality. Its colors swirl and flow into one another, defying boundaries. Where does blue end and blue-green begin? The analogous palette seeks no answer. It just revels in the mystery of movement.
partial excerpt from Margie’s Muse, August 2010
bead by Kristy Nijenkamp
How to create a necklace color scheme from an existing bead (or fabric) is one of the questions I’ve been asked the most over the years.
Last week Rachel D. wrote:
“I have a question about working with beads that are multi-colored. I have purchased lampwork glass beads that are made up of at least 3 colors. I would like to know if I should choose 1 color out of the multi-color bead and use as an accent bead or just use plain clear glass beads as accents? I hear different opinions.”
I told Rachel “Its difficult for me to give you my most informed answer without seeing the beads. My preference is color, not clear glass beads. So I would try to choose 1 color within the beads to use as a unifying color. That is not a rule, that is where I would start experimenting.”
To give my best answer to Rachel and you, dear reader, I devote this August 2010 Margie’s Muse column.
I’ve also created a fully illustrated, bullet-pointed, picture-says-all PDF guide titled 7 Strategies for Extracting Palettes.
Let’s discuss this question with one of the strategies outlined in 7 Strategies for Extracting Palettes.
Strategy #1 is the simplest approach, yet often the most difficult to pull-off successfully. I call it “All Colors Present.”
In this approach you employ all the colors of the existing source (the focal bead) in the necklace itself.
The reason this approach is often difficult to pull-off successfully is because it risks becoming too busy and chaotic. There’s already so much visual activity in that focal bead: you don’t want to make a necklace that competes with it for attention. Your job is to shape the colorful chaos into a pleasing degree of form and order. To do this…”
40 palettes, pages of gorgeous jewelry created with Pantone’s 10 seasonal colors, explanations, how to work with colors, inspiration and eye candy galore!
You can download a FREE preview before you buy.
Look how Kristie Roeder of Artisan Clay blog has let the Color Report inspire her work!
click on photo for enlargement
Let me show you one of the most fun themed beading contests I’ve seen in awhile: The Gothic Beading Contest organized by Trudy of the Black Crow Dutch Beadwork forum.
Trudy loves black (don’t we all!) and Gothic themes, so she inspired others to get creative within those very broad guidelines.
13 bead artists participated in the cuff category and 9 in the choker/necklace category. The forum used an international independent jury so moderators or owners were free to participate.Their list of sponsors is too long to include here, but many are from the USA, including me.
I’ve shown you a few photos, but you must go look at all the entries – they are quite creative and fun.
Trudy did a fantastic job putting this together, and organizing sponsors.
Makes me wish I were Dutch!
click on photo for enlargement
click on photo for enlargement
I had so much fun giving patterns to the winners of the “Answer & Win” contest in May that I’ve decided to give away my beautiful seed bead weaving patterns for FREE and will continue, 2 by 2 a month, until they are all free!
This includes peyote, brick stitch, square stitch, and looming versions.
June features are “Celebration” (one of my most popular) and “Lotus Blossom.”
Tell all bead weaving maniacs to come and get ’em! (PDF downloads only, not the hard copies.)
Click the link, then scroll down to find the free patterns.
Heartbroken over the devastation in the Gulf of Mexico, I’ve been researching the threatened wildlife, and drawing a tribute to them in my sketchbook. Here are some of my pages… there are more to come…
excerpt from the June 2010 Margie’s Muse column
know the major categories of seed bead finishes and you’ll understand how each interacts with light and reflects color
be able to make confident choices to create the effects you want in your beaded jewelry and art
be able to enjoy the thrill of working with seed beads creatively, artistically, and expressively.
Seed beads are chameleons. They change their color—sometimes dramatically. When strung as a hank, seed beads will enchant you, casting a spell that sounds like “Buy me. You can’t live without my color.” Then when you stitch or string it alongside ten other colors (you couldn’t live without) they darken or lighten, disappear or pop out jarringly.
Glass beads are the grandest of visual tricksters. The smaller the bead, the trickier the tricks. Color changes radically based on the light source, surrounding beads, thread, background, bead finish, and other factors.
For example: did you know that when you look at the surface of a silver-lined bead you see about 50% reflected light and 50% reflected color? If it’s a green silver-lined bead, you are not seeing all green… you are actually seeing much of the light source illuminating the bead.
A bead’s color is altered by its surface finish. Depending on the bead’s finish, the same hue of green can appear hard and rough or soft and smooth, iridescent as cellophane or solid as velvet.
Admittedly, our pre-mixed medium of beads limits our color selection. However, surface finishes give us a creative playground unavailable in other mixable mediums such as paint. Red paint is altered only by another color or substance (oil, glaze, varnish). In contrast, red in the form of beads comes in a matte finish, semi-matte, opaque, transparent, iris, pearlescent, or some combination of the above.
Understanding a beads’ reflectivity as well as color provides a more comprehensive approach to designing with beads.
Start by thinking in terms of reflectivity first, color second when you are choosing colors. When you look at a particular bead, how much light are you seeing? How much actual color are you receiving?
…To read entire article with many more photos & a downloadable PDF, go to Margie’s Muse …
I offer a one-day class exploring the issues presented by bead finishes. I also offer an on-line class at CraftEdu titled “Seed Bead Finishes and Their Interaction with Color.” At the end of this hour long class you will:
We’ve been working for months, and finally CraftEdu.com has launched! Its an online class site offering the finest professional instructors (me included!) for all kinds of media.
One of the trickiest issues we bead artists deal with is the play of light and color on different finishes of glass. Glass beads are the grandest of visual tricksters. The smaller the bead, the trickier the tricks. Color changes radically based on the light source, surrounding beads, thread, background, bead finish, and other factors.
I’ve developed a 2-part online class at CraftEdu.com called “Seed Bead Finishes and Their Interaction with Color.” In the class I explain major groups of finishes (opaque, transparent, matte, silver-lined, ceylon, and more) and we explore how much light they reflect, and how much color they transmit. If you can grasp that, you’ll be able to make much more conscious choices in finishes and color.
I also outline problems we encounter with certain finishes, and things to be aware of.
Here are some of the screen shots from the class:
If you are confused about how light and color work with different finishes, you’ll love this class. Stop by for a FREE preview.
Also, I am offering a promotional special: if you buy one of my classes at CraftEdu.com, I’ll give you a FREE Color Report for Bead and Jewelry Designers. (You’ll need to email me after you register for the class.)
While you are at CraftEdu.com, be sure to watch my FREE overview of what you can do with seed beads… I had a lot of fun with it:
Color for Bead Artists 