Color in Focus Bead Reveal

Back on New Year's Day I introduced you to my new feature, Color in Focus.  Over the year, I am going to be taking different groups of color and work with it to create a piece of jewelry.  In this post,  I am going to be revealing the beads I chose to use to work with this month's palette.  

Just to refresh your memory,  I chose the Colored Corn palette by  Design Seeds for this month's focus.  

Colored Corn by Design Seeds

I love the colors in this palette.  The earthy mixture of red and yellow with those touches of Wedgewood blue and grey really spoke to me.  Unfortunately,  they aren't the easiest group of colors to pair beads with.   I really want to use mostly beads from my stash for this exercise because I am certain most jewelry designers are like me, with large groups of beads that are just waiting to become a beautiful piece of jewelry. I spent quite a bit of time pulling beads out and matching them up.  Let me give you a peek at what I chose and then I will explain how the colors match back to the palette.

First, I decided to pick one color as the one to use in focus.  When you are trying to pull a design together you need to have one color as your focus or your piece will not be cohesive and will just look off when you try to put it together.  The other thing you need to remember is that the collection of colors is a guide.  Don't stress out about being perfect with an exact match.   I chose to use the maize yellow as my focus color.  I was lucky, because the ceramic pendant I found not only had a yellow that trailed into red but also had the edge of the piece glazed in a grey tone that matched so well.  From there, I wanted to pay homage to the other colors and also make sure that they all worked together.  So I added glass beads in grey-blue, harvest red and golden yellow.  A few fun ceramic beads in red, yellow and white and those sparkly yellow beads round out what I will be using in my design.

Don't be afraid of color.  If you want to stretch out your design wings and step out of your comfort zone, using color inspirations like the one above is a great place to start.  My second bit of advice is to test.  Not sure two different colors work together?  Test string them or make a quick pair of earrings with them.  Two colors that you are certain will clash may just surprise you.  And if they don't work, then it is on to the next little baggie of beads!  I will be back at the end of the month to reveal what I make with the beads.   In the mean time, if you are participating too or doing something else with color I would love to hear from you!