VioletBeadBlog: 2015

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Designers Guide to Color - BOOKS 1 & 2

I'm exploring colors for my dragons and dragon earrings. I have a set of 5 books that are nothing but COLOR inspiration.

These books are available used pretty cheap on Amazon.

I completed my set with books 4 & 5 last week.

I get into ruts of my happy colors. Purple, Blue and Green (especially Teal Green)

nothing but pages and pages of color combinations

So book one looks like this

This book has mostly 2 color combinations

but is has a few 3 color combinations and

I have already beaded dragon earrings from them

and I plan to make a dragon from this

color combo in the bottom right corner

This is book 2

It has lots of 3 color combos

and some 2 color combos

lots of combos I would never put together myself

but are very nice

I am not into the pastel colors

but bright vivid colors are my fave

Time to get back to my beading

I hope you go looking for color on your own

I have gone to fabric web sights and gotten inspiration

I used a 3 color parachute cord to get a combo so I went looking for more multi color inspiration

Where do you get your color inspiration?

Thursday, September 17, 2015

I'm beginning a journey about color and how to put colors together - join me!

A little back story.... In July 2015, I started dreaming about a dragon necklace. It would be 3D and it's feet would stick out... And I made one. It turned out pretty cool.

Then I made one that showed the colors better so I could make a pattern

Which can be found in my Etsy shop

Well then I started making them and naming them - playing with colors

And then my cousin dreamed about my dragon only as an earring.

and that night I came home to make this pattern

I was wanting to play out of my color comfort zone so I dug out these cool books on color

And I opened them to find color combinations

and I made these

And then these

made these

So I used books on color to come up with theses

I looked some other places to get color inspiration like at the striped parachute cord at the bead store I work at. I picked pink, olivine and grey out from one of those.

You can search for things like quilt squares or quilt fabrics to get inspiration. Most of you can probably open your closet and find all kinds of combos in there.

So I'm going to try to document a journey on color inspiration

Thursday, June 11, 2015

Happily Beading Through My life

So I have neglected this blog horribly. This time my absence is not due to bead block like is usually is… like the topic of my last post… in 2013. It’s actually quite the opposite but where do I begin. I’m going to try to do this one a week. I am going to focus on what I’ve been doing until I’m caught up to the present and then I will try to make sure I don’t forget this blog. I now work at The Beadman in Redding, CA. I spend my days at work, stocking seed beads and ordering things for the store. This is quite possibly the best time of my life. My body aches but my soul smiles so much I almost don’t notice that so much. I have beads and color all around me all day. Then there are the customers. I love the customers but I especially love when I get to connect with other seed beaders. Not only do I have the coolest place to buy beads and teach beading, but I am also there a couple days a week working. Since I have been working there, I have come up with some of my coolest designs. A friend also contributed to my burst of creativity by sending me all of her delica beads. I had never been friends with those little cylinder beads. Another friend had taught me the basic triangle so that is where I started playing. My first triangle design is one of my most popular patterns.