A Colorful Experiment

So I’ve fallen back down the research hole. Which would be fine but in this particular hole, all kinds of sources have been throwing in conflicting advice. There is an elevator that will take me back to ground level, but it’s awfully slow and I’m still not sure that it will take me to the right place or not. There’s another elevator that I’m sure says that it goes up but really will go further down. 

Man, I love talking figuratively to get my point across. Makes things interesting doesn’t it?

Anyway, I did have a brief vacation out of the hole when I spent a week working on these bracelets. This is the original here: Oscar Bracelet, which I had shown before, and while I usually like to make one or a couple of any particular design (see, my bridal designs), I took a good look at it and realized that I would LOVE to see how it would look in other color combinations. 

The original pattern for this, titled "Lattice Lace Bracelet", was designed by Carolyn S. DeGroff of CSD designs (look her up, she’s a great designer) but I tweaked it a bit to fit my aesthetic. 

Lucky for me, my husband is an artist who has a great sense of color combination and he’s also very honest. If I do something that’s not jiving with him, he will gently let me know that it’s not working. When he raves about something, I know it must be really good!

He raved about this one. It was the first one that I tried. I’m not usually a fan of gold, as I have probably mentioned before, but this combination just spoke to me. Besides, it’s a pale gold.

This one was next. He liked it but didn’t really RAVE. Still, I know it’s not bad. Also, for some reason I have come across many who go balls-on-fire crazy for all things purple. I’m not worried about having any takers on this one.

This one he REALLY liked because of how the clear grey beads pick up on the colors of the skin or any other surface that it’s on.  I really liked the blue and grey together. 

This last one is using a color that I find myself using quite a lot; teal. This is funny to me because I used to HATE teal and turquois until I had seen it used in really beautiful ways, like being paired with brown and white. This bracelet almost turned out completely different, but for some reason, that bracelet didn’t want to be made. I swear it, I had to take it apart several times because the thread wouldn’t cooperate and as soon as I switched the beads to the ones I used, I no longer had any thread problem. Figure that, huh? After I finished, I was glad that I listened to the thread.

I had such a hard time picking the pictures to use for this blog. Here's a link to a photo album with more pictures

All of the bracelets have a quartz bead, clear or smoky, as a toggle clasp. I like that because then I don’t have to worry about gold or silver prices. I also think that it adds something special. Funny thing about that… I bought the two strands because when they were strung up I thought they were so pretty, but whenever I used them in a design, I didn’t quite like the look. Until one day, I was trying to figure out what bead to use as a toggle for something else and BAM it hit me. Now they are my favorite go-to beads to finish off a bracelet.  I’m going to be sad when I run out, especially if I have a hard time finding more. But I’m sure I’ll be able to find a great substitute. I’m lucky that way. I might even have some great substitutes now, but I’m not using them because it hasn’t occurred to me yet.  Yes, beads are wonderful and they speak to me in a beautiful language.

Lastly, I feel sometimes that I work with blue far too often and would like to jump into some more reds and greens maybe even orange. I feel sometimes that most people don’t quite like orange as much as I do.   If I’m going to work with more reds and greens, it means I must go shopping, which I’m ITCHING to do, but sometimes I feel bad about buying more things without having specific plans for something. I could very well get out of hand. But that’s the fun part isn’t it?