Thursday, August 7, 2014

Pantone Fall 2014 Fashion Colors Mauve Mist, Aluminum and Cognac

I missed posting yesterday as we had to go out of town for a bit so I decide to wrap things up and combine the last three of the top ten Pantone Fall 2014 Fashion Color polymer clay recipes here.

There has been a bit of discussion and a few comments from polymer clayers who feel they do not like the Pantone colors for this fall.  Some feel they are too bright where others feel some of the colors are not appropriate for the fall season.  There might be a few colors I am not crazy about either but it all comes down to personal taste and let's face it, if we weren't all different, we would all like the same food, the same color and so on.

While most of these Pantone colors are not the traditional autumn shades (orange, brown, gold),  not everyone can wear these colors.  We all have different skin color tones and so therefore not everyone is going to look their best in brown where others it would be an excellent choice.  For myself, I have been told that lime green is "my color" and it brings out the green in my eyes.  Purple on the other hand makes my complexion look very drained and pale and I can look sickly.  I can wear purple, however, if there is enough lime green to offset it.

There is a system available called "color draping".  Colors are put into various categories (Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring) and a professional will test your skin tone to see what best suits you.



Another thing to consider is if you are creating jewelry or accessory pieces for yourself to wear or are you selling them to other people?  If you are making items for others to wear you need to think of your customer base and their color preferences and not just your own.  I hardly wear anything in purple but it is in big demand by our customers and so we always make sure we have a selection of items available in this color.

Some of the Pantone Fashion colors are not intended to "stand alone" but are considered more neutral (Aluminum for instance) and meant to be used more as an accent or "filler".  That is how I would use all of these last three colors and will show some examples of this a little later on.  In the meantime, here are the color recipes using Kato clay:

 Clay recipe for
Mauve Mist
(a soft and elegant light shade of purple)

1 part "Plum" #10-5*
4 parts Mix#1-2*


Clay recipe for
Aluminum
This is a pretty close match to the
color recipe for "Dove Grey" #1-14*


Clay recipe for
Cognac
(a rich autumn brown with a gold tone)

Follow the same recipe
for the color "Russet" #3-4*
but reduce the amount of copper to only 1 part.

* For these base color recipes using Kato clay, see my "Clay Color System" tutorial

To see some of these fall colors in action, you can follow my Pinterest boards.

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