A Birthday Gift Set and Color Recipe

Every year we make some jewelry pieces for Dave's mom's birthday and she always looks forward to it.  This year we decided to make her a matching necklace and earrings from our Tie Dye beads. 

Here is a closer view of the actual beads:

The colors in these beads are not the Pantone Fall 2011 colors but they are a favorite of ours.  The main colors I used to make the beads are Purple Orchid (recipe #10-8), Olive Green (Recipe #7-8 -- same as this fall's Pantone Cedar) and a yellow green mix I call Avocado (10 parts yellow, 1/2 part green, and 1 part gold).   I of course combined it with the beige mix. (recipe #2-8).

The earrings are a clip on style.  We generally makes these as a custom order for anyone who requests them.

Pantone Fall 2011 Color Combo

Here are some beads I created using a mix of the Pantone fall 2011 colors Phlox, Cedar, Bamboo and Orchid Hush.  I made these "Tie Dye" beads using a technique I call my "mini-mokume".  It really isn't a mokume gane at all but sort of starts out that way and then ends up in a nice compact-size cane for slicing.  It is a really super quick method to see how various colors will work together (or not) without wasting a lot of clay or time.  I share this technique and how to make the beads as a bonus feature in my Clay Color System tutorial.

When we strung these beads, we combined them with olive green cat's eyes and some hand crafted rondelles in lemon curry which we had on hand.   Since the Pantone Fall color Bamboo is simply a lighter shade to the lemon curry, they worked very well with this combo.

Whenever I mix up my new blend, I like to save it on index cards with the color recipe numbers and add them to the back of my Color System album so I remember what I did in case I need to mix up some more.

I also like to make up extra color chips of the latest Pantone and a few other favorite colors so I can play around with them to see what color combinations I might like.  I throw them into my purse when I go shopping and like to look for matching colors so I will have something new to wear with my latest jewelry pieces at any upcoming shows.

Cedar - Pantone Fall 2011 Color

Cedar is a sort of olive green which is an excellent fall color.  It is pretty much exactly the same as the Woodbine recipe # 7-4 in my Clay Color System tutorial.  Woodbine was one of the Pantone colors for fall of last year and it combines very nicely with some of the new colors for this season.

You will notice how the color appears to be more muted and lighter on the Pantone site (above photo) than what is actually shown on my Pantone color chip (shown below).  This is why I do not rely on color matching using a computer screen but rather a set of Pantone color cards I purchased a few years ago that gives me a more accurate color sample.