Buttons in Gold

The wholesale part of our clay has been keeping us busier these days with two more stores added that are now selling our beads, buttons and shawl pins.  One thing we enjoy the most is the freedom we have to create new designs all the time so we do not get bored with making the same piece over and over again.  We are also "tailoring" our work to each store so they all have certain items that are unique only to them and the  same items are not repeated everywhere.


Here are some samples of textured buttons in gold.  We like to use a variety of textures or stamps that lend themselves well to using mica powders, inks, pigments or acrylic paints.  You might recognize a few of the patterns from Helen Breil's texture sheets which I love working with.

Bargello in Autumn Colors

This is one of our latest Bargello sets in some warm autumn colors.  I show how to make the cube shaped beads in one of my latest tutorials, "Make Your Own Rondelle Spacer Beads".

Lovely Leanne is modeling this set.  I love how it seems to come alive on her.  Can you see yourself in it?

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.

Coffee Liqueur, Nougat and Deep Teal

This is another color combination using the Pantone fall 2011 colors, Coffee Liqueur, Nougat and Deep Teal.  I've been busy working on some orders to fill so I quickly made some beads from my mini mokume technique.  Personally, this color combination wouldn't be my first choice as I much prefer brighter colors but  it does have a nice earthy tone that is very calming.

When mixing up my Pantone colors, I also like to add color chips to an index card recording my cross referenced recipe numbers.  I can refer back at any of the past seasons if I'm looking for a particular color or for a comparison.

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.

Jewelry Photo Shoot

I am currently finishing off some pieces to share with you in various combinations of the Pantone Fall 2011 colors.  In the meantime I wanted to share with you a few photos of our first jewelry photo-shoot.  We had a nice time visiting our niece, Leanne, and her family last week and she so graciously modeled some of our jewelry pieces for us.  Our plan is to have some of the better photos framed to hang in our upcoming shows this season.

The jewelry seems to come alive more when shown a real model as opposed to a mannequin.  In this collage, our "Fiesta Spiral" Necklace and Earrings are versatile enough to be worn formal with a dress or casual with jeans.  (Click on the photo for a larger view.)

Quarry - Pantone Fall 2011 Color

Quarry is a very soft muted shade of blue that is similar to a faded denim.

To mix up this soft denim-like color, combine one part of Navy (recipe Mix # 9-7 in my Clay Color System) and 4 parts of Ecru Base Mix # 2-8 (see my Clay Color System).

So there you have the recipes for the top ten Pantone Fall 2011 colors.  I will share next with you some of the combinations I created with these colors.  If anyone has been following our blog and experimenting with their new colors and would like to share, please feel free to leave a comment with a link.

Click on the names below to go to the links for the other clay color recipes from this series:

Bamboo

Emberglow

Honeysuckle

(plus free tutorial to make disc earrings)

Phlox

Cedar

Deep Teal

Coffee Liqueur  &  Nougat

Orchid Hush

Quarry  (see above on this post)

I've had several requests for where I purchased our Pantone color cards.  Pantone has all types of color cards -- from plastic to cloth swatches.  You can even purchase them as an app for your ipod or iphone.

Pantone even has a cool gadget called a "Capsure" where you can hold it over almost any type of surface and it will match it to a Pantone Color.

At more than $600, I will have to pass on buying one for now, however.

We just have the "paper" set which are nice and compact and look like the paint chips you get in a paint store but in a sort of book style.  A much more practical tool for us.

We purchased our set over 5 years ago at a much better price so I am glad we invested in a set when we did.