Color Play with Marsala: The Pantone 2015 Color of the Year

Marsala: Pantone's Color of the Year for 2015

I decided to try to make some beaded pendants using the color marsala, a brownish light red wine color that's also Pantone's Color of the Year for 2015. You can click over to Pantone's official site to see some of their examples of this color in action. I also colored a few of my beading illustrations using this hue:

(I should note that my illustrations tint marsala to the lighter side; the dark parts of these illustrations are closer to the official Pantone color).

First Color Experiment: Marsala Tints

I started with a monochromatic color palette made up of seed beads, Rizo beads, crystals, and freshwater pearls, that ironically enough had been sitting together on one of my bead trays since last August. Out of all the beads in my stash, a copper-lined seed bead that I found at Creative Castle most closely matched marsala, so I used this seed bead in each of the projects in these color experiments.

I decided to try to create the Tropical Dahlia Pendant with these beads, substituting drop-shaped freshwater pearls for the Czech drop beads called for in this pattern.

Unfortunately, these particular freshwater pearls are too thick at the base of the pearl, so they don't fit into this design when substituted one-to-one for the drop beads. I tried adjusting the seed bead count to compensate, but it still ended up too wonky.

So, for my next attempt, I found some reddish-brown iris Czech drop beads and also changed the color of the Rizo beads to a pink opal/sunset color, for a very monochromatic take on this design.

(Incidentally, while I was hunting for these drop beads, I learned that I have the same beads with the same color number from two different dye lots in my stash. In this case, the color difference is quite substantial!)

Second Color Experiment: Marsala with Purple

For my next experiment, I tried combining marsala with purple; I substituted shiny purple lentil beads for the outer ring of crystals, and I also used purple drop beads.

I like the look of this result, but in this particular pendant design I prefer a more even tint progression from the inner rivoli crystal to the outer edge of the pendant, so I tried again with a slightly different purple lentil bead for the outer edge, and one of those new patina rivoli crystals for the center.

I was drawn to this result color-wise, as I love purple and I like the tint progression in this beaded pendant. However the patina of the crystal competes with the complexity of the overall design, and this version has the least marsala out of all the experiments.

Still, I had to create a pair of matching Sakura earrings before continuing :)

Third Color Experiment: Marsala with Magic Wine

For my third experiment, I wanted to get back to the red wine flavor of marsala that Pantone shows off on their website, so I switched back to a mahogany rivoli crystal and added magic wine Rizo beads, cranberry drop beads, and a light magic green shade of lentil bead:

While it's on the darker side, I think this Tropical Dahlia pendant most closely matches the red wine richness that's most appealing about the marsala color.

Fourth Color Experiment: Marsala with Matte Sunset/Tan

For my final experiment, I switched to the Rivoli Kaleidoscope design, and used lighter, browner shades of lentils, crystals, and drop beads for this pendant.

The result is more monochromatic and, with the addition of the matte sunset drop beads, a little more on the Desert Sand side of the marsala spectrum. It's probably not the best representation of this color, but I think this palette could benefit from more light peach Duracoat/PF seed beads.

I also couldn't resist making another pair of matching Sakura earrings :)

Marsala Color Experiments: Results and Conclusions

My takeaway from these experiments? I think the marsala color has a lot of potential, particularly when paired with darker, richer wine-like reds. It also blends with purple, so it could be used as a secondary or tertiary color to warm up a purple-heavy color palette. At least in my hands, marsala is less effective in a monochromatic color palette, particularly with related colors of similar value.

I was also glad to learn a couple of design lessons from these experiments. Namely: freshwater pearls don't work very well in the Tropical Dahlia design, but lentil beads substitute for the outer crystals quite well.

What do you think of Pantone's choice of marsala for 2015? Love it? No? Drop me a line in the comments :)

New Tropical Dahlia Pendants

In preparation for the BABE! Show this upcoming November, I wove two new Tropical Dahlia pendants with specialty rivoli crystals. This one features a black diamond Swarovski rivoli with the glacier blue coating.

It was a little tricky to position the drop beads optimally on this pendant, as they're coated on one side but not the other. I like the whimsy of this color scheme, and I'm sure I'll be wearing it a whole bunch.

This pendant, on the other hand, features muted golds, amethyst, and a glacier fuchsia rivoli for a very autumn feel.

I think it has a little too much amethyst though...

I used a sparkler light bulb for these photographs, which seems to work well for crystal-focused pieces such as these.

Which pendant do you prefer?

New Kit: Special Edition Heliotrope Tropical Dahlia Necklace

New kits are now available for the Heliotrope Tropical Dahlia Necklace:

I received so many compliments about this piece at the Bead & Button Show that I had to put it together as a kit. Unfortunately, after the show I learned that heliotrope Swarovski rivolis are a limited-edition crystal, and it took me a while to source more of them. Since I don't know if I'll be able to source them again, this will be a Special Edition kit.

Each kit contains all the beads needed to make the complete necklace, including Swarovski rivoli crystals, rizo beads, Czech teardrop beads, Japanese seed beads, large sterling silver jump rings, and a sterling silver clasp (please note that you will need to supply your own Fireline thread to complete the necklace). The necklace is choker-length, however you can add to its length with a couple more jump rings or a short bit of chain.

Balance in Earrings

If you haven't noticed, I've been making matching earrings for most of my recent beading patterns. The Cosmic Windows design is no exception. Here's the matching pair for the Antique Glass colorway:

What you may not have noticed is that I spend a lot of time engineering these earrings to make sure that they're balanced. Unlike pendants or bracelets, earrings do not have a surface to lean against when worn, so if too much of the weight of the earring is on the front, back, top, or bottom, the earring will not hang correctly. Unbalanced earrings can lean forward or backward from the viewer, taking the eye away from the focal point, and ultimately making the earring unattractive. Unbalanced earrings can also be downright uncomfortable to wear.

So, how do we solve this balance problem? Well, there are a couple of different strategies that I've learned to use to make well-balanced beaded earrings.

Design Symmetry

One way to get a balanced earring is to design it to be the same on the front as it is on the back. My Tila Droplet charms naturally make for well-balanced earrings for this reason. See how the bottom drop bead lines up with the top connecting seed bead? Since both sides of the earring have the same beads, its weight is naturally symmetrically balanced.

If you can't get the earring to be exactly the same on the front and the back, another option is to symmetrically balance the weight down the center of the earring. I do this in these Fiberoptic "Egg" earrings, a variation on the Fiberoptic Duo beaded bead design:

Even Weight Distribution

If it isn't possible to design the earring to look the same on both sides, you can still make a balanced earring by distributing its weight evenly between the front and the back. Here you can see how the Cosmic Windows earrings face the viewer without tilting forward:

The reason for this is that the bulk of the weight of the earring is sitting in the middle of the component; if you cut down the center of the earring so that the front is in one piece, and the back is in another, both sides will have about the same weight. You can see this more clearly in this side view:

In this case I've engineered the cosmic crystal to sit in the same plane as the bail, positioning the crystal slightly above the tila bead frame and not below it. This puts the bulk of the weight of the earring right in the middle, and naturally solves the balance issue.

Thoughtful Bail Engineering

Unfortunately, it isn't always easy to engineer a beaded earring to have symmetrical weight across the component. The Tropical Dahlia pendant is like this, as are its matching earrings. To solve this inherent balance dilemma, I turned my attention to the positioning of the bail.

Usually, it's easy to add a bail to a pair of earrings; you just make a little loop for the ear wire in the most convenient position in the beadwork. The problem with this approach is that this position doesn't always lead to a balanced earring. You can see what this looks like in the earring on the right; the natural bail position is too far backward, so the face of the flower points downward and away from the eye. The earring on the left shows a bail engineered with balance in mind; the bail is anchored to both the front and the back of the component, resulting in a much more pleasing look.

I used this same strategy for the earrings of the Fiberoptic Dodecahedron Set. These earrings have five points of seed beads built into the star-shaped component, which mimics the stars on the matching beaded bead. At first, I tried weaving the bail up from one of these points, but when I added the ear wire, the earring would tilt forward, away from the eye of the viewer. So, I instead built the bail up from a middle set of seed beads, resulting in a more balanced design.

It makes for a much more tedious way of finishing the beaded earring, but in the end, it's an important detail that makes for much more solid design.

How do you achieve balance in beaded earrings? Do you create symmetrical components, or do you focus on the bail? Or do you use a different strategy?

Heliotrope Tropical Dahlia Choker - Finished!

Presenting... The Heliotrope Tropical Dahlia choker, now finished!

Finished Necklace

I previously blogged about how I went about exploring this colorway of this design. To connect the individual Tropical Dahlias together, I took a cue from Gwen Fisher's Rivoli Sunflower bracelet and used sterling silver jump rings. I wanted to give an illusion that these beaded flowers were floating on the neck, so I used a minimal number of connecting seed beads between them and the jump rings, and no additional beads for stringing. I think it's a rather minimalist approach, but this rivoli + rizo + drop + rivoli pendant design is so detailed in the first place that they don't need much else to look fabulous.

I wove a total of nine Tropical Dahlias, which is just enough for a choker-length necklace. It's a bit shorter than the length that I usually wear, but if I made it much longer, the Tropical Dahlias wouldn't sit quite right; although the jump rings between them can move freely, the flowers tend to lean forward if they're not sitting right up against the neck. If I had to make this necklace in a longer length, I'd angle the connection bails to balance the piece out.

The jump rings themselves are pretty big, at about 14 mm in diameter. They're closed jump rings, so they should be more resistant to bends than open jump rings. I think I will eventually get a larger clasp for this piece, but a small S-clasp serves as a convenient temporary replacement.

Matching Earrings

Since I have a compulsion to create my jewelry in sets (my bead doctor has officially diagnosed me with "setitis"), I just had to weave a pair of matching earrings.

I had already created other versions of these earrings as part of the Tropical Dahlia Set pattern, but with only the floral component. For this version, I added a Swarovski briolette drop crystal to the bottom of each earring, which really kicks them up to the next level. It's amazing how this technically-simple bead addition adds so much to these earrings!

I'm looking forward to wearing this set at Bead & Button next week! I believe that I shall wear it on Friday :)

WIP Wednesday: More Tropical Dahlias, Starting Earrings

I've been working on a couple of different beading projects this week...

Even More Heliotrope Tropical Dahlias

I finished a total of nine heliotrope Tropical Dahlias! I'm nearly done with this project and I hope to have it photographed and ready to show soon. In the meantime, don't these sparkly beaded flowers look pretty all gathered together?

The Start of Matching Earrings

I also started to weave a pair of matching earrings for my Bead Dreams finalist piece, and I hope to have them done soon so that I can wear them to the Bead & Button Show next week. Here's a snapshot of the beads that I'll be using for these earrings.

My Bead Dreams finalist piece is in the same color palette, so keep an eye out for it in the display case at the show!

What are you working on this week?

WIP Wednesday: More Tropical Dahlias

Today on the Bead Origami blog, I'm posting some pictures of a current work-in-progress.

I've been meaning to try out a series of WIP Wednesday posts on this blog, but so far I haven't been able to make these kinds of posts consistently. This is due to a number of reasons, partially because I sometimes hesitate to show pictures of my messy bead tray, but also because I don't generally like to post a brand new project until it's complete. I probably won't be posting any full pictures of designs-in-progress that I'm not yet comfortable releasing, but I hope to at least show some sneak peaks of the current goings-on in my beading tray.

Heliotrope Tropical Dahlias

This week, I'm continuing with the idea that I mentioned the other day for a necklace made up of Tropical Dahlia pendants. So far I've completed three of these rizo bead pendants.

I bought some big fused sterling silver jump rings that I'm thinking of using to connect them together, but I'll decide for sure once I finish more of these beaded rivoli flowers. Until then, I've left their working threads untrimmed.

The more I work with these colors, the more that they're growing on me... Why did it take me this long to work with heliotrope rivolis?

What's on your beading tray?

New Kits: Tropical Dahlia Set

New kits are now available for the Tropical Dahlia Set! The kits make both the beaded dahlia pendant, and the smaller matching earrings.

Colorway #1: Spring Blossom

The first colorway is in the very floral tones of cyclamen opal, pink, peach, and a nice sunny yellow. I've taken to wearing this one myself quite frequently!

Colorway #2: Tropical Oasis

The second colorway is in the cooler colors of fern green, teal, and deep amethyst.

Colorway #3: Desert Bloom

The last colorway is in various shades of copper and turquoise, and I think it looks like a flower that you might see blooming in the desert.

All three kits are available at beadorigami.com, and include all the materials necessary to make the the pendant and the matching earrings. Plus shipping is included in the kit price!

Heliotrope Tropical Dahlia

Now that I've finished the beading projects that I needed to complete for the Bead & Button Show, I can switch gears and continue some projects that I've had sitting on the back burner for a while. First, I'm turning my attention back to the Tropical Dahlia Set.

As I previously mentioned, I think that a collection of these beaded flowers all strung together would make a nice necklace. I bought several heliotrope rivoli crystals with this idea in mind, only to find that these crystals are somewhat difficult to coordinate with other colors. They have the most gorgeous blue and purple hues, but I can't get them to work in the complementary color palettes that I'm used to using in this design, at least not with the rizos and drop beads that I have on hand. So I paired them with more subtle metallic blue rizo beads, silver drop beads, and blue shade crystals.

What do you think? Yay? Nay?

New Tropical Dahlia Pendants

I made a new Tropical Dahlia Pendant, and listed it along with two others in my Etsy Shop. Click on the photos below for more information about each pendant. Of course, the pattern for the complete Tropical Dahlia Set is available exclusively at beadorigami.com if you'd like to make your own!

Dark Amethyst Tropical Dahlia Pendant

Tangerine Tropical Dahlia Pendant

Passionflower Tropical Dahlia Pendant

Which pendant is your favorite?

Tropical Dahlia vs Rivoli Kaleidoscope

While I was weaving some new Tropical Dahlia Pendants, I found myself constantly comparing them to my other rivoli-centric pendant design, the Rivoli Kaleidoscope. It's an instinct I learned while working as an analytical scientist; you're always comparing your current results to previous work. So, to satisfy this itch, I wove a couple of these pendants in the same color schemes so that I could make a direct comparison without considering color differences.

Tropical Dahlia (left) and Rivoli Kaleidoscope (right) Pendants

Center Rivoli vs Outer Rivolis

A big visual difference between the two designs is the focus between the center and outer rivolis. The Rivoli Kaleidoscope has three different kinds of rivolis, and shows off more of the outer rivoli pendants at the expense of the center rivoli. The Tropical Dahlia, on the other hand, leaves much more room to show off the center rivoli. I like that I was able to accomplish this in a rivoli design, as it's often difficult to bezel a rivoli with beadwork without covering most of it up.

Tropical Dahlia Pendant

Symmetry Difference

Another difference between the two designs is the symmetry difference; the Tropical Dahlia Pendant has 10-fold symmetry, while the Rivoli Kaleidoscope has 8-fold symmetry. This difference not only gives the Tropical Dahlia more detail, but it's also reflective of the symmetries that you're more likely to see in a flower vs. a kaleidoscope.

Tropical Dahlia (left) and Rivoli Kaleidoscope (right) Pendants

Of course, as I mentioned earlier this week, the Tropical Dahlia Pendant can be woven in 12-fold symmetry for a larger variation. A larger variation of the Rivoli Kaleidoscope can be created too, and both patterns describe the changes necessary to create these larger variations.

Size Matters?

Finally, the Rivoli Kaleidoscope is ever so slightly larger than the original Tropical Dahlia, but it's also slightly smaller than the larger Tropical Dahlia variation.

Tropical Dahlia (left and right) and Rivoli Kaleidoscope (center) Pendants

They range from 27 to 32 mm in diameter.

The patterns for the Rivoli Kaleidoscope Pendant and Tropical Dahlia Set are available exclusively at beadorigami.com if you'd like to make your own!

Which design is your favorite? Drop me a line in the comments section below!

Tropical Dahlia Pendants: Larger Variations

While I was designing the Tropical Dahlia Pendant, I experimented with the idea of using a larger central rivoli in the middle of the pendant...

Original Version: Ten Units

The original Tropical Dahlia Pendant has ten units of beadwork around the central rivoli; ten rizo beads, ten Czech teardrop beads, and ten rivoli pendant crystals, accompanied by a collection of Japanese seed beads.

Larger Variation: Twelve Units

To create the larger variation, I used an 18 mm rivoli in the center, and increased the units of beadwork from ten to twelve. The result is a slightly larger pendant with the rotational symmetry of a clock face! Can you see the difference?

This variation also required some additional minor adjustments in the size and count of the seed beads on the back of the pendant, which I describe in detail in the Tropical Dahlia Set pattern.

I think that a collection of Tropical Dahlias in these two different sizes would make a gorgeous necklace...

The pattern for the Tropical Dahlia Set is available exclusively at beadorigami.com if you'd like to make your own!

What's your favorite kind of variation on a beading pattern?