Feeling very Pastel-y

I have a real thing for pastels and neutrals.  As much as I love colour, there is just something about a pale, smokey colour that I find incredibly appealing.  Not so much what I would call "baby" pastels which are colours with tons of white mixed in but take the same colour and throw in a drop of black for that misty effect and I'm there.  Now many people looking at the above set would wonder why I'm calling bright yellow a pastel.  Well, it's not really but I have a tendency to read yellow as a neutral and when paired with these other creamy neutral beiges the overall effect seems very clean and neutral (to me anyway).  The pictures are a little darker than real life (I'm still playing around with Adobe Light Room and haven't quite achieved the effects I'm looking for but am still much happier with the pictures than I was before - thanks, Holly) but they still give a good idea of how these colours blend together.

Once I started I couldn't stop and ended up with even more shady pastels in this set.

Soft pastels in blue and green mixed with warm vanilla latte beige and a chalky beige brightened with a blast of yellow.  I could not like this colour combination anymore if I tried.  And I think the beads look amazing all strung together.

They have a really simple but summery look to me; a leather cord and a simple spacer and a clasp and away you go.  For the record, these sets are made with CIM Vanilla Latte, CIM Antique Lace, CIM Dirty Martini, CIM Sepia Unique, Effetre Misty Blue, and Effetre Medium Lemon Yellow.

Hey, quick new note here.  I noticed when loading my pictures onto Blogger that they seemed much darker than the original.  A quick internet search found the reason, Google is auto-enhancing my pictures which to them seems to mean making them darker.  I went to setting and turned this off and low and behold my pictures are back to normal (still not quite right but much better).  Here's a link for anyone with the same problem:

Remodelando la Casa: Dark pictures in Blogger

Favourite Colours Effetre Chestnut and CIM Dried Sage

A set of beads in some favourite colours.  There's just something so soothing about soft, grey-toned pastels and warmer browns and corals.  It's that rich, earthy quality and it works so well on all skin tones and with so many other colours.  This set came about after the completion of a customer order because I just couldn't stop myself.  

These sets are made with CIM Dried Sage, Effetre Light Chestnut, Effetre Red Roof Tile, Effetre Dark Grey opaque, Effetre Sage Green, and Effetre Grey transparent.  I love this CIM Dried Sage.  It's just a slightly grayer version of Dirty Martini  but enough to give it a really earthy effect.  It works so well with these warmer colours and provides just the right contrast.

St Patricks Day and Design Games

Like a lot of other people out there, I've been feeling a little blah lately.  Uninspired, lazy, and I'll admit, a little disgruntled (according to my husband, I'm never gruntled so that's not a surprise).  Anyway, I decided to make something bright and cheerful and, with a last name like mine, you have to try and get into the St Patrick's Day spirit so I felt that green would be required.  

But this time I decided to give myself a bit of a challenge.  I would use green, grey and white but I could only use the green to make dots and the grey to make lines (white could go either way).  I actually went the other way when I started but I found out on the first bead that this green doesn't make very good lines so I switched them.  I figured this would be easy but I was surprised at how many times I wanted to make a grey dot.  If you look at the bead on the right, you'll notice that it has a white line ending in a green dot.  I really really really wanted that dot to be grey.  I debated putting a grey line there but I didn't feel it would enhance the bead so in the end I stayed with my challenge and used green.  And I loved it.  No way would that have looked better as a grey dot although I know for sure I would have made it grey if I wasn't playing my little design game.  I think I'm going to have to come up with more of these design games and see where they take me.

For the glass people out there, this set is made with Effetre White, Effetre Light Grey op, and CIM Elephaba.

Boring Pictures

I'm finding myself really frustrated by my pictures these days.  It seems that in order to get the colours more accurately represented, I have to go with "flatter" pictures.  Less vivid and sort of blah like the above picture.  Oh it's not a bad picture but it doesn't really have any spark to it.

In the past, I've tried spicing up the background with props and different colours but I often find this to be "busy" and it can sometimes even detract from the beads so generally I tend towards plain old white backgrounds.  But I'm bored with plain old white.  So once again, I've decided to try and work some background design into my pictures.  I've been looking at a lot of packing designs and gift wrapping ideas on Pinterest and trying to get some inspiration.  Here's one of my favourites. 



Nice clean, simple, elegant, fairly neutral so it doesn't overwhelm visually.  Here's my first attempt at this type of background style.

Not perfect but a little more visually interesting than my first picture.  I need to play around with different layers of material and paper and, of course, this would have to be modified to suit the colour of the beads.  The text is a stamp that I bought awhile ago mostly because I really liked the font.  I also got a stamp maker for Christmas so this another area that I will have to explore in terms of design features.  This could easily take over my life.

For gallery type images, I'm trying to add a little texture but still get a really up close image of the beads.  So far, I'm liking this style.

Rustic grey wood with a macro focus on the beads.  You can't really see much about the set except for the bead in the middle but I think it still conveys a fair bit of info about the set.  I'm not sure I'll ever be completely happy with my pictures because I always think the beads look prettier in person but I guess I'll keep trying.

For anyone interested in glass colours, these beads are made with Effetre Light Rose, Rubino D'oro, Light Rose transparent and white with some light and dark grey in the focal beads.