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.

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.

Effetre Bright (Electric) Yellow

Effetre Bright (sometimes called Electric) Yellow is my all time favourite yellow.  It is technically a transparent colour but it quite often goes translucent when worked which creates a stunning cloudy, swirly yellow.  This colour is as clean and clear a yellow as you'll find anywhere.  No orange or blue tones, no brown murkiness, just a bright, true yellow.  Obviously with a colour like this a little can go a long way.  This set first started with thoughts of yellow and grey but I wanted to mellow it out with some caramels, browns and beiges.  Frankly, it turned out almost exactly as I pictured it in my head and that's pretty rare for me anyway.

For those bead makers interested in colour combinations this set of beads contains:  Effetre White, Effetre Bright Yellow, Effetre transparent Grey, Effetre transparent dark Grey, CIM Maple, CIM Adamantium, and CIM Vanilla Latte.  I did encase the Vanilla Latte in two beads and they seem to be fine.  I think some of my past cracking problems had to do with putting the beads in the kiln too cold.  I warm everything up a bit now right before plopping them into the kiln.