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.