How to Spark Inspiration/Motivation, Part 387-D

So, a short and sweet little lesson in sparking inspiration when you are so absolutely unmotivated you could cry! The last few weeks have been totally stressful for me...my day job has been converting to new financial systems and I have had to focus on training and learning an entirely new way of doing my job, which involves sitting at my desk staring at a computer screen. I have been so mind-weary every day, creativity has been lying dormant.

Today after work I decided to just sit at my bead table and look. There were some things that had been sitting there for a while that I just hadn't played with yet. I pulled out a couple of bags from recent purchases and looked at them. Walked away, came back, walked away, etc...

Small raku-fired beads by Keith O'Connor

I saw this pile of raku beads I got from Keith O'Connor's trunk show at my friends house.I remember loving them so much when I saw the stacks of these he had in almost every color of the rainbow. I wanted some of each, but was strapped for cash so chose pairs of my favs.  I intended to used them as pairs in projects...earrings, probably. When I saw them all in a pile like this, though, I thought...don't fight it! Use them all!

Copper bracelet with Keith's gorgeous beads.

I didn't add anything else, just wire-wrapped them with copper wire and made a quick clasp.  Simple, yet totally effective!  Disclaimer, I used a stupid headpin as my charm that wouldn't patina, so I'll have to go back and fix it!

Karen's gorgeous beads!

The second package I picked up was an auction I won at the Ceramic Art Bead Market on FB from our own dear Karen Totten!  I remember when I bid on them how much this color combination moved me.   I have been looking at them and fondling them for a while.

Wrap necklace with Karen's beads, an enameled bead by me, and one of Keith's raku beads.

I have been seeing lots of simple wrap necklaces...beads or other components on each end of a long chain that can be wrapped around the neck or just looped over in front.  I thought this was a cool way to show off gorgeous beads in a different way.  I hope to be creating a few more of these.  Again, pretty simple, yet colorful and unique!

So the crux of today's lesson: You don't have to be inspired or feel creative. Take the time you need. It's okay to walk away from something and come back to it as many times as needed. Trust your first instinct. Take a chance.

Color Inspiration Saturday...

I was thinking this week of creating some copper components to enamel for earring pairs that could be mixed and matched, but wasn't really sure what colors I wanted to incorporate, then remembered all the inspirational Pinterest photos I've seen featuring Pantone's Colors for Spring 2014. We have all been touting Radiant Orchid, Pantone's Color of the Year for 2014...why, even Karen Totten did a great blog post last month about the color. It is a bright and gorgeous color...one of my favorites of all time!  But, what about those other colors for Spring 2014 that Pantone included in its picks? I decided to find out...here is the list.  Look at these gorgeous spring shades!

Photo courtesy of www.ofdist.com, via Pinterest

I started going through my enamel stash to see what I had to match...some would have to be mixes of shades to get as close as I could, but I chose 4 to recreate for now.

Don't look at my crappy enameling job...these were sort of experiments and as such were done pretty quickly.  They will need some tweaking, but these are my versions of Celosia Orange, Freesia, Placid Blue, and Sand.  I put them in some different combos...lots of possibilities!

For you torch-fire enamel enthusiasts out there, my recipes are easy.  Pretty basic, and as I said, aren't perfect, but pretty close!

• Placid Blue - Robin's Egg
• Freesia - base of white with Egg yellow transparent
• Celosia Orange - Sunset Orange
• Sand - Nut Brown

Oh, and by the way, you can get a pretty good Radiant Orchid using white, or off-white as a base with Raspberry transparent on top!

Hope your day is drenched in color!


Melissa Meman
Melismatic Art Jewelry
Art. Life. Love.

Thinking in Color - Part II

A little over a year ago, I wrote about some of the online tools I turn to when I'm trying to piece colors together. Color theory isn't one of those things I do instinctively (unlike my best friend, Kimmy, who is a natural!) so I've been working on improving my overall design sensibility and digging a little deeper into what makes good design. One aspect of that is how colors work (or don't work) together.

For starters, I invested in two subscription services: Lynda.com and Adobe Creative Cloud. For a very reasonable monthly fee, Lynda.com offers unlimited access to thousands and thousands of training videos on every single topic you can imagine, including web and graphic design, photography, and color theory. Learning is one of those things I don't think I'll ever get tired of and this subscription has turned out to be wonderful for those times when I want to dig a little deeper into something than I can get with a Google search.

The Adobe Creative Cloud membership offers me access to every single one of the programs that are part of the Creative Suite of products - but instead of paying $2,000 or more for the software, I pay a monthly subscription fee that ensures my software is up-to-date at all times. It's a win-win for me - I'm a heavy user of Photoshop and dabble with InDesign and Lightroom, and the subscription winds up saving me a ton of money on the programs I use the most.

But if you're looking for a color design tool that ups your game without a commitment or a financial investment, let me introduce you to Adobe Kuler. 

Select the color "rule" you want to try from the drop down menu, set your base (or primary) color, and then start moving the pistons in the center of the color wheel. Any change you make in one color results in changes to the others, making sure your colors stay related. You can also tweak individual colors using the sliders below the color blocks for fine tuning. When you come up with something you like, you can set up a free Adobe account and save the color palette to your themes so you can refer to them later.

But one of my favorite features is the ability to create a theme or palette from a photo. Upload a photo and Kuler automatically chooses a palette based on one of five pre-programmed color "moods." (This photo is one of my favorites from a Hawaii vacation we took in 2009.)

All of these themes evoke the overall feel of the photo, but each one has it's own unique vibe - except that the 2nd and 4th palettes are nearly identical. I am really drawn to that taupey grey on the right side of those two - very warm and rich, and not at all a color I would have picked out of this photo.

This photo (another favorite from our Hawaii trip) gets tweaked in a whole different direction.

I love that third palette - it really reads "spring" to me, and is composed of colors that aren't at all what I would have pulled out of this photo.

Honestly, this is one of those toys... uh, I mean tools.... I could spend hours with. It makes me think about colors in a new way, and usually pushes me towards color combinations that are completely outside my comfort zone. I've been trying out some of those color combinations in recent enameling experiments and I hope to have some things to share with you soon.

So what new digital tools are making their way into your studio? Are there new things you're finding you can't do without?

Until next time -

Enjoying the Colors of Winter

I find it's very easy sometimes to overlook the beauty of winter for the bitter cold of it, but the other morning when I woke up to this, I couldn't help but pause and enjoy (And shiver, of course!). The colors are subtle, but they're definitely there. There's a beautiful softness to each hue. I would be one happy bead artist if I had the ability to combine colors just a tiny fraction as beautifully and perfectly as they are arranged in nature!

And so, to remind us to enjoy the beauty despite the cold, I put together a treasury of some of my favorite winter finds:

'The Beautiful Shades of Winter' by TreeWingsStudio

Some say winter is oh-so drab, but if you take the time to look, you'll always find such beautiful colors hidden in the cold. Enjoy!

Tiny Flowers Charms humblebeads $16	Lampwork Beads - SueBeads - ... suebeads $25	Large leaf beads, czech Glas... MayaHoney $2.5	Woodland Sparrow Bird in Ear... StudioByTheFor... $20
Moss Ceramic hand carved win... blueberribeads $4	Tribal Dangles ScorchedEartho... $3	Handmade Lampwork Ivory Etch... SilverReflecti... $19.99	Lake in Winter, Landscape Ph... EyePoetryPhoto... $30
Fine Art Print-Andes Ice For... elisemahanfine... $12	Handmade Large Polymer Clay ... KristiBowmanDe... $10	Porcelain bird earrings, Bro... THEAjewellery $26	Set of 6 Carved, Patterned, ... selenaannewell... $30
Blue Matte Stoneware Coin Ch... suburbangirlbe... $14	Silver and Brass Hammered Le... KarenLPowellDe... $35	Ceramic Tree Bark Pendant - ... ktotten $14	Earthy Snowflake classicbead $8.95

Nature is always my greatest inspiration! I hope you'll be inspired this weekend — go enjoy some beautiful winter sights and see where it takes you in your creating!

Happy Saturday!

Going out of my comfort zone part 1

Hey there friends.  Last week I posted a question on the AJE Facebook page about whether or not you continue to work through a color palette you are not quite sure of.  Most of you said that you push through and some times set it aside for a while then come back to it.

I did not have the luxury of putting this one aside as it has a deadline.  So I thought I would share the whole process with you to see what you think.  These are colors I have worked with before but not together so it is a totally scary process for me.

Here is where it began...

I have that really pretty sunset color!

Yes that is our Component of the Month courtesy of Diana.  I had a plan in mind as soon as I saw this one in person.  So I searched color palettes on Design Seeds Blog (by the way if you ever need a palette this is the go to place to find a perfect one.) and picked this one.

Here is the color palette...

Here are the colors I chose from the palette....

So I set off to work.  This color range is not what I am used to working with together.  I had a specific pattern in mind from Jill Wiseman's Beautiful Beaded Ropes book because of my thought process for this necklace. 

Here is what the first layer looked like....

Humm still very very unsure.  This necklace will either be an epic win or epic fail.  I am thinking it is wayyyyyyy  too much turquoise (I really have never said that) so I pressed on.

Here is the second layer....

Still worried but I continue to press on.

Here is the third layer........

 Okay so this is as far as I am going to show you today because part 2 will be on Wednesday on my blog.  Your opinions are greatly appreciated!

Kristen