Got Colour?

Colour fascinates me, so I thought we'd discuss that a bit today.  

My daughter, C, has the best innate colour sense of anyone I’ve ever met.  She’s now 21 but her taste is spot-on, always.  Years ago I was renovating my parents’ home for us to join them and decided to let my two children have a free choice of how they wanted to have their new rooms look; they were old enough to have definite tastes and after all, the rooms were for THEM.

C, then only 9 years old, selected blue carpet, white woodwork and ceiling, and JOLTING BRIGHT lime green walls (the colour name is actually “Leap Frog”!).  She set it all off with dashes of electric blue, aqua, hot pink and burnt orange.  Much to MY surprise (having been ready to see her already high energy levels zinging through the ROOF with such a stimulating colour scheme) it turned out to be perfect.  A small window provided only a little light, but with such happy colours awaiting it, even that little bit of sun seemed to warm the entire space.  Twelve years on and the colour combo still looks fresh and inviting.

A game we used to play was “Bead Soup”.  At the time I was doing a great deal of freeform peyote work, which basically BEGS for bead soup!  I would ask C to make me a bead mix and provide guidelines for her.  I'd give her an amount of mix I needed (for example, “fill this small dish”…), what sizes / shapes / finishes I would like used (such as “nothing bigger than a size 8 seed bead or smaller than a size 15 but any shape and only shiny finishes”) and a theme word (“Forest”, “Icestorm”, “Candy”, etc.).  She would then dive into my stash and return after a time with the most GLORIOUS mixes.  She could always intuit the atmosphere I wanted to work with and instinctively selected what would be needed to evoke my idea.

Now that my personal colour maven is in University, I'm down to my own resources.  As many people do, I’ve found that there tend to be specific colourways to which I gravitate.  These include:

Spice

Beach








Fiesta









Cafe Au Lait




Have you found a particular group of colours that works for you?  I'd love it if you'd share YOUR perfect "go to" combination.  One of the things I truly love about teaching beadwork is the opportunity to work with students, finding colours that work well together as well as suit their intent.  

Happy Beadsday!