One of the first choices in any project is deciding on the colors. While this can be as simple as picking out your favorite blues or yellows, sometimes this basic task can seem nearly impossible. If this ever happens to you, it can be helpful to search for inspiration away from your bead stash. One of our favorite places to find this vision is from a photograph. It can be a beautiful scene that you can’t take your eyes off of or a treasured image of a loved one. Either way, using photographs to find inspiration is a wonderful way to help you get back on track.
Above is a photograph I took on a sunny day at the beach. It is one of my favorites because of the intensity and depth of color. The deep blue-green of the ocean looks so much like my favorite Tila Bead that I decided it would be a perfect anchor color in a Mosaic Wrap Bracelet. It is important to not only identify the key colors but to also note the balance of the colors. In this photograph, the main colors are the blue of the sky, the deep blue-green of the ocean, and the sandy-cream of the shore. The white caps of the waves and the gold of the distant cliffs are important too, but could be incorporated with less frequency to keep the balance of colors true to the photograph. Darker grays and browns can be seen on the shore.
I used Tila Beads to capture the main colors in the photograph, as well as some of the highlights. Both the white and gold beads are used in smaller amounts as seen in the sample. To bring out the colors of the shore I chose Sand colored leather and Cocoa C-lon for the silk wrap. My last decision was to bring in some more highlights through the use of White Tuff Cord #1 as my laddering thread. While this is only one example, you can definitely see that the colors from this image have helped inspire the colors of the project. The next time you feel like you are in a creative rut, try finding inspiration through a photograph. As Janice tells her students, “Get the color right and the design will follow.”
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Nice! <3
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