Color and Jewelry Personality

Janice Parsons is known for her color coordinating skills, and to help share her strategy for designing using color inspiration, she and Kate Richbourg dedicated a Facebook live show to the topic. During the show, which is now available through beadshop's YouTube channel, they work together to offer a sort of color workshop for beaders. Along with watching the show, you can also download a free Tricks of the Trade handout that Janice originally used while teaching in her brick and mortar store when it was open from 1983-2008. 

Color Inspiration

As Kate explains during the show, "Color can change the personality of the piece," and Janice agrees that it is important to feel free to experiment and not "be afraid of color." Both designers suggest that working with color is a good starting point when you are creating jewelry. Begin with a photograph, fabric, painting, any object that provides a ready-made mix of colors that personally inspires you. For example, in Janice's handout. a beautiful bouquet of flowers is selected as the place to begin, and eventually, by following her steps for design by looking at shapes in your object and coming up with adjectives that not only describe it by also how you feel when you look at it, you can collect beads and jewelry components that work well together. This is what Kate calls thinking of "the big picture" before focusing on too many details like what your clasp will be. 

This show, which aired live on the beadshop Facebook page on 1/25/17, is one you will want to watch and probably take notes to help you develop your own inspiring and colorful jewelry pieces.