Sunday, November 10, 2013

Bead Color Ideas: Winter Green

Here on the West Coast, winter scenery is a little backwards. All summer long the grass gets baked to a golden brown, and then becomes lush and green again with the almost constant winter rain. This climate quirk has inspired me to try out some winter palettes with a more vibrant green than the deep velvet of holly leaves and pine needles.

The perfect character to play this part are some beautiful carved bone tubes from Happy Mango Beads. The finish isn’t uniform, giving them an organic, mossy finish. The colors range from olive to chartreuse, with little white stars scored into the surface.

Frozen Creek Bead Color Idea


First I paired the green bones with light and wintry blue, and shiny jet black for contrast. Although we miss the leaves when they’re gone, the look of branches in silhouette on a bright winter sky is a welcome one! The greens definitely have a coolness to them in this trio, like moss with a layer of frost. There’s a certain watery-ness to this palette, which I decided to call Frozen Creek.

Antique Centerpiece Bead Color Idea


Of course I couldn’t resist trying out some bright opaque red. Adding white seemed a little too obvious, and probably wouldn’t have a very festive effect on the lighter greens. Instead, I tossed in a handful of gold Swarovski Elements pearls. Antique Centerpiece has a warm elegance, like a favorite decoration that gets passed on from one generation to the next.

November Lichen Bead Color Idea


Finally, I wanted to try out a complementary palette, starting with lovely olive green seed beads. Transparent rootbeer brown provides a little light and some additional organic color for this palette. With so much green, this one could only be called November Lichen.

Are you using your winter greens right now? Which shade do you prefer?

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4 comments:

  1. I was wondering where do you get your hanks of seed beads?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi, Dawn! I shop for hanks at ShipwreckBeads.com and FireMountainGems.com (my new favorite, since they've added flat rate shipping to Canada). You can also find a lot of bead sellers on Etsy and ArtFire that carry bulk seed beads.

      Delete
  2. I live in southern Alberta so our winters go from frosty and white to brown and green when a chinook wind blows in. The green carved bone beads are cute and very organic looking. I quite like the palette in the last photo, greens with the rootbeer brown.

    ReplyDelete
  3. One of my favorite suppliers of opaque seed beads is an etsy shop called shadowdesignscrafts. She had some of the best 11/0 and 10/0 seed beads and they are so uniform. Rarely ever have to cull them and the price is super great.

    ReplyDelete

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