Bead Color Ideas: Blue Coconut

One of the challenges that comes with choosing a bead color palette, is balancing the shapes and textures of the beads to create a harmonious theme. Whether you’re making an abstract or simple piece, or recreating an object of inspiration, the individual bead finishes, shapes, and color can have a big impact on the overall design.

This week I wanted to explore possible color palettes to use with some new coconut shell daggers. Tropical blue dye gives them a very playful look, while still maintaining their natural earthiness. The challenge would be to not only find palettes that enhanced the tropical theme, but also some that would alter it entirely by using color to change one’s perception of the daggers.

I started easy by choosing some bright and citrusy colors. Lime green and lemon yellow go together quite nicely, and add a very watery element to the palette in plain transparent glass. Together, all three beads make me think of spots of sunlight dancing under the shadow of a Palm Tree.

For a more challenging palette, I wondered if it would be possible to make spiky blue shapes look like ice, so I grabbed some matte polar white seed beads to start. They have a wonderfully snowy look, but aren’t as stark as true white. Rather than go with another neutral, I decided to complement the blue with some frosty matte emerald to create a winter Tundra. I think with the right stitches, this palette could look icy, but the organic texture of the coconut would still be difficult to blend.

Finally, I couldn’t resist using some of my favorite colors. I wanted a palette with lots of impact, so I started with opaque pepper red - a very bold contrast for the daggers. To this I added warm and exotic Autumn Tucson seed beads. All three colors, along with the pointy shapes, remind me of exotic and dangerous things, like poisonous frogs and flowers in a Deep Rainforest.

What kind of theme would you create with spiky blue coconut?

Copyright 2012 Inspirational Beading
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