Bead Color Ideas: Blue Mother of Pearl

With summer just around the corner I’m looking forward to light and airy designs, aquatic themes, and lots of gorgeous color. For this week’s bead colors I started with a strand of aqua blue mother of pearl coins that I’ve just barely tapped into. They’re always sitting in my stash, calling out to be used, but I rarely have any ideas for their shape. The best solution, of course, is to find the perfect color palette and wait for inspiration to strike.

I didn’t have any particular colors or themes in mind when I started looking for seed beads to back up these coins. I just pulled out colors that I thought would look good and then matched them up. My first trio features the always ready-to-work transparent medium topaz for a lovely beachy look. I added a dash of flotsam in the form of metallic olivine. I love the moody earthiness of this particular color, which works really well with the nacre patina on many of the coins. The Baked Boardwalk trio would be great in a design with lots of geometric elements - perhaps a cuff bracelet or some brick-stitched fringe earrings.

I’ve really been in the mood for my precious white-heart seed beads lately, so I was quick to grab what’s left of my cobalt stash. The glow of white hearts plays really nicely with the shimmery shells. To complete this palette I ended up with some buttercream Ceylon with its barely perceptible hints of pale yellow and an equally pretty shimmer. Though Vanilla Milkshake doesn’t pop quite as much as the first palette, it still has plenty of potential. I’d love to use in in an ombré-style design with the shells spanning between the seed bead colors. An asymmetrical mulistrand necklace would be perfect.

Finally, I couldn’t resist some transparent cherry red to get a coral and turquoise effect. This color combination always makes me happy and eager to get creating. It’s equally great for aquatic, Western, and ancient Egyptian themes. I added a backdrop of jet black 8/o's to really make both colors shine. The Fire Urchin palette would be lovely in something fringed, as well as netting. It would be so much fun to make a scarf lariat in this palette.

What colors do you like to use in summer designs?

Mortira

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