Bead Color Ideas: Rainy Days

Here on the West Coast, we don’t get a huge kick out of spring. By the time April showers roll around, we’re already so tired of rain that we can’t wait to start baking in the oven of summer. We don’t even get a lot of rainbows, since the rain is usually accompanied by completely overcast skies. The mild temperatures are nice, of course, but sunshine is definitely a welcome treat.

In the ancient Egyptian tradition of fighting fire with fire – in other words, if you’re going boating on the Nile, wear a crocodile pendant – I thought it would be nice to look for some rainy inspirations and use beads to find the good in rain again. I certainly don’t have a shortage of blue beads to work with, and with gray being one of my favorite colors for fashion, I always have a few bits of it in my stash.

I started by getting out what’s left of my Picasso jet druks – one of my favorite gray finishes. The effect is so like a natural stone and the resulting shade of gray is perfect. I paired these with some patriot blue bugles and robin’s egg seed beads for a cool, smooth palette that reminds me of raindrops on a garden shed or a streaking down a favorite reading window. This palette would be perfect for a cuff bracelet or a twisted multistrand necklace.

Next I found a little mixture of colonial gray and dichroic blue lined TOHO cubes that were perfect for rainy inspirations with their sparkly AB finish – like little reflective puddles. I added some vintage aqua white-hearts for another pop of blue, then calmed things down a bit with a neutral backdrop of bone white. For this palette I’d want to let the cube beads shine, so perhaps it would work with some fringed earrings or a bridged herringbone cuff.

For the final palette I drew inspiration from one of my favorite rain features: petrichor. We don’t get to enjoy the smell of rain much here, since it’s so rarely dry enough to release the dusty-oily smell of petrichor when the skies open up (they’re pretty much always open). I started this scent-inspired palette with some transparent medium topaz for the dust, and some Job’s tears for a hint of gray and their raindrop shapes. Then I finished the palette with a backdrop of storm-cloud navy blue. I’d love to use this trio for a statement necklace – perhaps a collar or a fringed lariat.

What’s your favorite weather for creative inspiration?

Mortira

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