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| grown up fruit |
I spotted this happy composition of fruit,
the bowl is a black and white 'hand made in the 1950's at an art school' lumpy thing, a charity shop find that I just love. Painted in a blue black glaze in swirls.
But less about my fruit bowl and more about the fruit therein.
Russet apples and black grapes still with the bloom on them, delush! (divinely lush or deliciously divine)?
Step one accomplished, colour inspiration.
Step 2, bead conversion!
The way to do it is pick out as many bead colours that you can find in your stash that match up to your source of colour inspiration, don't over think it, just grab and pile them up. You might find that there are subtle secondary influences going on too:
It just so happens that this autumn, all shades of mustard and ginger have hit the high streets and I find myself wearing mustard coloured jumpers with pale blue denim or adding a blue and turquoise scarf. Maybe the fashion world has nudged me to notice those colours more too.
Step 3, find a beading pattern and just go for it.
The pattern will have a list of how many colours are
needed, and which sizes of beads to use, so go through your newly piled up palette and pick out a combination to suit the pattern requirements.
This is the fun bit, and may take a while, but because you have a basic palette you know the bead colours will sit together. It's at this stage that I drift away from my original source of inspiration and let the beads do the talking.
For my Step 3, I thought, hmm, I would love me a bangle or two to slide on, you know, just to spread the bead happy up my arms. An evening of beading later and I have this zingy version of my City Bangle match my new jumper. I didn't have any really dark blue/black beads, so I used a dark teal and a little bit of bright turqouise because the beads looked good together, then added a bit of 'warmth' with dark copper O beads along the edges.
I'd picked out quite a few crystals (hard to resist!) so as my bangle design didn't need them, I used a Minerva Spiral, and luscious lime Swarovski bicones became all mixed in with dark blue and dark copper coloured beads. I love this technique because you can throw just about any bead combination at it and it will work up into a gorgeous rope in no time.The more you vary the bead sizes, the more shapely the rope will become, just keep the sequence small to large and back again. The Minerva Spirals book was out of print, but we found a box full so they are now up on the website.