MONET'S
GARDEN BRACELET
About the Kit...
The
Monet's Garden Bracelet is a fun project that students love. It
is for students who have some familiarity with bead weaving and
an obsession with colors. This project was designed by Kathleen
Lynam.
I
had been experimenting with various strategies for blending colors
along the length of a bracelet. At about the same time, Beadwork
issued a call for project proposals to be used in a book about
what to do with your Bead Stash -- all those small quantities
of lots of different colors you have left over. This was perfect.
This
bracelet teaches a mathematical approach for organizing several
colors within a color blending scheme. Also presented is a simple
math formula for personalizing your bracelet -- that is, varying
the width and length to suit your needs. The techniques here are
Square Stitch and Fringing.
It
is important, I believe, for a contemporary piece of jewelry to
have a sense of dimensionality, movement, and a strong use of
color.
Color
blending with beads is always challenging. It is not like paints,
where you can merge and blend colors with ease. Beads are physical
objects with set colors. You can't mush them together, The transition
from bead to bead in any piece, requires the eye/brain, when interacting
and interpreting colors, to literally jump a cliff between the
inevitable gaps between each bead. You want the viewer to have
a satisfying, pleasurable journey as their eye/brain moves along
that line of color-transitioning beads.
In
my pieces, I love to draw on nature's inspiration. I gather flowers
and plants and bring them into the bead shop to match their colors
as closely as I can. For my Monet's Garden Bracelet, I've developed
instructions for both a Spring Palette, as well as a Fall Palette.
However, the instructions would be as useful for a monochromatic
palette, such as whites to grays to black, or a Southwest palette,
such as turquoise to corals to reds. Use your imagination ---
and use up your bead stash, in the process!
In the Monet's Garden Bracelet project...
What You Will Learn:
- Planning for Color Blending
- Creating
a square stitch base
- Creative
use of fringe
- Embellishing
edges along your square stitch base
- Adding
a button clasp
|
