Today we want to announce to you our "Color Palette" project. We are very excited about it, the project will continue few months, and at the end we'll have a nice online tool for color references between the glazes used in our work, the colors of the Miyuki and Delica seed beads and the DMC embroidery flosses. Today we'll tell you how this ambitious initiative started.
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| First batch of the color samples |
The Glaze Hunting - over the years, each ceramic artist develops a list of favorite glazes, glazes that work best with the individual style and the favorite decorating techniques. It's an endless process; for example, we are eager to try whatever new glaze we are able to get our hands on, and if it suits our quality requirements we include it in our regular color palette.
With almost 20 years of hunting for glazes behind us, you can imagine that the current pile of glazes in our studio is pretty big. Last November, after a long procrastination period, we decided to organize the current color chaos into some kind of working system.
First, we determined all the glazes that we were sure were still carried by suppliers (a lot of really nice colors have unfortunately been discontinued colors). Second, we fired color sample tiles of all "good" ones. Next, we sorted them and made a list of the colors in numerical order. The last step was to announce the palette to the public on our
Facebook page. Or so we thought. It wasn't the last step at all, as our friend Carol Dean Sharpe from
Sand Fibers shares with you below:
The Color Palette Project
(aka The Dangers of Social Networking)
It all started out innocently enough, as light banter on
Golem Design Studio's Facebook page. In late November, Vlad posted a photo album of his gorgeous glazes. There's nothing quite like color to get a beader's heart racing.
The lovely Linda Roberts of
BeadsForever - who introduced me to Golem Design Studio's work - was the first to comment with "This is a great idea. The next step (and I'm sure you can do it with no problem) will be to list all the Delica and Miyuki bead colors that match your colors. lol"
Of course, I couldn't resist and offered my own:
Send me some samples for each color and I'll get right on that for you! LOL
Vlad: Carol, I can send you sample rounds and tubes for most of the colors, just let me know if you are interested.
Linda: Carol, I think Vlad is serious! Ha Ha! Now what will you do?
Carol: Vlad, I don't have all the delica colors, by far, but I do have a pretty substantial stash and would be happy to look into color matches for these gorgeous glazes.
. . .
Well, Vlad took me up on it! And here were are: three and half months, many emails, and a package from Bulgaria to New Mexico later. At first we thought that Vlad would send me samples and I'd just provide him with a list of the Delica beads that match the glazes, but then he came up with the wonderful idea to take photos of his glaze samples with the actual Delica beads to then post on this blog for everyone to see.
Because the tiny glass beads that so many of us are addicted to look different in their bags and tubes than they do actually woven up, I'm making small beaded beads (aka peyote tubes) from each of the Delica colors that "go with" the glazes. And, because I have a complete collection, I'm also including a bobbin of matching DMC cotton embroidery floss in each of the photos. Have you ever tried kumihimo with DMC floss? It's easy, inexpensive, and the results are wonderful...and could provide the perfect showcase for your
Golem Design Studio pendant or cabochon!
Each of the posts for this project will have a photograph of the beads (both Golem Design Studio glaze samples and peyote tube) and matching floss. It will be followed with the following information:
Golem Design Studio glaze #
matching Delica bead # and name
corresponding Miyuki seed bead number, if available
matching DMC floss # and name
We will also share a bead / pendant / cabochon or two in which the Golem Design Studio glaze is used, "action shots" (for lack of a better phrase).
So, that's the long and short of it. Get ready for some beautiful "color studies" over the next days/weeks/months. Enjoy. Be inspired. We hope this information will help you plan your next project with
Golem Design Studio beads, pendants or cabochons.
(And, Linda, see what you started!)
