The Secret to Jewelry That Looks Intentional (And Why Most Palettes Fail)

I've been wanting to talk about colour theory in jewellery making for the longest time because that's often what people get wrong. In today's episode we're talking all about why some colours and even some shades of the same colour work well together and some don't. If you've watched this episode where I made 8 projects using the beads from the March Jessie James Mystery Box, when I got to the blue beads I couldn't make them work and there was a really good reason why, so that's what I'm talking about today. I'll be talking more about why those blue beads in the Jessie James Subscription Box didn't work together closer to the end of this episode. Hello, welcome to The Stylish Maker, my name is Carol. Last week I did a live stream for the Style Makers Network with Liz Clever from Closet Plate Image and we talked about colour. This is something I've covered before over on the network but I've never really discussed it here and there's a lot to talk about so let's get into it. The colour theory I'm going to be discussing today works not only for jewellery making but it also works for any sewing or crafting that you do as well as for your outfits. And believe me, figuring out this can be a game changer when it comes to your wardrobe but that's another story for another day. Colour theory isn't about rigid rules but rather understanding the mechanics of colour so you can stop guessing and start creating harmonious, visual pleasing designs every single time. We're going to start by looking at three things, the undertone of the colour, the value of the colour and the clarity of the colour. Once you understand how undertone, clarity and value work together, you'll see why specific colours work more naturally together. Undertone is whether a colour has a yellow base or a blue base. Value is whether it's light, medium or dark. And clarity is whether the colour is clear or muted, in other words watered down with either grey or white. So let's look at undertone. All colours have either a warm or cool undertone. This means that they have either a yellow base or a blue base. Let's see how this works for people and then we'll talk about beads. I'm a cool toned person because I have a lot of pink and blue in my skin tone. I have a blue undertone. This beautiful redhead has a yellow undertone to her, making her warm. You can see that we are both wearing purple, but my purple has a cool undertone and her purple has a warm undertone. There's also a different value, but we'll talk more about that later. Here are some other examples of warm versus cool undertone. Can you see the colours on the left here are all a bit bluer than the ones on the right? Even though we have two reds, they are very different. One is more of a raspberry colour, the blue base, and one is more of a tomato red, the yellow base. Yellow is a tricky one because you would think that all yellows have a yellow base, right? It's not quite so obvious with yellows, but the blue yellow is slightly more on the cool side than the canary yellow. People often struggle with blues and greens, but you can see quite clearly that these two on the left are definitely more blue than the two on the right. So the key takeaway is that not all colours are created equal. A red can be warm or cool. A cool red has a touch of blue in it, while a warm red has a touch of yellow. Think raspberry, which is cool, versus brick, which is warm. If you only employed this theory when you're choosing beads, you would already be winning. I have here four different beads, two greens and two blues. You can see that if we put this blue with this green, it works well. But if I put this blue with this green, it doesn't work as well. That's because this green has a warm undertone. Now if I put the green with this more aqua blue, it is much better. The golden rule is to make sure that the undertones match. If you are pairing colours, pair cool with cool, or warm with warm. Now let's talk about value and contrast. Value is how saturated a colour is. Does it have a more intense colour, or is it less intense? This image goes from black, which is 100% saturation, to light grey, which is 10% saturation. And you can see there is quite a difference. When we talk about value contrast, we often look at a person's hair, skin and eyes. High value contrast is where there is a big difference. Like someone with very light skin and very dark eyes and hair. Think Snow White. Low value contrast is when there is a small difference, where the hair, skin and eyes are similarly light or dark. Cinderella. If I hold this up to my face, let's just take off my glasses, you can see that my hair is way down here, but my eyes are probably about here somewhere. So there's quite a lot of difference between my hair and my eyes, which means that I have a medium high value contrast. So basically that just means that there's quite a bit of difference in value between my hair and my eyes. If we go back to our redhead, you can see that her skin, hair and eyes are all much closer in value. All three things sit quite close to the centre. So how does this apply to your jewellery designs? For jewellery and clothing, a person with high contrast can easily wear a combination of light and dark colours in their jewellery and their clothing. It complements their natural intensity. However, a person with low contrast is better with beads that are more similar in value. This doesn't mean that you can't use colours that are quite far apart, for example dark blue and light pink. You just need to use an intermediate shade or mid-tone bead to step your way through that value contrast. This is an excellent technique to create a beautiful gradient and a more balanced, less jarring transition in your design. I'm medium high contrast, so if I'm wearing an overall light outfit, I need to wear quite dark jewellery, just to give me a pop of something dark. Not many people are high contrast, so not many people suit high contrast jewellery. For example, black and white is the extreme of high contrast, and most people wouldn't suit that. Here's an example of a person with high contrast. Her hair is black and her skin is very white. You could make that black and white necklace for this woman and it would look great, but for someone with a lower contrast, use mid-tones to step through that contrast. You can see that this first necklace is very high contrast and quite jarring, but by simply adding a mid-tone bead to the mix, it's much more pleasing to the eye. If you're finding this useful and would like to see more of this type of design theory, leave me a comment and let me know, and also hit that subscribe button. Next, let's talk about clarity. Clarity refers to the amount of white or grey added to colours. So, for example, clear colours are made by adding white. Adding white makes these colours lighter and clearer. All the colours on the left-hand side here are very clear. You can see the pink is just a watered-down with white version of red. Muted colours are made by adding grey. Adding grey makes a colour more subdued, soft or dusty. The olive green and blue on the right are watered down with grey to make them more muted. When you are choosing your materials, look at how clear or greyed-out they are as well. While you can mix clear and muted colours, you have to be careful not to overpower the muted ones with the clear ones. Also, if you put a super bright clear colour together, for example yellow, right next to a very greyed-out colour, perhaps green, one is going to completely overpower the other. Here's an example of a bright pink and purple. You can see that the muted purple just doesn't work as well as the clear purple. By the way, these colours all have a blue or cool undertone, so you can see that the clarity of the colours is also very important. For best results, try and keep the overall intensity of your design consistent. If you use a muted tone, stick with muted tones. If you're using clear, bright tones, stick with those. Let's bring in the colour wheel and talk about colour combinations. I'd like to talk about two colour combinations that work really well. Let's talk complementary colours. These colours sit opposite each other on the colour wheel. Think about the classic combinations that work well, like pink and green, or blue and yellow. Pairing these colours together create a dynamic, energetic look. Crucially, remember the first rule. Your cool pink needs to be paired with a cool green, and your warm yellow needs to be paired with a warm blue. The undertones must match for this combination to work. Analogous colours are ones that sit next to each other on the colour wheel. Think combinations like pink and purple, or blue and green. They create a more harmonious and sophisticated look, because our brains see them as related. If you're a beginner, starting with an analogous colour scheme is an easy way to ensure a beautiful result. Now we need to discuss neutrals and metals. Neutrals are greys and beiges, and they have undertones yellow, pink or blue. Just like any other colour, they should be matched to the overall colour palette you're working with. Metals, of course, are warm and cool as well. Gold is a warm metal, silver is cool, and rose gold is wonderfully neutral and tends to suit almost everyone. There is one universal colour that suits everyone, and that's periwinkle blue, so if in doubt, that's the way to go. Now let's bring in those Jesse James beads, and we'll have a look at why that didn't work for me to be able to make a beautiful piece using the beads that they had paired together. So let's start first by talking about the beads that were in the bead strand. And if you haven't seen that video, I'll leave it linked up here or in the description box so you can check that out. So here's the Jesse James strand I was having issues with. And if we have a look at this, there is a really good reason these don't work together. Because if I take these two beads away, most of the strand is fairly cool. If I put these two beads back, it causes a problem. So let's have a look at these two beads together. So this one here is a very warm-toned bead, and it has gold on it as well, so it just looks warm. When we pair it with this very cool-toned bicone, it just doesn't work well. Now we've also got this section here, which was one of the little containers in the box that I got, and you can see that this bead works so much better with those than it does here. And so what I'm going to do is take out these two beads. I'm not going to use them at all. These are from some old bead boxes that I have from Jesse James, and you can see that this one here is nice, cool-toned blues. So this is called the Santorini Beach Pack, and it works so well with this. Now there are a couple of warmer-toned beads in here. This also speaks to clarity, so this bead here is much more of a muted tone. These are brights, so even though these are warmer-toned, they'll still work in this mix here with these beads because they are clear, and so are these ones. Now if we have a look at these ones, these came from an old Jesse James box as well, the Amalfi Gardens box. So you can see that even though these are mostly green, they work so much better with these beads here because they are a warm undertone. So I hope this is beginning to make sense to you. Now this one here could go either way. So it could work there, but it still works better there. I also have some yellow beads, yellows and blues. Now you can see immediately these ones work better with the warm-toned beads than they do with the cool-toned beads, except that in here I have a charm. If I can get it out. Now this charm here is a cooler-toned lemon, so that would actually work, if it was a bead, quite well with this mix here. So you can see already that warm and cool-toned beads makes a big difference to how you lay out your designs, but also that clarity and intensity also makes a big difference. Just looking at what I have here. Okay, so this is a very light bead, and these ones are quite dark. They're not super dark, but they're quite dark. So this is a reasonably high, it's probably a medium-high value contrast. So I would be looking to kind of find a medium blue to step me through the light and the dark. Now I don't have anything with me, actually, yes I do. Let's have these beads. So these are a high contrast bead. It kind of works because the bead is quite high contrast in itself. Now we could look at something like this one, which has a bit of a medium thing going on. It's got a medium, a high contrast, because it's white and a medium, kind of slightly on the darker side, blue. But the yellow there kind of steps us through it. What else have I got in my little stash here? This is a bead-in-bead bead. So it has a white centre and a blue exterior, so the translucent exterior. So that bead works as a medium, so we could use that to kind of step through our light and medium. I also have a fairly light bead here. That kind of works as well in this mix too, because it's darker than this one and lighter than these ones, it kind of works to step us through that contrast as well. Of course we could add some silver here, and that will help us step through the contrast and brighten up this piece as well. So I hope that you can see how definitely the undertone of the colour makes such a difference when you're using your beads, and also how the clarity makes a difference as well. Now I am going to be making a necklace with these beads sometime in the near future, so make sure you're subscribed to check that one out. To wrap up, remember your four principles of harmonious colour. Warm versus cool, clarity, value contrast, and colour wheel relationships. Match your undertones and your clarity, and you will achieve harmonious and visually pleasing results every single time. I know that we've covered a lot, and I hope that helps you to understand how colour works in your designs and in your wardrobe. We discuss this type of thing all the time over on the Stylemakers Network, so if you would like to know more and be able to attend live streams and chat with me on a regular basis, check out the link in the description box below. Thank you so much for watching today, have a wonderful day, and I will see you again soon.