For 2021, Pantone chose "ultimate gray" and "illuminating" as its Colors of the Year. According to them, the colors were chosen because they combine the ideas of strength and hope. I'm normally rather ambivalent about Pantone's colors, but I did appreciate the symbolism in these and thought I'd play around with them.
Here are the steps I tried to jump start my imagination:
1. Peek at Your Past
Sometimes it's helpful to look at your past jewelry designs to see if there's anything that might trigger a new idea.
Gray and yellow are not colors I normally gravitate towards. In fact, when doing a quick search on my blog for old jewelry, I only found two pieces. One was a heart necklace with gold [yellow], silver [gray], and black. The other was a pair of leafy earrings that combined the gray and yellow palette with a touch of minty green.
With the necklace, it was useful to be reminded that metals can be seen as colors, not just colored beads. This allowed me to think more expansively about possible materials. With the earrings, I remembered that if you don't have the components in colors you need, you might need to make them!
2. Surround Yourself With Inspiration
Some designers have inspiration or mood boards where they pin pictures to help inspire them.
I rarely sit in one place all day, so I decided to make this color palette a bit more mobile. I made myself a yellow beaded charm to wear on my gray shoes so that any time I looked down I might get a bit of inspiration.
3. Use a Different Medium
Next I used a medium I don't use every day -- painting. I made an acrylic pour painting with several shades of yellow, gray, and white. It was fun and made me think about the many shades of yellow and gray available. The advantage of using a different medium is that the expectations are a lot lower. Don't worry about making anything polished or perfect. Have fun!
4. Visit Your Bead Stash
This is often the starting point for my design work. A quick search found that I own very few yellow beads. If I was committed to this color palette for the long haul (instead of just playing around on the weekend), I'd need to do a little bead shopping.
5. Don't Forget About Stringing Materials or Findings
I did find a bit of yellow ribbon, yellow embroidery floss, and gold stringing wire in my drawers. I didn't end up using them, but it was nice to know that my yellow options weren't quite as limited as they first seemed. I also found that I had a fair amount of gold (brass) and silver (gunmetal, silver-plated brass) chain and findings, so I knew that could be a backup plan if needed.
6. Make Your Own Components
I made a few components out of yellow acrylic and combined them with silver (sterling silver, pewter, and/or steel) as my gray color.
Tiny yellow butterfly earrings hang on bright sterling silver ear wires.
Lemon slice earrings with sterling silver ear wires remind me summertime lemonade. This yellow is actually a fluorescent yellow with very subtle green and orange tones along the edges when the light hits just right.
These pewter bee earrings with a bit of yellow honeycomb make a bright statement. (I slightly updated these for 2021.)
Design Tips
Here's what I learned about working with new-to-you color combinations:
- Add a third color. If using two colors seems too difficult, add a third. This seems like it would make the challenge harder, but if you absolutely love that third color, it might make it easier to combine it with less desirable colors. Even a neutral color like white can be helpful when combining unfamiliar colors.
- Make two monochromatic pieces (maybe two bracelets or two necklaces), one for each color, and wear them together.
- Don't worry about exact shades. Unless you need to follow a specifc palette, feel free to experiment with the exact shades. Go darker or lighter.
- Consider metals as colors (gray = silver, pewter, steel; yellow = gold, brass).
- Start with a small project like a pair of earrings. You'll feel good about finishing and possibly encouraged to try something more ambitious.
- Make the beads or charms you need if you don't own the right colors. This could be as simple as adding paint to them as I did with the leafy earrings mentioned earlier in this blog post.
- Designate one color as a background color and use less. For example, use yellow cord to string gray beads. Most of the yellow will be covered up, but you'll see splashes of it.
- Use a different medium to work with these colors to get a sense of how they work together.
- Think about how these colors are used in nature. (I thought about the sun peeking out from behind gray clouds.) Similarly, seek out fashion or home decorating magazines to find examples of these colors in use.
- Surround yourself with the colors. Wear something with them or hang up a print that uses them.