Beads made from the color blends I brought home from Lindly’s class

I did two workshops at CFCF 2012 with Lindly Haunani.  As is often the case, the biggest lesson for me had nothing to do with the actual workshop projects.

I spend lots of time developing a color theme, and then producing most of my work using that theme.   I love “Color Inspirations” by Lindly and Maggie Maggio, and I used some of the steps in the book to create the color theme I usually use.   So, walking into Lindly’s classes and being presented with 5 blocks of (donated) Premo filled me with anxiety. Black, white and 3 stark prime colors – something like this and no time to mix better ones. There was only one thing to do –

So I used the colors I was given and hope for the best.  The result?  Some wonderful blends of color, in less than an hour, basically from skinner blending the colors, but no need to worry about the angles – we just butted each strip of each color against the other.   I don’t want tot give a step by step for Lindly’s ikat class, but you can see that the blend is then alternated with a lighter color.I will continue to carefully develop my color schemes, but the lesson  was that I can create a wide range of colors that go together well, in no time at all. I brought home the left over clay from Lindly’s ikat class,

rolled it out thinly on a sheet of black (as suggested by Lindly).  I  placed torn pieces of the thin sheet on beads of scrap clay.  Using the method demonstrated so well by Desiree McCrorey  on her site,  I created the beads pictured at the top of this post.