The Beader's Color Mixing Directory

Beader's Color Mixing Directory: 200 Failsafe Color Schemes for Beautiful Beadwork written by Sandra Wallace and published by Krause Publications ($22.99 US; $27.99 CAN) addresses the need to understand how colors can work for or against you in your beaded jewelry designs. Unlike many jewelry books published today, I don't think this book's main audience is the beginning jewelry maker, only because of the lack of nuts and bolts type of information; however, the basic how-to of making jewelry is clearly not the intended focus of this text. Instead, I saw this as a kind of portable class in color theory. Granted, the beginner would find this information helpful, but I think even more so, the experienced jewelry designer (especially intermediatel level jewelry makers) will find this book useful.

Chapter one includes extensive discussion on color theory, from the basics of the color wheel to the various types of color schemes derived from the wheel. The second chapter builds on this information and provides jewelry examples of how you could implement the different types of color schemes such as cool, warm, neutral, and so on. The final chapter has 10 projects that use some of the sample color schemes from chapter two.

Though there is some bead stringing in here, the projects and jewelry color examples are primarily made up of bead weaving techniques. So, while bead stringers can still find a lot of good color information here that would applicable to stringing, bead weavers would probably be more likely to attempt the projects.

If you find yourself struggling with color combinations or you want to try experimenting with different color schemes, then this might be a good resource for you.