Purple and WHAT?

Okay, so I am bending (fold forming) some tin to play with and it ends up in this odd square that catches the light in the forms.  I like it.  Uh, but it's purple.  I'll use purple but I will usually throw it in as an accent color to some blue-green or something.  So, I'm fiddly fartin' around with the parts I stamped out and it fits on the copper square I cut out earlier.  Okay, cool.  It's a good fit and with four corner rivets and something in the center it will be quite interesting.

Not cool to me was the possible color problem.  Copper with purple.  For me, it was a stumper.

I had recently seen a great article on the Art Bead Scene where they went over the color of metal.      Well, see for yourself HERE.  It honestly has got to be one of the best articles I've ever seen that covers the problem of contrast/color choices on beads/jewelry components.  Anyway, it helped immesely.  I'd highly recommend everyone check it out and it got me thinking.  In fact, I think those girls ought to take that same format and work it up into a book presentation for a publisher - along with color segways for jewelers and beaders.  There's nothing else like that out there that takes into account the color of the metal so comprehensibly.

What I resorted to after pouring over that article was Googling purple and copper color images.  Mostly the copper images is what helped me find some possible solutions.  What goes best and is most often used with copper is a teal (or turquoise) - blue green color.  Why is that?  Because copper is basically an orange.  DUH, and thank you Art Bead Scene.  And why didn't I think of that - I do know that they reside opposite on that color wheel.  So the googling showed a whole bunch of color matches that had the teal included.  What it also showed were these two combinations that were interesting:

purple/ orange(copper)/ red/ black
copper (orange)/ purple/ teal/ gunmetal

Now, for purposes of these earrings I'm going to oxidize that copper piece (maybe a pattern too), silver rivets will work nicely, but my orange (copper) is dark and my purple is dark.  This is where The Art Bead Scene article comes in mighty handy.  If I'm going to use one of the possible color choices I've listed I'm going to have to use a much lighter shade/tint of one of the remaining colors (for the additional component to the front) to make this pop a bit...or it will be dull and boring.

This is what I used for inspiration.  It's still a rather tight range of tints/shades of those colors - but the grey could be the silver - and you see the copper/purple teal.  I'm still considering the red combo on that list too.

Maybe a very simple riveted pop of bead color in the center.  Way over-thinking this, huh?

On the subject of over used brain power I either ought to have brain freeze or a burning sensation in my hair.  It's not like a simple pair of earrings is going to sell for a cool thousand - whoo - that would mean you'd only have to create like 30-50 pair a year to make a living.  LOL  It must be time to give it a rest and take a nap.

One set of these should work !