I think this will be a fun and interesting beading experiment. Freeform Peyote beading is not new, of course, but I'm excited about the idea of developing a beading project here in the Beadwork Blog, using a color palette far outside of my usual comfort zone.

I usually bead in shades of blue, green, teal, purple and lavender. When I want to work with warm shades, I use peach, a bit of pink, a touch of orange and a wee bit of brick or red, but that's about it. My usual metal shade preference is silver but for warm colors it's either copper or luscious bronze.

The thing that really grabbed my attention with these beads was not, however, that yummy bronze, but the combination of the mustard yellow glaze and the gray bead surface. My childhood home had a bathroom done in yellow tile and I recently read an article on bringing those 1950's tile colors into the 21st century by adding gray to the yellow. At first I thought "yuck" but the pictures in the article looked great.

Here's the selection of Raku finish beads and the base seed beads for the Beadwork Blog Freeform Beading Project so far. These beads are the first I've seen with that yellow/gray color combination and the added bronze just makes them perfect for me: