The Beader's Guide to Color by Margie Deeb

A great book for beaders who want to advance their work through a better understanding of color and how to use it. Margie de-mystifies color theory and presents hundreds of suggested color palettes to make it fun and easy to expand your use of color.

The Beader’s Guide to Color, Margie Deeb, $21.95, Watson-Guptil Publishing

Margie has written a reference book about color and its use in beading. Not just limited to off-loom beadweaving, she has also included thoughts about using color in loom work and stringing.

Each color is profiled with background information along with information about the color wheel, how colors “relate” and “react” to each other, and how colors in seed beads will react to one another. Margie also included some basic information on color theory to get you thinking about how you use color in your own beadwork.

Throughout the book, you will find numerous suggested color palettes that Margie has created based on each aspect of color theory. If that sounds intimidating to you, relax: each color palette has suggested Delica numbers and proportions to make re-creating these color schemes easy for the beginner.

What I liked best about this book were the color palettes. So many of them to choose from! Even in the colors that I don’t like to use – pastels and lighter colors – the ready-made palettes made me want to experiment with those colors to broaden my color horizons.

There are projects for every taste and technique including off-loom weaving, loom weaving and stringing. Basic off-loom weaving and beading techniques are covered, although the projects and information in this book assume that the reader is already familiar with one or more of these techniques.

A beautiful gallery of inspiration and eye candy round out this volume, the first of its kind for artists who work primarily with beads.