Beaded Jewelry 101 - Designing Your Own Jewelry - Space and Texture

Spaceimportant. Texture is how the object feels on the
The way space is used in jewelry making is howsurface; smooth, rough, silky, bumpy, soft, hard, etc. It is
close or far apart the beads and components arealso possible to find beads that look like they are
from each other. Depending on the distances used, thistextured, but they really are just printed or covered by
can affect how we look at the object. There are twoanother layer of clear material. Many jewelry artists
types of space. Positive space and negative space.draw texture combinations from nature, because there
Positive Spaceare many of them. There are also quite a few artists
Positive space is the space that is taken up by thethat use texture as their main element of design in their
beads and components. When you have a necklaceworks.
or bracelet that is composed of square and circleTexture also helps when you are trying to get a piece
beads, then the positive space is the places theto feel right. Sometimes when a certain medium lies on
square and circle beads are in the composition.your skin, it feels weird by itself. When you add other
Negative Spacetextures to it, that helps it lay better! It is not very
On the other hand, negative space is the completedifficult to use texture in jewelry making. One example
opposite of positive space. Rather than the places theof this is to use many, many different sizes and
beads are, the negative space is where the beads areshapes of beads to create a design. The combination
not. For example, if you have a double strand necklaceof several beads will:
where one of the strands is longer than the other, a1. Give your piece texture and
crescent shape is formed. The crescent shape is the2. Make your piece fun and inspiring
negative space.A few more words about texture... decide upon how
One of the cool things about space, is that sometimesmuch texture to use by what you want the piece to
the negative space, which is what is not there, isbe like. If you are expecting the piece to turn out clean
sometimes just as interesting as what is there (positiveand crisp, maybe don't use a lot of texture. But, then
space.)again, if you want your piece to look old and worn, a
Texturelot of texture will give you this effect in connection with
The texture of an object or project is also verythe correct colors.