May Art Bead Scene Challenge

The editors over at the Art Bead Scene blog have picked out a delightful floral painting to inspire us for the month of May.  The painting is "Vase with Flowers in a Window" by Dutch painter Ambrosius Bosschaert.  You can learn more about the painting and the artist over at the ABS blog HERE.

Vaas met bloemen in een venster :: Vase with Flowers in a Window, 1620

Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder
Oil on Copper, 64cm x 46 cm

I love how the artist snuck so many little insects in with the gorgeous, velvety flowers.    If you enlarge the artwork you see that he didn't spare details with the mist-covered landscape in the background.  There are so many rich colors to play with here!

Looking through my art bead stash (these challenges are really helping me to reduce the dragon's hoard!) I found two contenders.  One is a porcelain Floral Drop Pendant from Nancy Schindler at Round Rabbit and the other a chunky lampwork bead.  I love the ornate floral motif on the porcelain piece, but I decided that it was too pink.  The lampwork bead has a little bit of that pink tone as well, but there are more orange and cream tones that really reflect the colors in painting a little bit better.  Unfortunately, this is another case where I have no idea who the bead designer is...sigh, my regrettable lack of record keeping from my early years strikes again!  I know I bought it at the Twin Cities Bead Bazaar, but that's all I've got.

Once I decided on the round lampwork bead, my immediate thought was to turn the vase idea on its head and do a dangle with lots of fine chain with glass beads wrapped onto the ends.  I used a brass bead cap that reminded me a bit of the ornate vase from the painting and strung several lengths of chain from an eye pin that I then wire wrapped to securely close the unit.  In digging through my bead stash, I found that I had lots of little teardrop shaped beads in yellow, orange, and a peachy color.  Perfect to drip off the chain! 

With the way I crafted the pendant and the size of the lampwork bead, I knew that I wanted a longer necklace for this one.  I worked in a variety of Czech glass and gemstone beads along the chain and even added a cream colored shell piece to represent the shells on the window ledge.  I had to get just a tiny bit literal and add in a couple of glass bell flower beads and a little dragonfly charm.

I'm pretty pleased with how my necklace captures the color and feel of the artwork (less thrilled with some of my photos, but time was running out and the light was fading).  This has been a busy month and I'm barely getting things done and posted before May bleeds into June and summer starts in ernest.  I hope that we will see some big bouquets of Minnesota grown flowers soon.  For now I'm just happy that the trees are leafing out and the world is shifting from brown to green again.