January Art Bead Scene Challenge - Round Two!

As you may have guessed from my post last week for the Art Bead Scene challenge (click HERE if you missed it), I'm pretty smitten with this month's inspiration artwork by Lois Mailou Jones.  Even though I've already made one design, I couldn't resist doing a second one!

Textile Design for Cretonne, 1928? 

by Lois Mailou Jones

Tempera on Paper

One of my beady Christmas presents from my sweet husband was a six month subscription to the Simple Truths Sampler Club that Erin Prais-Hintz auctioned off for Typhoon Haiyan relief.  I have been wanting to buy a membership for a while now since I admire her work so much, but I just never made the leap...so he did it for me.  (See, he's a keeper!)

December was my first month in the club but I ended up getting both the December and January installments right after the first of the year.  If you didn't know, Erin has been designing her Simple Truths each month to go along with the ABS challenges (she's one of the editors of the ABS blog too).  I really like what Erin did for January.  She carved her own leaf stamps to use in her polymer clay designs.  The colors she chose are much softer and more subdued than the inspiration piece, but lovely nonetheless.

I was super happy that my pendant was in an antique brass bezel since I've been designing so much with brass lately.  I knew I'd have plenty of options for whatever my design might eventually be.  As so often happens, when I was pulling beads for another project, I noticed a seed bead mix that had the perfect soft mix of colors to go with my new pendant.

The seed beads and the pendant both have a slight pearlescence to them.  The combo seemed so perfect that I just had to use them together...but one strand would have been way too wimpy and boring to go with Erin's lovely pendant.  So, I picked out some nice TierraCast cones in an antique brass finish, some metal and Czech glass accent beads and started to play around with stringing patterns on multiple strands.

Now every time I do a multi-strand necklace (especially if it's stringing) I get so frustrated trying to get everything all even that I swear I'll never do it again... yet here I am doing it anyway.  I'm just a glutton for punishment!  Somehow my strands shifted a little bit as I was trying to get things situated and crimped but I was able to more or less straighten it out.  The resulting pattern isn't quite what I'd originally planned, but still works for me.

I'm certainly looking forward to seeing what other treasures I receive from Miss Erin over the next few months.  Don't be surprised if you see some of them make appearances here!

P.S.  I decided to add this one to my Etsy shop.  You can see it (and buy it!) HERE.