Pretty Palettes Partner

Each month Erin Prais-Hintz of Tesori Trovati shares a palette for inspiration on the Halcraft blog, picks out a variety of beads from Michael's, and encourages others to play along with her and design something.  Starting this month she's changing things up a little and is inviting a guest blogger to join the fun.  I am the lucky person to be chosen as her first Pretty Palettes Partner and I'm just thrilled and honored!   

You can read all about Erin's palette inspiration and bead choices over on the Halcraft USA blog HERE.  For May, Erin picked out this gorgeous palette from Design Seeds.

Those April showers are sure to bring pretty May flowers in this pretty palette from Design Seeds. http://design-seeds.com/index.php/home/entry/flora-hues38

Here are the yummy beads that Erin picked out (and sent me!) to create with for this challenge.  They are all from Michael's from the Bead Gallery line and I just want to say these beads look even nicer in person!

As soon as I saw the color palette and the photo that inspired it, I thought of some of the ceramic flower pendants that I've gotten from my friend Tracee Dock of The Classic Bead.  Heck, they may have been modeled on the very flowers in the photo they look so perfect for this!  When I went looking for those pendant I found another art bead in my messy stash... this one from Marie Voyer-Cramp of Skye Jewels.  I had already wrapped her lovely wooden tile in brass filigree so it wasn't going to work with the silver beads that Erin had picked.  No problem, I realized that I was going to make two necklaces for this blog hop!

Since I already had all my Vintaj goodies spread out on my work table, I started with the wooden tile.  The florals were just the perfect colors for this challenge but more toward the darker, deeper colors in the palette.  I decided to go for an asymmetrical look with the iridescent crackle rounds and little faceted glass beads on one side of the pendant knotted in light rust colored waxed Irish linen.  On the other side I used some beads from both strands of the table cut Czech glass mixed in with some pale yellow frosted glass rounds from my own stash.  I overestimated the number of bead units I needed for the table cut side, I decided to whip up some subtly mismatched earrings to round out this look.

After my first set was completed I still had plenty of beads left to play with and it was time to switch to silver tones!  This time I wanted to have a heavier emphasis on the beads that Erin sent me and also to work in some of the pale pink rounds that I totally ignored for my first set.

So I started working on the second necklace... well, what I thought was going to be the second necklace.  I wanted to go back to my roots and do something that was more of a simple stringing project.  When I started playing around with it, something just didn't feel quite balanced... it just wasn't what I had been thinking in my head.  I finally found a stringing pattern that I liked, but my pendant seemed too big for the scale of the beads.  Luckily, I'm an art bead hoarder and had a second, smaller pendant from Tracee in the same colors.  So much better!  For this design I used the small pink rounds, faceted glass beads, and silver plated flowers from Michael's and added in a few frosted yellow round glass beads and some peachy seed beads as spacers.

I was still determined to use that original Classic Bead pendant I had found, so back to the drawing board for necklace number three!  Now, I could have just popped a jump ring through the top of the pendant and gone from there, but with my newfound love for waxed linen I decided to something a little different for me.  I used two strands of the light rust linen mixed with a strand of two-ply butterscotch to tie the pendant to a jump ring.  I added some little seed beads from the ends of the threads and I'm really happy with the effect.  But I still needed a necklace to go with my pretty pendant.

This time I pulled out my sterling silver wire and made a series of bead units with the table cut glass, crackle rounds, and silver plated flowers.  I used Nunn Design antique silver plated findings and kept this one pretty simple.

Not the best picture but I've been having uncooperative lighting lately.

Once again, I had to make earrings to go with the necklace (y'all know I have that matching disorder!)  I used the crackle and faceted glass with the rhinestone rondelles and a silver plated bead cap from Nunn Design for some sweet little ear bobs.

So there you have it... one set of beads to go with this month's Pretty Palette and three different looks.  I hope you've enjoyed what I've come up with for the challenge.  Please pop over to the Halcraft blog to see what Erin and some of her colleagues made by clicking HERE.