Sj Designs Jewelry: The Honey Do List: July 2016

This year, my husband Eric has decided to issue me a design challenge each month to get me out of my comfort zone and to help clear out my bead stash... we're calling it the Honey Do List. I know that I'm not the only one who loves a good design challenge, so I'm inviting folks to play along!

Here is this month's inspiration and what Eric had to say about it:

I'm a huge fan of the beauty to be found in nature, especially that hidden within the depths of the earth. The random patterns of these stone pendants are a work of art unto themselves--some abstract, others more defined. The challenge this month is to incorporate such a patterned natural stone into your jewelry!

I'm sure that Eric was thinking about all the gemstone pairs and pendants that he helped pick out at Bead & Button when he chose this challenge! Here is a shot of some of those goodies.

Even though I strongly suspected that Eric most wanted me to make use of some of my new pendants, I was in an earring mood when I started working on this month's Honey Do List so I started with some of the fun earring pairs. I made one pair with red creek jasper (left) and one with a combination of galaxy jasper and apple jasper rounds (right).

I wanted to do at least one necklace for this challenge... I chose a large red creek jasper pendant for my focal. Seriously, this is a statement piece! Red creek jasper is one of my favorite stones... so many great colors and patterns... Yum! My biggest challenge for this piece was the wire wraps for the pendant. (I'm jealous of folks who make that seem so effortless!) For the left side of the necklace I chose red creek jasper in a variety of sizes and shapes. The right side features copper beads and some abreciated jasper nuggets.