Honey Do List: February 2017

Last 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... and we're continuing the Honey Do List for 2017!  I know that I'm not the only one who loves a good design challenge, so I'm hoping folks will continue to play along!  

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

I went minimalist on this month's photo which I took this last summer in the Japanese Gardens in Portland.  Walking up the trail to the garden proper, I spotted this single leaf sitting in a ray of sun filtered through tall trees and magnolias.  I'm dreaming of summer after too much winter here in Minnesota, so here you go!

I love this color combination of fuchsia and bright green and actually had just made a pair in those colors for last month's We're All Ears challenge.  I couldn't just recycle those (although I'll slip them in at the end of this post for fun) so it was lucky that I had some other beads floating around in the right colors.

The color palette for this challenge immediately made me thing of a couple of goodies in my stash from Heather Powers of Humblebeads.  First up, a quick pair of earrings using a pair of her matchstick charms in a lovely magenta.  I was a tiny bit naughty and bought the green leaf beads just for this challenge... they were too perfect to pass up!

I also happened to have a cute little mum pendant in just the right colors that Heather gave us in our gift bags at last October's Inspired by Nature fall retreat.  (Read about that awesome event HERE if you missed it!)  This seemed like the perfect time to make a necklace with it... not everything languishes for years around here.  ;)

I had some tiny garnet beads that I wanted to use which meant stringing part of my design due to their equally tiny holes.  And speaking of tiny holes... I ended up wire wrapping a bail for my pendant because none of my jump rings fit nicely through it.  I used a mix of Czech glass and gemstones for the links and dangles.  In addition to the garnet, I used some faceted jade and dyed agate in two colors.  I'm pretty happy with the mix and balance of colors!

Lastly, as a bonus, here is that pair from last month's We're All Ears challenge featuring charms from Marsha Neal Studio:

An InLinkz Link-up

get the InLinkz code