Water & Fire Mystery Challenge Competition

The latest installment for the Allegory Gallery Design Challenges is another mystery competition, Water & Fire!  This time there was an added twist... instead of just one kit, there were two... and you didn't know which kit you would receive unless you decided to buy two.  I decided to roll the dice and see which kit I would get... and it was Water for me!

Wanting to make sure that I actually used the special "mystery component," a polymer clay pendant made by Andrew Thornton, I started with a necklace.  The focal is just lovely with waves in blue and gold (or is it more bronze??), but I didn't love the way it looked with most of the beads in the kit.  I did pull out some small glass rondelles from the kit, but what really caught my eye was a bag of leftover beads from a class project I never finished with Heather Powers on a past Bead Cruise.  I picked out a great mix of Czech glass, freshwater pearls, and crystal from that kit and added in some other Czech glass beads and seed beads from my stash to create a strung necklace that (I hope) lets Andrew's pendant shine.

Next up, a little collection of earrings I made!  There were lots of bead pairs that were just crying out to be earrings... so who am I to deny those beads their destiny?

The first pair I made used some fun faceted drops that are (I think) vintage plastic or lucite.  I added some brass bead caps to the bottom to make them a little bit fancy and paired them with some coordinating green crystal and Swarovski pearls for some fun dangles.  The second pair here is probably my favorites.  As soon as I saw these tube beads (again in plastic or lucite) I knew that I wanted to do some fun wire wrapping around them.  I used a pair of adorable glass shells to dangle from the bottom of the wire-wrapped tubes and finished things off with niobium ear wires with bright copper accents.

For my second two pairs of earrings, I moved away from warmer metals to use sterling silver.  The pair on the left is pretty simple... just a pair of lucite (or plastic?) drops and some glass rondelles from the kit.  I just added the silver plated bead caps.  Next up, something a little outside my normal design comfort zone... some three tiered dangles!  All the beads are from the kit here.  I'm so happy that I had some matching ear wires embellished with Swarovski crystals to finish these off.

Life has been crazy busy with our trip to Milwaukee for Bead & Button (expect to hear more from me on that super soon) and other general life llama drama, so I didn't get as much made from this kit as I had hoped.  I'll leave you with the wisp of an idea for a second necklace... hopefully I'll get this one made in the near future.