Artisans Create Together Color Inspiration Challenge: March 2018

This month's Artisans Create Together Color Inspiration Challenge is perfect for the month we celebrate St. Patrick's Day... it's all green all the time!  I'm definitely a girl who loves green (especially lime-y shades) so this is right up my alley.

I'm not sure if this first design plays strictly by the rules... the challenge says "your choice of accents... Black, Grey, Cream, Gold?"  So I'm interpreting the question mark to mean that I can choose a less neutral accent color!  When I first grabbed this adorable butterfly with flower charm pendant by Lesley Watt out of my art bead storage, I really had intended to keep it pretty monochromatic.  Honestly, that's normally how my brain wants to work!

As I pulled bead possibilities out onto the bead board, the sea of green just wasn't doing it for me.  Now with the variations in the glaze, I really could have gone with a more brown or rust color... but clearly I didn't go that route!  I knew that I wanted to use some Czech glass flowers in my design to play off the whimsy of the butterfly's swirls... some cobalt blue ones just cried out to play.  Who am I to argue with the beads? 

Next up I made a multi-strand bracelet based on Lorelie Eurto with a lentil bead from Golem Design Studio in several shades of green. I used a dark green waxed Irish linen, a variety of Czech glass beads and seed beads in a variety of greens.  I also found a China Chrysoprase large hole round bead and some recycled glass to anchor the design. 

Not quite done playing with green, I made a second bracelet featuring a polymer clay link by Summer Wind Art that my sweet husband gave me ages ago.  Seriously, sometimes it takes me a LONG time to decide what to do with something... or to stumble across the right challenge to make me want to use it!  This time I grabbed some matte jade rounds as well as some ivory colored Czech glass melons to start making beaded links for part of the bracelet.  I never think to do more than one strand when I'm doing links, so I wanted to try adding chain into the mix this time to shake things up!  I used a Czech glass maple leaf with copper accents and a smaller matte jade bead to dangle off one side.  I'm pretty happy with the movement in this piece.  I'll have to remember to try this sort of look on future bracelets!



Thanks for stopping by to see my sea of green for this month!  Now I'm off to raise a glass of (not green) beer!  Cheers!