This marks the third year that my husband Eric has been giving me a design challenge each month to get me out of my comfort zone and to help clear out my bead stash... it's the Honey Do List 2018! 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 with us!
Here's this month's inspiration and what Eric had to say about it:
I've wanted to get a decent crow picture for ages but they have eluded me. Over our recent trip to Portland (and their plethora of loud crows) I finally had a chance! The closer of these crows was pretty mad about my presence and kept cawing at me while I took this series of shots. It ended up dive-bombing a random pedestrian and my friend Ron shortly after this!
When Eric chose one of his crow pictures for this challenge I knew that I had a couple of pendants from my friend Andrew Thornton of Allegory Gallery that were just perfect. Yay for immediate inspiration!! This first necklace definitely makes me think of when Mama Crow was fussing at Eric for getting too close. I love that this laser cut wood pendant catches the crow mid-caw! With the feathers in the background I thought it would be fun to incorporate a Vintaj feather piece that I added some black patina paint to. Originally I was thinking I would have a feather on each side of the necklace, but after trying several options, I abandoned that idea in favor of a much more asymmetrical design. The links are made up of a variety of Czech glass and ceramic beads.
I had a much more colorful crow pendant from Andrew in my stash too. It wasn't in the original pile of beads that I pulled out for this month's challenge, but it kept calling to me (cawing to me?) and I just had to pull it out and play with it! This time I went for a strung design of glass, freshwater pearls, plated hematite, and vintage lucite with copper plated findings. To finish things off, I picked a key toggle clasp to play off the key in the crow's beak on the pendant.
On a more subtle note, I decided to do a play on the sheen of the crows feathers. You can't see it in this photo, but when you take a close look at most black birds, their feathers aren't pure black. I had a piece from my friend Erin Prais-Hintz of Tesori Trovati that just cried out to be used for this challenge... I love her little beaded mosaic pendants and was lucky to get a few different ones including this one that she did for her Simple Truths Sampler Club. I decided to use up some of my seed bead mixes that I've had for a while as well as some iridescent pinch beads gifted to me by my mother in law for a two strand necklace.
Believe it or not, I actually left a few crow beads behind on the bead table... with travel and having too much fun overall this July, I ran out of time. Those potential designs will just have to wait for another day!
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Overachiever! Love how these turned out!
ReplyDeleteWhat fun! I love the inspiration picture (and crows in general), and think that these necklaces really reflect the crows therein. Beautiful work! :)
ReplyDeleteI absolutely hate crows (which is my reason for not participating in this challenge) but I think that your second and third necklaces are beautiful. Love the colours and the inherent sheen of the beads
ReplyDeleteOh, I adore what you've created. All three necklaces are fantastic. I really dig that last one. The iridescent colors of a crow's feathers is probably one of my favorite things about them. I let myself run out of time for this challenge since we were "on vacation" for the first two weeks of the month. However, since you've left the linky tool open for so long, I might be able to figure out a way to join in soon, but no promises. Thank you and Eric for always having such a fun and unique challenge.
ReplyDeleteThanks for letting me know about this! I will definitely join you!
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