Sorry to be posting this so late in the day, but at least I got it done on the due date! I got a little caught up in our Five Friends Holiday Sale on Facebook that extended through today, Cyber Monday. And I'll apologize in advance for my photos... the light hasn't been on my side lately.
Anyway, as most of you know, 2020 marks the fifth 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 2020! 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 went a little surrealistic on this one. I took this from a moving car in England: a field with a bunch of wild poppies. I like the blur and the pop of color here. Good luck!
As soon as I opened the picture file from Eric I knew one of the art beads that I just had to use this time! But I'll get to that design in a bit. As always, I started by gathering all the possible beads that I might want to use for this challenge. I had a nice selection of art bead options!
As is my normal habit, I started with a pair of earrings. I snagged these pretty poppy enameled charms by Lindy's Designs in a Facebook sale before Eric chose this month's artwork and they came just in time! As luck would have it, I also had just gotten some fun new acrylic that were sitting out on my bead table when inspiration struck. I love the acrylic for being bold without being heavy. The black and white floral pattern really was the perfect addition to this design!
Next up, I had to play with at least some of my extensive collection of
Golem Design Studio poppy pieces! For this first necklace I strung a collection of Czech glass beads in colors to coordinate with the pendant. I even threw in some red flowers for fun. I just love the mix of teal or turquoise and red!
While I was noodling on what to do with some of the other pieces, I whipped up a multi-strand bracelet using Lorelei Hill Eurto's design from back in the day of beading magazines being plentiful. I used several different colors and sizes of seed beads, Czech glass, and bamboo for the strands. Wood and a ceramic round round out the focal section of the bracelet.
My next necklace was inspired by a series that my friend Erin Prais-Hintz made a couple of years ago. I got my Now That's a Jig set back up on the end of my table and whipped up a little teardrop pendant frame that I could hang another Golem lentil bead off of. A few coordinating rows of beads wire wrapped to the frame completed the look. I just strung the pedant off of a long brass chain.
Lastly I've got my favorite piece of the whole bunch... with the art bead most perfectly suited to Eric's photo. I had snatched up a pair of of fabulous enameled focals by
Gardanne Beads a while back that really look like Anne could have taken her inspiration from Eric's picture! I knew from the first that I wanted to do a multi-strand necklace with a variety of smaller beads pulling the colors from the pendant. I hid the ends of the strands in brass cones topped with turquoise colored beads. I added links with red and black flower beads to connect the front part of the necklace to the brass chain in the back. This one still needs a little bit of tweaking, but you get the general idea!
Now it's your turn! Please add links to/photos of your own creations below. I love seeing what everyone else is making too! Check back on December 1st (omg, that's tomorrow!) to see what Eric has in store for us next month!
