Art Elements Theme of the Month :: Snowflakes

Fittingly enough for the crazy winter weather that has spread across most of the United States this month, Jennifer Cameron chose the theme of Snowflakes for the February Art Elements Theme of the Month.  Little did she know when she picked it...  While much of the country is getting rocked by the extreme weather, it's mostly just been bone chillingly cold here in Minnesota.  So, basically, business as usual!  

It's pretty hard to design for Spring when you are in the depths of winter (at least for me!) so this theme was perfect for where my head was at this month.  Maybe after this round of designs both me and the weather will have the heavy snow and crazy cold out of our systems!  A girl can dream.

I was lucky enough to snag some gorgeous snowflake cabs from the talented Lisa Peters Russ at the end of last year.  This challenge gave me the excuse to play with a couple of them before the spring thaw... and I'm so happy I did.  I'm also pretty proud of myself for taking on a more ambitious project right out of the gate!  

I started out with the big snowflake shield cab from Lisa (I had already glued that one and two smaller shield shapes down to backing) since I had an inkling of an idea for it.  Since the cab was sizable I wanted to play around with some vintage crystal components that I had picked up for just such an occasion.  It's hard to see in the picture but the large center element has two holes while the smaller side ones have just one center hole.  I used small clear silver lined seed beads to attach the crystal elements.  I played with a new to me technique for filling in the background at the top... a sort of random sewing down of one bead at a time.  As luck would have it, once I got the pendant all finished, I discovered that I had the perfect dyed silk ribbon to compliment it.  Such an easy and elegant solution for finishing the necklace!

Still on a bead embroidery kick, I completed a second smaller snowflake pendant.  I just love Lisa's pieces!  Since this cab was a smaller scale to begin with, I did an extra row of beads around the entire thing.  For a fun, frosty affect I did a picot edge around the pendant with a nice grey pearly colored size 15.  I'm still not sure how I will finish it into a necklace, but that's a problem for another day!

I was in the process of putting some new(ish) purchases away when I realized that the TierraCast charms I had gotten had a snowflake looking pattern on one side (the other is very much floral).  So I went digging through some other homeless supplies hanging out on (i.e. cluttering up) my bead table to whip up these sparkly snowflake earrings.  Hard to tell from the photo, but the bead caps are a snowflake pattern.

I still have some other snowflake goodies hanging out on my bead table, but the sun is out and I may opt for some tropical designs next!