Honey Do List April 2021

Happy Monday, everyone!  It's reveal day for the Honey Do List!  Who else is excited??  2021 marks the sixth 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... The Honey Do List!  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:

Hey everyone!  Here is a little tongue-in-cheek challenge for the Easter month.  I took this picture in Pacific City, Oregon several years ago.  Our hotel sold bags of rabbit chow to guests and we had to try this out.  Soon Sj had "wild" black rabbits eating out of her hands.  Welcome to Spring and have a great month!

Feeding all those black bunnies in Pacific City was so much fun!  What a great memory from a fun trip.  I honestly didn't believe the lady at the hotel when she told us if we shook the bag of food that the rabbits would come running... but she was totally right!

Anyways, seeing at the Art Elements theme for April is also rabbit/hare focused, it's a good thing that I had a decent amount of interesting art beads to choose from that could work for either challenge.  

Clockwise from top left: White Swan Studio, Lesley Watt, Jess Contreras, Round Rabbit, Andrew Thornton, Andrew Thornton

I haven't gotten as much made as I had hoped this month, but I still have a few more days to get some more designs finished for Art Elements.  I've got partial ideas for two of the remaining pendants... so we'll see how quickly things come together.  For now, let me show you the two necklaces that I did create!

I kicked things off with a lovely hare pendant by Lesley Watt that I've been hoarding (along with two of it's cousins if I'm honest) forever.  I strung an asymmetrical design that features some lovely matte Czech glass rounds, matte cuprite, cultured sea glass, and Vintage German resin.  To pull in the color of the pendant's flower charm, I added a few dark red touches... Czech glass flowers and rondelles as well as some deep colored faceted garnets.

Next up, I veered a little bit from realistic bunnies into the wonderful and weird world of the jackalope!  The adorable little polymer clay pendant is by the multi-talented Andrew Thornton.  To give it more heft, I wire-wrapped a fun striped Czech glass bead with some brass nuggets.  Still in a stringing mood, I used a combination of matte jade, bronzite, agate, wood, and Czech glass.  

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 May 1st to see what Eric has in store for us next month!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Inspiration for the April 2021 Honey Do List

Welcome (a little late) to April and finally some warmer weather here in Minnesota!  And a very Happy Easter to those of you who celebrate it!  2021 marks the sixth 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... The Honey Do List!  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:

Hey everyone!  Here is a little tongue-in-cheek challenge for the Easter month.  I took this picture in Pacific City, Oregon several years ago.  Our hotel sold bags of rabbit chow to guests and we had to try this out.  Soon Sj had "wild" black rabbits eating out of her hands.  Welcome to Spring and have a great month!

Apparently Eric was in sync with the editors over at the Art Elements blog who also chose rabbits/hares as their theme of the month.  So if you're doing that challenge, feel free to play along with us here too!

The reveal date will be Monday, April 26th.  To make it super easy for you to participate and share your creations, I'll set up an Inlinkz link up so folks can add their blogs as they are ready.  Just stop by my blog starting on April 26th and join the fun!  I'll leave the link up open for a while... so you have plenty of time to add your links.  (Last month's is still open... check it our HERE.) No blog?  No worries!  Feel free to send me a picture of your creation and some brief comments and I'll happily share in my blog post.  You can reach me at sjdesignsjewelry@gmail.com  The more the merrier, so I hope you'll play along with me this month

Allegory Gallery Design Challenge: Fairy Garden Reveal

Happy April!  It's not an April Fool's joke that today's the day for the Allegory Gallery Fairy Garden design challenge kit!  After a very long hiatus from their design challenges this is the second kit in a row that I couldn't resist grabbing.

I was really smitten with Ann Schroeder's use of the lentil beads from the Dark Rainbow kit last month and that inspired my first necklace design a bit.  (You can see Ann's designs on her blog HERE.)  When I saw Andrew Thornton's mystery component I immediately knew that those lentils would work with this kit just as well!  I started playing around with different combinations of the larger beads from the kit and eventually came up with a design that I was happy with.  Almost every bead in this design was from the kit... the only exceptions were the lentils, seed bead spacers, and two other Czech glass beads.  

Of course, every time I get a kit like this I immediately look for cool bead pairs with earrings in mind.  Here are the ear bobs I whipped up this time!  I couldn't be more smitten with the cute little pale purple lady bugs in the pair on the left.  It felt like a no-brainer to pair them with the purple flower beads for some fun dangles.  The middle pair was super quick... I just attached the crystal teardrops to some fun Art Deco style connectors.  The pair on the right started with the green flowers.  I built a little dangle with them and some of the other small beads from the mix and then found a perfect pair of disk beads from Humblebeads to go with it.  

I never really know how to deal with dagger and petal shaped beads.  Since there was a nice little collection of them in the bead blend I challenged myself to play with them for once.  I strung them on a piece of wire with seed beads in between for a delicate little focal bib.  

I was about ready to move along and put away the rest of the kit away for the moment to move onto some things that I needed to deal with this week.... but then I took another look at some of the larger beads from the luxury bead blend included with the kit.  I started playing around with them and came up with a pleasing arrangement... now to find a focal to go with it.  Now I don't know about you, but this is 100% the opposite of how I normally design.  I came up with a few fun contenders but in the end chose a sweet polymer clay moth from Humblebeads.  I added a little bit of leafy chain underneath the pendant for a fun effect.  This may be my favorite piece this time around!  I may still need to adjust the length a bit but at least I could get a picture.  (Memo to myself... this is why prefer open link chain.)

Thanks for stopping by to see my latest creations!