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!