2023 marks the eighth 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! (Y'all, time really does fly!!) 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:
During our trip to the arty city of Asheville, NC recently, I took a ton of pictures of amazing graffiti. Take a decrepit brick building and make it into a work of art? Check! This month's challenge is to use either this graffiti/mural as inspiration...or take your own photo and use it as inspiration!
I love both the cute little bird with his kind of sad expression and the colors and patterns in this photo! The bird itself (himself? males are usually the colorful ones) started off my creativity for this month as I started to grab beady possibilities from amongst my stash.
What did I make first? Earrings! Who is surprised?? What, no one is? That's fair. First up, a pair of earrings highlighting a pair of winter bird porcelain charms from Artisticaos. The colors were perfect even if they aren't exactly summery.
For my second pair of earrings I picked a cute set of birdie charms from Happy Fish Things. The colors really worked for the inspiration and I feel like their little body decorations fit with the feeling of the mural too. These really didn't need much from me... all I did was add some little Czech glass beads for legs and brass ear wires.
I eked out a little more creative time this past weekend and managed to finish two more pieces for this challenge. I had pulled a fabulous ceramic pendant from Golem Design Studio and am so happy I managed to complete a necklace with it. I adore their fun and colorful designs and am in awe that each one is hand carved and glazed. Anyway, I wanted to do something asymmetrical with some yellow Czech glass leaves. to balance those leaves and a faceted yellow jade teardrop on the one side, I used a trio of Czech glass flowers on the other. Pulling from the colors of the pendant, I selected some Swarovski pearls in Petrol and some aqua colored crystal.
Last but not least, I whipped up a sweet little bracelet using a set of polymer clay beads from Humblebeads that have languished in my stash for a long time. I kept the design fairly simple just adding some spacers between Heather's beads. For the rest of the bracelet I used a mix of enameled link chain and a more plain gold plated oval chain.
I really had hoped to play with some lampwork glass from my stash that channeled some of the colors and patterns in the mural. Sigh... so many ideas, so little time. Maybe, just maybe something will come of those before I clean off my work space again.
But enough of might of beens... it's time to see what YOU created! Please add links to/photos of your own creations below. I love seeing what everyone else is making too. Check back on July 1st to see what Eric dreams up for us next!
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