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!

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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!  

Allegory Gallery Design Challenge: Dark Rainbow Reveal

It's been absolutely ages since I've participated in one of Allegory Gallery's Design Challenges, but when they premiered the Dark Rainbow kit I had to snag one and play along!  I couldn't resist the dark iridescence going on in all the goodies!

Each Allegory Gallery Design Kit has tons of great beads to play with and there's always a Mystery Component that's a surprise.  Here's an up close look at the Mystery Component for this kit and some of the beads I was playing with to go with it!  

For once I started with a necklace (instead of the low hanging fruit of a quick pair of earrings!) and immediately zeroed in on the three strands of matte plated hematite rondelles in different sizes.  The bronze tones in those beads was just perfect for the pendant!  The clear rounds with an AB finish were another early pick for the necklace.  The pearly look to them brought out some of the subtle sheen in the clouds.  (My picture doesn't do the color shifting pigments justice!)  All the beads are from the kit with the exception of a few seed beads at the very back.  I picked a brass plated toggle clasp that mimicked the design around the top of the pendant.

Of course the second thing I made WAS a pair of earrings, lol.  With kits like this I usually start by pouring all the beads out and seeing what I have... grouping like things together and thinking about what things might play best together.  I set aside some matching bead pairs that didn't seem like they would work for my necklace idea as well as some coordinating beads right away but then circled back to them once I finished my first design.  All the beads other than the crystal rondelles came from the kit... so shiny!

Last, but not least I made a bracelet to round out my little mini collection.  I got the idea and some of the supplies for this from the Dakota Stones/Goody Beads presentation during the Great Bead Extravaganza.  I mostly used beads from the luxury bead blend as well as the same matte rondelles I used in my necklace.  I added in some purple peanut seed beads and some braided black leather.  The bracelet is strung on heavy duty memory wire to handle the weight of the bigger beads.  

Thanks for stopping by to see what I've been up to.  There are still a bunch of beads that I haven't even cut off the strands so there's more jewelry to be made from this fun kit when I have the time.  

Art Elements Theme of the Month: Octopus

Gotta love this fun garage door in Portland!  I could't resist sharing a little bit of street art in my post.

As intriguing as the octopus is as a sea creature, I feel lucky to have had as many bead options in my stash as I did.  Not everyone is going to be all about the tentacles!

From top left clockwise, Components by: Anna Choi, Tracey Seder Donoughe, Andrew Thornton, Andrew Thornton, Gardanne Beads

I also have this little cheapie necklace that I bought a while ago thinking I would update the pendant and change some things around for a steam punk outfit.  I still may eventually get there, but Gardanne's piece is far more attractive to me right now.

Eric has been patiently waiting for me to get around to designing something with the amazing (I mean jaw-droppingly gorgeous!) Anne Choi bead we bought for him at Bead & Button 2017.  The big problem is pinning him down to discuss what he wants.  It's a sizeable piece, so I lean toward simplicity, but I'm not sure he will agree.  Must. Schedule. Time.

I'm in the ever-ongoing process of trying to get my beads and supplies organized and put away, and as a result had a bag of beads that I bought last month at Rustic River Finds in Galena, IL during the Adornments Retreat.  As I was starting to put some of the yummy Czech glass away, I realized that there were a couple of things in there that looked really nice with the pale green porcelain octopus pendant by Andrew Thornton of Allegory Gallery... especially some fun crusty feeling rounds. Score!  The pendant has a matte finish and a subtle range of green colors so I looked for things to play into that.  In addition to the Czech glass, I picked some Aventurine, Burma Jade, and some gorgeous faceted green opal rondelles (also from Allegory Gallery) that I've been hoarding.

I always feel a little bit guilty when I sit down to make something for myself.  Perhaps that's what took me so long to get to that sweet enameled octopus from Gardanne Beads.  I piled up a bunch of gemstones, pearls, and Czech glass bead options and just left them sitting on my bead mat until the very end of the month.  I'm such a procrastinator!  At the very last minute (i.e. August 30th) I pulled together one last necklace for the challenge.

I really wanted to use some gorgeous teal faceted pearls in the design but, for whatever reason, I didn't want to string both sides of the design.  For the rest of the strung side, I used some AB finish Peruvian opal and Czech glass.  On the other side I made wire wrapped bead links on sterling silver wire that I antiqued with liver of sulphur first.  It's a combination of pyrite, matte cuprite, and some of the same English cut Czech glass that I used on the strung side.  I was originally thinking that I'd do some sort of dangles off the bottom tentacles, but I think there might be enough going on.  Thoughts?

I actually made the earrings below a while back as a project for the Inspired by Reading Book Club, but I thought that they were too fun not to share!  The ceramic charms are by Michelle McCarthy of Firefly Design Studio and I paired them with labradorite coins that I wire wrapped.  I added some messy wire with tiny seed beads to the charms to hide the metal loops.  I need to remember to try this again sometime!

Thanks for stopping by to see what I've been up to.  This is a blog hop, I hope you'll take the time to see what everyone else was inspired to make this month.

Guest artists:

Cat
Evie and Beth
Hope

Karen
Kathy
Melissa
Michelle
Rozantia
Sarajo - You Are Here
Tammy

Art Elements Team:

Cathy
Claire
Jenny
Laney

Lindsay

Marsha

Art Elements Theme of the Month: Luna Moths

Image from The Spruce.

Luna moths have always been one of my favorite winged insects, so I was thrilled when Jen Cameron picked them as the Art Elements Theme of the Month for March.  I remember my dad finding and showing me one as a small child, and I've been enchanted by them ever since!

Before jumping into share what I made this month, I just have to share a necklace that I made back in 2014 for myself with my coveted luna moth set by Kerri Fuhr.  I probably should pull this one out and take better photos... but you get the idea!  I should also go through my jewelry box and get things more organized so that I can find and wear my favorites more often, but that's an endeavor for another day.  

I've participated in several moth themed challenges over the last couple of years, so I was actually worried that I wouldn't have any luna moth appropriate beads left.  Happily, I was wrong!  See?

First up, I finally got around to using a lovely luna moth ceramic pendant by Tracey Seder Donoughe that Eric bought for me at Bead and Button two years ago.  I happened to have a little container of Czech glass beads that I got from a friend who is going through her late aunt's bead stash sitting sitting next to my little corral of art beads.  I did a double take and realized that those beads looked gorgeous with the pendant... such luck!!  I added in a couple of other styles of glass beads from my stash as well as some brass findings to round out this long necklace design.

I already had a bunch of beads for a necklace design with Andrew Thornton's sweet little pendant but I got distracted when I rediscovered all the little moths that Eric and I made in Heather Powers' metal sketches class at Allegory Gallery a few years ago.  We hammered steel wire on top of the copper to get the patterns and then added Swelligant patinas for the fun (but unpredictable!) color.  I found two that were really close in size and coloring and knew I had to whip up some earrings!  I made some fun cultured sea glass teardrops dangles, added ear wires, and voila!  I might have to keep these for me... we shall see.

So, after a brief earring diversion, I returned to the pile of beads surrounding Andrew's pendant.  I have to admit that I really had a tough time getting started on this one for some reason but I pushed through for a sweet strung necklace design.  I used a mix of Czech glass, freshwater pearls, and agate in various shades of green plus a little bit of cream.

As luck would have it, I got a package from my friend Erin Prais-Hintz of Tesori Trovati with a treasure trove of beady goodness for my Simple Truths subscription including a fabulous moth pendant!  While the moth was actually created for the Art Bead Scene Art Journey One, the one that I received was perfect for this challenge!  I couldn't bear to set it aside... I just had to make something with it immediately.

I love the saturated colors in this fun, stylized moth... it just feels like Spring to me.  I picked through my hoard of Czech glass and crystal... finding lots of beads that worked with the pendant.  This is a bold piece that's sure to make a statement!

This is a blog hop!  I hope you'll check out what everyone else made for this fun challenge!

Guests:

Tammy

Beth and Evie

Alysen

Rozantia

Sarajo - You are Here

Karin

Sarah

Divya

Colette

Art Elements Team:

Niky

Caroline

Cathy

Jenny

Lesley

Marsha

Lindsay

Claire

Jen

Allegory Gallery Ancient Kingdom Challenge

I really wasn't thinking about the timing for the reveal for the latest Allegory Gallery design challenge kit when I bought it... thus me being a day late to the reveal.  I'm fairly impressed that I managed to get anything done with how busy I've been this past month.  I'll admit that part of the deciding factor in grabbing this kit was the added surprise Andrew and William offered if you bought the kit early.  :)

The first thing I made was a necklace featuring the "bonus" pendant.  Unlike many of my friends, I'm not usually a big fan of components with eye motifs, but this one with it's henna-like patterns spoke to me.  I used one of the rough amethyst beads to give the pendant a little more physical weight and then chose a selection of beads from the kit to create bead links.  I picked out the vintage plastic, plated hematite, and small purple rounds (I'm unsure what material those are) adding some small Czech glass and plated hematite beads.  It's hard to tell in this picture (darn you, crappy lighting!) but I love the cream and purple swirl to the vintage plastic beads.  They are fun and lightweight!

Since I usually have a bunch of the luxury seed bead blends left over from the Allegory Gallery kits, I decided to be proactive on that front and do a little memory wire bracelet with some of the smaller beads.  Other than the wire, all I added to the kit's contents were a couple of little beads and a brass star charm for some dangles on the ends of the bracelet.  The brass colored memory wire I used is a bit smaller than the normal wire I've used so this is certainly for an individual with a more petite wrist!

With all those little purple rounds in the bead blend, I thought that this would be a good time to make a little multi-strand bracelet based on Lorelie Eurto's design.  I had a ceramic lentil from Golem Design Studio in purples, pink, and white that worked with them so I built the design out from there.  I added a large hole vintage lucite beads as well as a faceted purple crazy lace agate bead.  I used the pale purple seed beads from the kit as well as some of the larger seed beads from the blend as spacers on three of the strands.  I mixed some Czech glass beads and etched seed beads to round things out.  I thought about using the waxed linen from the kit, but decided that a darker purple looked better with my collection of beads.

Lastly, I whipped up a little pair of earrings to wrap things up for now.  I chose the pair of vintage plastic teardrops and more of the little purple rounds to go with some gold plated coins and crystal rondelles.  

Thanks for stopping by to see what I've been up to this week!  Enjoy your weekend!!

Honey Do List July 2018

This marks the third 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 2018!  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've wanted to get a decent crow picture for ages but they have eluded me. Over our recent trip to Portland (and their plethora of loud crows) I finally had a chance!  The closer of these crows was pretty mad about my presence and kept cawing at me while I took this series of shots.  It ended up dive-bombing a random pedestrian and my friend Ron shortly after this!

When Eric chose one of his crow pictures for this challenge I knew that I had a couple of pendants from my friend Andrew Thornton of Allegory Gallery that were just perfect.  Yay for immediate inspiration!!  This first necklace definitely makes me think of when Mama Crow was fussing at Eric for getting too close.  I love that this laser cut wood pendant catches the crow mid-caw!  With the feathers in the background I thought it would be fun to incorporate a Vintaj feather piece that I added some black patina paint to.  Originally I was thinking I would have a feather on each side of the necklace, but after trying several options, I abandoned that idea in favor of a much more asymmetrical design.  The links are made up of a variety of Czech glass and ceramic beads.

I had a much more colorful crow pendant from Andrew in my stash too.  It wasn't in the original pile of beads that I pulled out for this month's challenge, but it kept calling to me (cawing to me?) and I just had to pull it out and play with it!  This time I went for a strung design of glass, freshwater pearls, plated hematite, and vintage lucite with copper plated findings.  To finish things off, I picked a key toggle clasp to play off the key in the crow's beak on the pendant.

On a more subtle note, I decided to do a play on the sheen of the crows feathers.  You can't see it in this photo, but when you take a close look at most black birds, their feathers aren't pure black.  I had a piece from my friend Erin Prais-Hintz of Tesori Trovati that just cried out to be used for this challenge... I love her little beaded mosaic pendants and was lucky to get a few different ones including this one that she did for her Simple Truths Sampler Club.  I decided to use up some of my seed bead mixes that I've had for a while as well as some iridescent pinch beads gifted to me by my mother in law for a two strand necklace. 

Believe it or not, I actually left a few crow beads behind on the bead table... with travel and having too much fun overall this July, I ran out of time.  Those potential designs will just have to wait for another day!

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Artisans Create Together: July 2018

This month's inspiration challenge over on the Artisans Create Together Facebook group is a theme challenge... Sun, Moon, & Stars.  I love this heavenly challenge!  Summer days are full of sunshine that lasts long into the nighttime hours and summer nights are all about star gazing and watching the moon cross the sky making this the perfect mid-summer challenge for us.

First up, a pair of earrings featuring some absolutely adorable star-studded earring charms by Andrew Thornton of Allegory Gallery!  I paired them with some Czech glass rounds in navy with gold stripes and plated hematite.  Because the charms are wood, these are super lightweight despite their length.

Keeping with the theme of earrings, I made a second new pair with some fun ceramic rounds from Golem Design Studio.  For some reason these actually make me think of the kind of balls you'd see in illustrations of the circus... like something a sea lion might balance on his nose!  The cheerful red stars just make me happy!  I added some copper findings and some red Czech glass and hung the little dangles from arched ear wires that I decorated with copper wire and seed beads. 

Last but not least of the new creations for this month... one more star-studded pair of earrings!  I had some fun with a set of enameled charms from Blue Hare Art Wear that I picked up a while back.  I love the bold black and white design on these.  I paired some fun black and white striped Czech glass rounds with rhinestone rondelles and some silvery glass rondelles.  I'm a little bit in love with these cuties!

Apparently the only appropriate items in my stash were star-themed earring components!  While I didn't make the following designs for this particular challenge, I thought I'd go ahead and share a couple of older pieces that fit the sun and moon parts of month's theme!

Etched copper "new moon" charms by me; Moon & Star ceramic charms by Michelle McCarthy of Firefly Design Studio. 

Golem Design Studio ceramic sun lentils; Jade Scott resin and copper sun pendant.

Thanks for stopping by to see what I was inspired to make for this month's celestial challenge!

Inspired by Reading: Station Eleven

As expected, I'm running a bit behind for the May Inspired by Reading Book Club selection.  No one should be shocked.  Better late than never though... and, darn it, I finished the book!  Speaking of the book, the May selection was Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel.

Station Eleven, despite the sound of the name, is NOT a science fiction space story...  it's the story of a world-wide flu pandemic that wipes out the majority of the Earth's population and how the world looks 20 years after the collapse of civilization.  The book goes back and forth in time following a small group of characters who end up having an unlikely connection.  While it may have been a bit of a shark jump for so many people who were connected to survive the highly virulent strain of influenza, it was enjoyable to read and unravel the threads.  While bleak, it was not the depression inducing read that The Road was for me...  I don't know if it enhanced my reading experience or not, but there's some irony that Eric and I have been playing through the game Pandemic Legacy... trying to save the world from collapsing due to spreading and mutating disease.

So, I have to say, the parts of the book dealing with the actual pandemic and the bleak world it left behind were not particularly inspiring to me.  Luckily, I got an idea from the storyline of the Dr. Eleven comic books embedded within the overarching tale.  Station Eleven is a planet like space station that has escaped from chaos on Earth through a wormhole.  Unfortunately the station systems were damaged and it is perpetually twilight on the station and most of the surface is covered with water.  There is conflict between the island dwellers led by Dr. Eleven and the people of the Undersea who want to return to Earth.  The Undersea dwellers ride giant and dangerous seahorses... half animal, half machine.  I used the seahorses as my jumping off point... although the ones in my designs aren't scary!  Also, it doesn't hurt that it's summer time and seahorse items seem seasonally appropriate.

My first design features a porcelain seahorse pendant from Andrew Thornton... I think I picked this one up at last year's Bead & Button show but you can find all his lovelies through Allegory Gallery.  I started playing around with various design options in shades of purple and eventually settled on stringing the necklace with a rich mix of gemstones and some accents of Czech glass.  The dyed white jade briolettes are from Allegory Gallery as well and were a perfect match for the pendant's color.  There's also a ton of amethyst in various cuts and shades... yum!  In keeping with the undersea theme, I used a sweet little starfish clasp from Green Girl Studios in fine pewter.

I also wanted to play with a fun ceramic set that I got from Michelle McCarthy of Firefly Design Studio.  When I pulled these guys out onto my bead mat, I realized that they color was just perfect for some cuprite beads I recently acquired.  I started with the bracelet design, adding in a couple of bronzite faceted rondelles to the matte cuprite beads.  I figured I should keep going and finish the set since I already had everything out!

Next, I laid out a necklace design that mixed matte and shiny cuprite beads with the bronzite... I kept with the same style chain and a similar dangle on the end of the chain to go with the bracelet.  I'm really loving how both of those turned out.  I've started the earrings, but since they aren't specifically seahorse patterned, I'll share them on my Instagram account when I'm done. 

Thanks for stopping by to see my May book club creations.  The blue set should be swimming over to Unearthed Arts soon! 

Art Elements Theme of the Month April 2018: Horses

For this month's Theme of the Month challenge on the Art Elements blog Jenny Davies-Reazor chose horses.  At first blush I was totally stumped.  My only real artistic outlet is jewelry making and I was fresh out of horse beads!  (I used to have two sets of horse charms from Round Rabbit but used them for a different challenge a few years ago.)  I have frogs, monkeys, fish, kitties, and birds galore but absolutely no horses.

Luckily, Jenny opened up her definition of what counts as equine to include some of the horses mythical cousins... unicorns and pegasus!  Whew!  While I still didn't have anything right on hand, I reached out to Andrew Thornton and William Jones of Allegory Gallery and they had just what I needed!  I ended up with two Pegasus pendants made by Andrew (one polymer clay and one wooden) to play with for this month.  Hooray!

Ancient Greek Pegasus figure, bronze; reproduction Ancient Greek coin; “Fame escorting Pegasus” marble, 1875 by Lequesne

First up, I grabbed the polymer clay piece that reminds me very much of the above reproduction of an ancient Greek coin.  The pendant is predominantly bronze in color, but has some hints of copper as well.  I decided on a simple stringing pattern for this one using some Picasso finish Czech glass melons and some bronze-y druzy beads.

I think that Andrew may have made the wooden Pegasus pendant just because I was asking after any equine creations... so I had to make something with it too!  This time I went for wire-wrapped links instead of stringing.  I used some really fun and unusual Czech glass coins that I picked up this spring at a local bead show and some matte Red Creek Jasper.

This is a blog hop!  Check out what everyone else was inspired to make this month.

Guests:

Alysen
Anita
Beth
Catherine
Jill

Paulette

Raven 

Sarajo - you are here

Tammy

AE Team Members: 

Caroline 

Claire

Jen  

Laney 

Lesley 

Marsha 

Niky 

Sue