Monday, August 29, 2016

Honey Do List: August 2016

This year, my husband Eric has decided to issue me a design challenge each month to get me out of my comfort zone and to help clear out my bead stash... we're calling it the Honey Do List.  I know that I'm not the only one who loves a good design challenge, so I'm inviting folks to play along!


This month I chose a picture from our recent trip out to Ligonier, PA for the Allegory Gallery's Creative Camp.  Andrew Thornton directed us out to a nearby bog where the carnivorous plants were in full bloom.  An entire field of these pitcher plants and much smaller sundews stretched around us--beauty and savagery all wrapped up in one tiny leafy package.  The strange shape, as well as the striated deep red patterns against green really jumped out at me and I wanted to see what a bunch of jewelry designers could pull off with this inspiration!

When I started sorting through my beads, the first thing that jumped out for me was one of my treasures from Gardanne that I picked up at Bead & Button.  Yes, I know it's a ginkgo leaf, not a pitcher plant, but the colors were spot on!  I quickly decided on some light green Picasso finished seed beads I had on my bead table from a previous project as the base for a strung necklace.  As I dug through my green gemstone beads, prehnite became the obvious choice.  Luckily I had some faceted coins in two different sizes to pull into the design along with some bordeaux colored Swarovski pearls.  Voila!  A necklace inspired by the colors of the bog!  


I also wanted to try my hand at painting some brass leaves from Vintaj for some earrings.  The colors aren't exactly what I was hoping for (they are a little too bright), but I'm making it work!  For the first pair I picked out some fun disk beads from Humblebeads that I grabbed during the Creative Camp Vendor Night that Allegory Gallery hosted.  I wire-wrapped those, some Czech glass discs, leafy patterned bead caps, and iridescent green Swarovski pearls.  The second pair features some more prehnite (boy do I wish I had more of these gorgeous rondelles!), Czech glass flowers, and crystal.  The leaves seemed too far away from the beads above so I added jump rings decorated with some fun seed beads to give it some more pizzaz.  I'm not sure pink and green is my personal style, but I'm really happy with how they turned out!







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6 comments:

  1. Your necklace and earrings are super. Just love how you painted the leaves in that stellar color combo of the pitcher plants. The Gingko leaf is such a lovely shade of the lime green and burgundy palette. I will post my creations soon. Glad we have some leaway for participating. Again, thanks to Eric for striking such a creative cord with me on this one. Both the colors and the subject matter!!

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  2. They look great! I guess I have to figure out next month's challenge now!

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  3. Fantastic and inspirational! It's great that we don't have to be literal but inspired by the elements. I appreciate the way you expressed the challenge! Again Thanks Eric!

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  4. Gorgeous pieces, love them!!!

    Laura xo

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  5. The leaf pendant you found is the absolute perfect color combination! Great pieces, all of them!

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  6. What lovely creations! I'm so glad that you and Eric got to come out again and that you guys got to experience the bog. It's one of my favorite places in the area. I really like how elegant the necklace turned out. That enamel piece is perfection! And the earrings are fabulous! They're so romantic!

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