Honey Do List: October 2017

Last 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... and we're continuing the Honey Do List for 2017!  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!  

Here's this month's inspiration and what Eric had to say about it:

Last month I took an insect photography class at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum so I figured one of those shots would be a good bet for this challenge.  The day of the course was insanely windy so taking pictures of moving insects atop briskly moving flowers was a challenge!  Luckily I got at least one decent shot of a Painted Lady butterfly...now take the idea and fly with it!

Just a few weeks ago we had Painted Lady butterflies all over the place.  I'd go for a walk and accidentally scare up droves of these little guys ahead of me.  I really like the picture that Eric got of the butterfly with its proboscis extending into the pale yellow flower.  It's pretty but not super showy with its wings closed.  This seemed like a good opportunity to use some of my more neutral toned butterfly components.

First up, I chose a pair of butterfly charms by Michelle McCarthy of Firefly Design Studio in a rich butterscotch and really dark brown.  I wire wrapped some Czech glass crullers with a nice Picasso finish with some topaz crystal rondelles and coordinating metallic fire polished round Czech glass.  The charms are so rustic so I liked the addition of a tiny bit of sparkle!

As luck would have it, I scored several butterfly inspired pieces from the talented and lovely Erin Prais-Hintz of Tesori Trovati in a special Art Bead Scene Lounge Facebook sale last month.  One of the sets of earring pairs was pretty perfect for this challenge.  Since they were pretty tiny little charms, I didn't want to add anything too large... but I also felt like it would be a cop out to just add ear wires!  I added some small plated hematite, Czech glass, and garnet beads separated by gold plated spacers to pull out some of the many colors in the petite charms.  These are long and skinny and absolutely elegant!

Another goody that I unearthed while looking for art beads for this month's various challenges was a wooden tile by Skye Jewels.  I bought several from Marie a few years ago in a destash including one with a yellow/orange butterfly.  I didn't have her drill most of them (including this rectangular tile) so I had to do some searching to find a filigree that would work wrapped around it.  I chose to string the necklace mostly with a mix of Czech glass and a few pearls with small sized hematite, garnet, and smoky quartz beads as spacers.

Lastly, as a sort of bonus, I made one more small pair of earrings with some teensy brass butterfly charms and some of the beads I had spread out on my bead mat for this challenge.  While not an exact match for the necklace, I think they coordinate pretty well and could easily be worn together.

An InLinkz Link-up

get the InLinkz code

Honey Do List: April 2017

Last 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... and we're continuing the Honey Do List for 2017!  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!  

Here's this month's inspiration and what Eric had to say about it:

I had hoped for some more color in my shot for this month, but "spring" in Minnesota is still much later than southern climes.  So I worked a little red into this action shot of a cute Chickadee!  The birds are back, and next month should be much more vibrant with the colors of spring.

I have a special place in my heart for chickadees... they were one of my Mema's favorite birds.  I spent a ton of time at her house as a child since she lived two houses up the street from us.  She had two window sills that she would always put birdseed out on (it was a brick house with a decent sized ledge) so she could watch all the birds from her bedroom.  I love that our backyard feeders are regularly frequented by chickadees.

For my first design, I finally used a pendant by Earthenwood Studio that I've had in my stash since very early on in my beading life.  While there's no bird to be found in this necklace, the cream and dark brown viney floral reminded me of the plants that Eric's little chickadee is perched amongst.  True story, I've had one of the black Czech glass flowers stored alongside this pendant for a couple of years now, waiting for the right time to explore a design.  Well, that time is now!  I added some other flower and leaf beads in earth tones as well as some smaller glass beads for an asymmetrical design.  The strung side came out a little bit longer than the other so I chose to even things out by having the clasp connect to the end of the side with the bead links.

Still in an asymmetrical mood, I started playing with beads for a second necklace featuring a wooden pendant by Skye Jewels.  I'd almost forgotten about this sweet little chickadee pendant... I guess that's why I always go through all my art bead drawers!  Since there's no hole in the pendant, I found a brass filigree piece to wrap around the pendant.  Luckily I had one that worked and didn't cover up the bird.  This necklace was one of those rare instances where the beads just cried out to be included.  I knew I had some coppery/bronze maple leaf beads that would echo the leaves on the pendant nicely.  When grabbing those out of my bead box I noticed the container of small turquoise flower beads that turned out to be the perfect compliment.  To complete the design I used a fun leaf shaped brass clasp.  (Memo to self: buy more of these... you like them.)

Lastly, I wanted to play with the idea of the vines a little bit more.  I revisited the idea of having vine-like tendrils coming out of enameled bead caps from C-Koop Beads for fun earrings.  I really need to just sit down and make more of these in a variety of colors... I keep forgetting about them!

An InLinkz Link-up

get the InLinkz code

Pretty Palettes Partner

Each month Erin Prais-Hintz of Tesori Trovati shares a palette for inspiration on the Halcraft blog, picks out a variety of beads from Michael's, and encourages others to play along with her and design something.  Starting this month she's changing things up a little and is inviting a guest blogger to join the fun.  I am the lucky person to be chosen as her first Pretty Palettes Partner and I'm just thrilled and honored!   

You can read all about Erin's palette inspiration and bead choices over on the Halcraft USA blog HERE.  For May, Erin picked out this gorgeous palette from Design Seeds.

Those April showers are sure to bring pretty May flowers in this pretty palette from Design Seeds. http://design-seeds.com/index.php/home/entry/flora-hues38

Here are the yummy beads that Erin picked out (and sent me!) to create with for this challenge.  They are all from Michael's from the Bead Gallery line and I just want to say these beads look even nicer in person!

As soon as I saw the color palette and the photo that inspired it, I thought of some of the ceramic flower pendants that I've gotten from my friend Tracee Dock of The Classic Bead.  Heck, they may have been modeled on the very flowers in the photo they look so perfect for this!  When I went looking for those pendant I found another art bead in my messy stash... this one from Marie Voyer-Cramp of Skye Jewels.  I had already wrapped her lovely wooden tile in brass filigree so it wasn't going to work with the silver beads that Erin had picked.  No problem, I realized that I was going to make two necklaces for this blog hop!

Since I already had all my Vintaj goodies spread out on my work table, I started with the wooden tile.  The florals were just the perfect colors for this challenge but more toward the darker, deeper colors in the palette.  I decided to go for an asymmetrical look with the iridescent crackle rounds and little faceted glass beads on one side of the pendant knotted in light rust colored waxed Irish linen.  On the other side I used some beads from both strands of the table cut Czech glass mixed in with some pale yellow frosted glass rounds from my own stash.  I overestimated the number of bead units I needed for the table cut side, I decided to whip up some subtly mismatched earrings to round out this look.

After my first set was completed I still had plenty of beads left to play with and it was time to switch to silver tones!  This time I wanted to have a heavier emphasis on the beads that Erin sent me and also to work in some of the pale pink rounds that I totally ignored for my first set.

So I started working on the second necklace... well, what I thought was going to be the second necklace.  I wanted to go back to my roots and do something that was more of a simple stringing project.  When I started playing around with it, something just didn't feel quite balanced... it just wasn't what I had been thinking in my head.  I finally found a stringing pattern that I liked, but my pendant seemed too big for the scale of the beads.  Luckily, I'm an art bead hoarder and had a second, smaller pendant from Tracee in the same colors.  So much better!  For this design I used the small pink rounds, faceted glass beads, and silver plated flowers from Michael's and added in a few frosted yellow round glass beads and some peachy seed beads as spacers.

I was still determined to use that original Classic Bead pendant I had found, so back to the drawing board for necklace number three!  Now, I could have just popped a jump ring through the top of the pendant and gone from there, but with my newfound love for waxed linen I decided to something a little different for me.  I used two strands of the light rust linen mixed with a strand of two-ply butterscotch to tie the pendant to a jump ring.  I added some little seed beads from the ends of the threads and I'm really happy with the effect.  But I still needed a necklace to go with my pretty pendant.

This time I pulled out my sterling silver wire and made a series of bead units with the table cut glass, crackle rounds, and silver plated flowers.  I used Nunn Design antique silver plated findings and kept this one pretty simple.

Not the best picture but I've been having uncooperative lighting lately.

Once again, I had to make earrings to go with the necklace (y'all know I have that matching disorder!)  I used the crackle and faceted glass with the rhinestone rondelles and a silver plated bead cap from Nunn Design for some sweet little ear bobs.

So there you have it... one set of beads to go with this month's Pretty Palette and three different looks.  I hope you've enjoyed what I've come up with for the challenge.  Please pop over to the Halcraft blog to see what Erin and some of her colleagues made by clicking HERE.