Vintaj Weeping Willow Design Challenge

This month's Vintaj Design Challenge, "Weeping Willow," hit near and dear to my heart.  Trips to Big Spring Park to feed the ducks were a favorite treat when I was a child.  My mother's mom, my Mema, used to take me down there with a big bag of bread to feed the ducks on many a summer day.  (Although, let's be honest, the giant goldfish got quite the snack too!)  We would park ourselves under this giant weeping willow tree to feed and watch the ducks and fish from under that cool, green canopy.  Any of my readers who are familiar with with my hometown of Huntsville, Alabama will probably know exactly what I'm talking about here.

Sadly, neither my Mema nor that majestic tree are still with us but I was able to find the picture above on the About.com website for Huntsville.  I hope that the necklace I made manages to capture a little bit of the magic of spending time with my grandmother  underneath the weeping willow.

I started with some little leaf blanks that I had embossed and painted in shades of green and yellow and then grabbed any and all possible beads to mix into my design.  I actually hadn't originally thought I'd make a necklace... I planned to use both sets of embossed leaves in a pair of earrings but later decided that would be too much.  So enter the idea of a necklace and earrings.  I'm going to keep you in suspense on the earring front... you'll get to see those in the next Art Jewelry Elements Earring Challenge reveal this weekend!

I chose to use the more yellow pair of leaves in the necklace.  I wanted to try wire wrapping the brass branch piece to make a toggle clasp with the filigree ring.  I've had the branches for awhile but have been nervous about my wire skills!  I used some finer, soldered chain so I had to really play with the placement of the dangles before committing to finishing the wire wraps.

The leaves and beads hanging from the lengths of chain are meant to feel like the draping branches and leaves of the willow tree.  All the shades of green are for the colors in the tree and surrounding park.  Anyway, without further ado, here's the finished product.  This one's for you, Mema!  I miss you!

You can see the other entries and vote by clicking HERE.  Mine is number 8!

And as a P.S. to this post, here is the only picture I could find at my house of a tiny me with my Mema.  (Lots of photos of me posing at her house though!)

Vintaj Plum Orchard Design Challenge

This month's design challenge theme over on the Vintaj Natural Brass blog is "Plum Orchard."  I will fess up here right from the start: for the first time I didn't create my piece in response to the theme... I used something that I had previously made.  In this case, it's a necklace I made in February that my friend Kathleen bought from me at the Artsy Market sale...so it's not terribly old!

I wanted to do something a little different or unusual above the main pendant (I tend to do a lot of designs where I attach the chain off of a jump ring of some sort) so I decided to try riveting the two Arte Metal flower pieces together.  It was a little tricky since the little flower drops have so much texture to them and aren't even, but I made it work.  I distressed the surface a slightly to get the silver color to shine through on the high points and then did a little touch up job with black paint to disguise the rivet.  Here is a before paint picture... it worked pretty well, if I don't say so myself!

This isn't one of the more elaborate designs I've done, but I'm happy with the relative simplicity.  It has great pops of color with the various purples that make me think more of the fruit of a plum tree than the blossoms.  I'm so over Minnesotan winter, and I hope that I will get to see some real, live blooms soon.  For now, I'll have to be content with flowers in my jewelry designs!

Lots of folks entered the challenge this month so competition will be fierce.  If you want to see all the designs and vote CLICK HERE.  Mine is number 14 this month...I hope you'll consider voting for me! 

Vintaj Morning Mist Design Challenge

Those of you who know me fairly well have already discovered that I've been enjoying participating in various design challenges.  Vintaj Natural Brass does a challenge every month on their blog that I love to take part in whenever I can.  It's been a few months since I've done one of these, but I'm back in action this month with their "Morning Mist" challenge!

The only real design parameter for the Vintaj challenges is that your piece showcases a good percentage of Vintaj Natural Brass Co. findings and embellishments.  Vintaj makes a wide variety of products in brass, copper, and arte metal (a blackened color) so there's plenty to choose from in the creative process.  Each month they award a prize of Vintaj goodies to the designer who gets the most votes and also to an editor's pick winner.  I've got my fingers crossed that someday I will be chosen!

I really didn't think that I had time to do another challenge piece this month with all my preparations for the Artsy Market sale, but I figured if I could make something I was willing to part with, then it wasn't really diverting my energies away from the show. 

I looked through my supply of focals and art beads and came across this great enamelled copper pendant by Becka Beads that I had bought from her back when she was still selling at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival.  The swirling blues and greens over the copper were just perfect for a misty sunrise...now to figure out how to incorporate enough Vintaj peices to make it elligble! 

Close up of pendant and my initial design idea.

Since the pendant already had copper wire bail with a gemstone I wanted to include some of the gorgeous Artisan Copper from Vintaj.  I haven't built up quite as much stock from their copper line, so I had fewer options to play with.  This ivy piece immediately caught my eye--now I just had to think about the best way to attach it and the pendant to the rest of my necklace design.  I initially thought about hanging the pendant from the ivy as seen in the picture above.  With the longer bail, it just didn't look quite right to me, so I played around with other ideas.

Thinking out my design.

In the end I decided to do a mix of copper and brass elements (the darkened edges of the pendant have a color that's similar to to the natural brass).  I added some amazonite beads (both nuggets and rounds), as well as some pale green gemstones from a mixed strand, along with some other little pops of copper.  I liked the way the chunkier nuggets balanced out the ivy connector for some nice asymmetry.  

The finished product!

If you want to see the rest of this month's challenge entries and vote (hopefully for me!), check out the blog here.  Mine is number 9.

I think I'm drawn to these challenges because they often force me out of my comfort zone and make me think about my beads and findings in a totally different way.  I think our brains all need that on a regular basis to keep us sharp and nimble.

As a P.S. to this post, I sold this necklace at the Artsy Market!  It was one of my more expensive items (due to the art bead and other materials used) so I was thrilled at making such a big sale!