Honey Do List: April 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:

Spring?  Not so much.  We have more crappy snow coming down as I write this post.  So, how about a picture evoking brighter days to come?  I took this last spring at a local orchard in Buffalo, MN and loved the bright yellow bike.  Let us see some bright and vibrant work this month!  

As much as I enjoyed last month's inspiration, I'm super happy for a fun photo with lots of vibrant color.  Until the last few days Minnesota has been in the middle of 5th Winter, so this bright scene is very welcome in my world.  With that said, my first creation is more about the bike than the colors!  I've been sitting on a pair of adorable bicycle charms by White Clover Kiln that I bought at Bead Fest Philadelphia a few years ago.  In fact, I've had several of her charms sitting in the drawer with a set of Humblebeads discs for almost all that time.  One pair is finally seeing the light of day!  I added some brass, Czech glass and plated hematite to pull this little pair together pretty quick.

My next design has a much stronger punch of color but the bicycle part is a little more abstract.  This design is my take on one of the first jewelry projects that I ever clipped from a beading magazine when I first started beading.  I was fascinated by the wire wrapped "wheel" bead and bought a strand from Michael's that has sat in my beading stuff ever since.  They always looked like a spoked bike wheel to me, so this was the perfect time to dig them out!  I went back through my clipped article file looking for the project that had originally inspired me and low and behold, it was one of my friend Heather Powers' projects from an old issue of the now defunct Bead Style!  Anyways, back to the necklace at hand!

Like Heather's original design, I used one of her Humblebeads lentil beads (a happy Van Gogh Sunflowers one to go with the colors of Eric's photo) along with the bike spoke bead.  To give the pendant structure a little more heft, I used a fun charm from Nunn Design at the bottom of things.  I also like the mixed metal action that it led me to use.  I had some fancy embellished chain that was just screaming to be used that I combined with some Vintaj Natural Brass rollo chain to make up one strand of the necklace.  The second strand is a fun copper plated chain that reminds me of bicycle chain!  While the colors in this necklace aren't quite as vibrant as the photo's, I'm happy that I somewhat captured all the major colors from the inspiration and included several bike inspired components.

I've got one more necklace for you this month... another one that embraces color without getting too crazy.  I picked up this fun bicycle pendant from Earthenwood Studio in a destash bundle a few months ago and I've been itching to use it.  I didn't want my design to be too monochromatic, so I added in some pale yellow rounds as well as some darker teal/green Czech glass coins that remind me of bicycle tires/spokes.  In other news, the bike on the pendant reminds me of my first hand me down bike as a little girl with the banana seat and streamers on the handlebars!

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Art Bead Scene: December 2016

The inspiration for this month's Art Bead Scene challenge is a stained glass window by Marc Chagall that was created as a gift to the Art Institute of Chicago.  American Windows was created to commemorate the American Bicentennial and features imagery that honors the arts and America's independent spirit.  You can read more about the artwork and the artist on the ABS blog HERE.

America Windows, 1977, By Marc Chagall, Art Institute of Chicago

Here's a close up of the third panel:  

Stained glass was one of my first creative loves so this challenge definitely struck a nerve for me.  My high school boyfriend's mom, the very talented Cindy Hallman, took me under her wing and taught me the basics of stained glass.  I never made anything more complicated than a couple of sun catchers, but I loved it.  My love of glass in all its forms may have started before this time, but learning about the art of stained glass truly gave me a new appreciation.  

You may not know this about me and my artistic journey, but I was actually actively searching for a stained glass class or workshop to renew my education in this art form long before I even thought about trying jewelry.  I was working full time at the library in the far Western suburbs of Minneapolis and the only classes I was finding were in Northeast Minneapolis.  The logistics just weren't in my favor for stained glass which left me open to the idea of trying a basic jewelry making class.  The rest is history!  

Enough of that detour!  Back to this month's artwork and what it inspired me to create!  I love the cobalt blues and the other pops of bright colors.  I decided that it was finally time to pull out one of the lovely two-holed pendants that I picked up from White Clover Kiln at BeadFest last year.  Even though it's floral, I felt that the design somewhat echoes some of the shapes in the window.  I created links with a variety of Czech glass beads and some matte denim lapis rounds.       

Thanks for stopping by to see what I've been up to post-Christmas!  You can stop by the Art Bead Scene blog HERE to see what everyone else was inspired to create this month.