Art Jewelry Elements Component of the Month - August 2015

This month over at the Art Jewelry Elements blog, we got to play with one of Suburban Girl Diana's rustic stoneware coin pendants.  You all know how much I love Diana's work!

As soon as I saw this picture, I thought Gee, those look familiar...don't I have one in my stash somewhere?

Sure enough, when I went digging, I was able to find this coin pendant, from a previous swap with Diana.  I had a lot of fun pulling bits and pieces out of the stash to go with it...and came up with this:

Finding that sage-y green in my stash was a little bit difficult, but I wound up with some Czech glass, some powder glass from Ghana, and a large Coke bottle green donut.  Black and white speckled powder glass and an antler bead (made by me!) helped to tie in the rustic coin.

As I was shifting things around on my tray, I stacked the two donuts on top of each other.  I purposely kept the beadwork minimal over the stoneware coin, to show it off.

I wanted to use the black and white powder glass as a way to tie in the speckles in the stoneware, but by themselves it looked a little disjointed - more speckles were needed.  So I alternated cream and spruce colored seed beads on the fringe loops with the speckled powder glass.  I like how it ties everything together.

To keep the two donuts together, I started with a right angle weave ladder at the top, and a sling of beads around the bottom.  The fringe is attached to the lower edge of the sling.

Here you can see the back side of the donut assembly.  I used transparent gray pearl twin beads to make the back of the sling nice and sturdy.

A band of peyote around the center of the antler bead connects the donut assembly to a warped square bail.  I love using warped squares as bails!

Here you can see the full necklace  Sage Czech glass rounds in 4, 6, and 8mm frame a few more powder glass beads, pulling the fringe beads up into the necklace strap.  I finished off the rear of the strap with opaque pearl turquoise seed beads, and one of my favorite sterling J-hook clasps.

Here's your beauty shot!  I just love how everything perfectly contrasts and frames Diana's rustic stoneware coin!  Now, I'm off to see what everyone else created this month...I hope you check them all out too!

Guests

Cindy Martin-Shaw

Samantha Wescott

Jenny Kyrlach

AJE Team

Kristen Stevens

Caroline Dewison

Sue Kennedy

Linda Landig

Diana Ptaszynski

Jenny Davies-Reazor & Lesley Watt

Jennifer Cameron

Lindsay Starr

Niky Sayers

Beading Back in Time - Episode 3 Reveal

Welcome once again!  Climb into our time machine as we celebrate the 3rd episode of our Beading Back in Time blog hop challenge.  A little something my buddy Sherri of Knot Just Macrame and I came up with last year, I'm so happy that we're still going strong.  I have to admit that I was looking forward to this episode's theme - Early Civilization.  Any human civilization or culture from 3500BC to 500AD was fair game for inspiration.  This meant that I could finally have a reason, motivation, muse to finish a piece that's been half done for a long time...

This was the first progress picture that I snapped, maybe 2 years ago or so?  I've always wanted to do a big Egyptian style necklace, but never really gotten around to it.  A friend and I were chatting about doing a necklace swap, and she was really interested in something Egyptian, so I figured I'd give it a go!  I didn't want to go with a super typical color palette, so I ended up using this white plaster scarab as the centerpiece.  I got this bead back in highschool on a fieldtrip to the Portland Art Museum. They were hosting a traveling Egyptian exhibit, and I had my fingers crossed for weeks in advance that they would have some sort of bead-like-object in the gift shop.  I bought a typical turquoise colored one as well, but this white one just spoke to me.

Second progress pic - filled in around the wings, and trying to figure out placement of some sodalite drops plus a big donut.  After I stitched the edging, attached the donut and drops, I was planning an intricate netted neck strap...and then the piece slithered off the table onto a concrete floor.  So much for the center drop...and my motivation.  I was still a bit sick over breaking that drop when I picked up this piece for the challenge.  But I put on my bead goggles and went to work anyway...

I ended up going for a less fiddly netted neckstrap, with lots of graphic shaped beads.  Instead of replacing the center sodalite drop with another of the same material, I went with a large blue and white striped triangle wedding bead.  The beads in the strap include vintage lucite, rough cut recycled glass, vintage and new 2 holed beads, arrowhead shaped vintage drops, and a large variety of seed beads.

I just love how the strap turned out.  The scarab was so blindingly white by itself in the embroidery section, that the addition of the arrowhead drops was really necessary.

And the beauty shot?  Here you go!

Oh, just so you know, I just got my Etsy shop reopened after moving.  I hope to list lots more (or at least get some pictures taken so I can list at my leisure) soon.  Until I do, you should check out these little baubles:

Don't you love how those first two pairs could work perfectly with this necklace?  I guess my color scheme wasn't so atypical afterall...

Please hop along and check out what everyone else made this month!  We really appreciate your views and comments!

Lindsay Starr
Sherri Stokey
Susan Kennedy
Jean Wells
Michelle McCarthy
Niky Sayers
Jenny Davies-Reazor
Stephanie Sanner Haussler