March 2017 Art Elements Challenge Reveal - Amulet bags!

When Cathy announced that this month's theme challenge would be amulet bags, I may have been more than a little bit excited.  After all, this is where it all started for me!

I started over 20 years ago with instructions from Threads magazine.  I have made flocks of these postage stamp sized brick stitched necklaces since then.

After learning Peyote stitch a few years later, I tried several different varieties of amulet bag with it and was not really pleased with the results until I learned how to work with "bead soup" and made this bag.

Lately, I have been loving how quickly 3-bead netting works into a bag, and it's so much fun to embellish! 

I had intended to make several this month for the challenge, but like it does so often, time got away from me.  This bag was for one of my coworker's bridal shower a few days ago.  Even if her wedding colors weren't jade and navy, I would have chosen some combination of green and blue for her!

Only the bag and embellishment is seed beadwork.  I connected the strap to two large picasso seed beads along the top edge of the bag opening, and strung it on flexible beading wire.

The strap is quite long - no clasp needed.  The front sections have some coin shaped jade beads that I have hoarded for years.  The rest of the strap is more of the large picasso seed beads - super comfortable on the neck.

The embellishment is all made of vintage pressed glass beads - two styles of button flowers and a large leaf, all in navy blue.  The looped fringe has even more of the large picasso seed beads floating over the strand of 11/0 seed beads - something to fiddle with while she's on the phone.

The back is left unembellished, for ease of wear primarily, but this also means you get a good idea of what is under the embellishment on the front.  I used a bead soup made of 4 different colors of 11/0 seed beads.

My other half pointed out when I was done that the bride would only need to tuck something borrowed inside of the bag to fulfill the Old English rhyme:  Something old (vintage glass beads), something new (the piece itself), something borrowed, and something blue (also the vintage beads)!  While this was totally unintentional, I love how this worked out!

I hope you will hop along and check out how the rest of our crew and guests were inspired by the theme this month!  I'm off to do just that.
Guests-

Samatha Wescott- http://wescottjewelry.com/2017/03/30/art-elements-challenge-amulet-bag-of-shame/
Oksana Bevz- http://oksanalikesit.blogspot.com/2017/03/march-theme-challenge-amulet-bags.html
Genevieve Camp- http://www.genevievecamp.com/201/03/30/art-elements-amulet-bag-theme-challenge/

AE Members-

Caroline-http://blueberribeads.co.uk/
Cathy- http://cmendola.blogspot.com/
Cooky- http://www.cookyschock.com/
Jenny- https://jdaviesreazor.com/blog/
Lesley-http://lesleywatt.com/uncategorized/art-elements-des...enge-amulet-bags/

Lindsay-http://phantasmcreation.blogspot.com/

Niky-http://silverniknats.blogspot.com/

Sue-http://suebeads.blogspot.com/