Bead Exploration Collaboration

Well, the Bead Exploration Collaboration has concluded! You may recall from my earlier post, Melanie Lukacs, Heather Powers and I have been working on creating pieces from the sets of beautiful beads that Melanie and Heather created. Each of us had identical sets of beads from which to work. The only rule was that we create each piece of jewelry using at least one bead from each artist. Oh, also, we were to create our pieces completely independently from one another. Today is the first day I whttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifill see Heather's and Melanie's work and vice versa. Melanie's beautiful work can be seen here and Heather's equally stunning work can bee viewed here.

Well, give me beautiful fairy beads and beads in lovely shades of green, and I immediately think of - yup! - "A Midsummer Night's Dream". My own pieces were once again inspired by the theme of wood nymphs. The starting point for designing all of the pieces was the center strand in the necklace. I loved that combination of beads, but as the Husband pointed out, it was a bit on the long side when strung together. I didn't want to shorten it, so I thought about how to balance the rest of the piece around that strand. I decided that I wanted the necklace to have a sort of totem-esque feel to it, so I planned out a series of graduated strands around the central one. From a technical standpoint, I thought that it would help to add beads with slightly different textures and colors to bridge Melanie's and Heather's beads. I tried different combinations and found that Diane Hawkey's beautiful faceted ceramic beads worked quite well. I added more of Melanie's beads - some deep brown pumpkin accent beads - from my stash. I also used a strand of golden bamboo coral, as well as some deep tourmaline Swarovski crystals and a couple raku ceramic beads (I'm afraid I don't know the name of the artist who made those). Finally, I found an odd Czech glass leaf bead to use as an accent.

I'm quite happy with the way the necklace turned out. To my eye, it has a sort of tribal feel to it. (I really didn't realize until I finished it that the basic shape is similar to my "Something Wicked" necklace - for one thing, I seem to be on a coral kick right now.) Although I rarely wear coordinated sets, myself, I thought in this case that matching earrings and a bracelet would be fun. (The Husband took one look at the bracelet and said "...Erm, you do realize that this is off-center, right?" I kind of like it that way!) As you can see, I used a good number of beads from both artists. The one thing I regret is not using some of Heather's lovely bicones, but I could not figure out a way to incorporate them into the piece in a way that was attractive and original (for beautiful examples of how to use these bicones, please visit Heather's gallery).

I'd like to thank Melanie, Heather, Cindy Gimbrone, and the rest of the artists involved in the Bead Exploration Collaboration for giving me the opportunity to participate in this fun and creative project!

Oh, and by the way, I emailed Michele Goldstein about the broken focal, and she is going to re-make it for me. Hopefully, the new necklace will not have any of the issues the original did...