Raison d'Etre

Yes, even more gorgeous beads to show off today. These are a part of bead sets by Melanie Brooks Lukacs of Earthenwood Studio and Heather Powers of Humblebeads. Anyone who's been reading this blog knows that I love Earthenwood Studio beads. I don't think I've previously talked about Humblebeads, though. Heather Powers does the most amazing things with polymer clay. Her cane work is incredibly detailed and her application of the canes on each bead creates this really lush landscape. "Romantic" is a word that comes to mind when I see her beads. She's also, like Melanie, an incredibly talented jewelry designer.

Anyway, even though these beads have just recently come into my possession, they are very special to me, as they are the reason this blog came into being in the first place. A while back, bead artist Cindy Gimbrone, Melanie and Heather, along with other bead artists, created The Bead Exploration Collaboration, a challenge where two bead artists and a jewelry designer would get together and create individual designs combining sets of beads that the two artists would make. The results are then displayed on the respective participants websites and/or blogs. To see the results of an earlier collaboration, please go here. Earlier this year, Melanie and Heather kindly invited me to participate in a new Exploration Collaboration. The only problem was, being a complete neophyte, I didn't have a blog or website! Thus, this blog was born.

These bead sets are fantastic, aren't they? I've already started designing a new necklace for them. I hope you'll come back to view the results, around the end of the month, once the Exploration Collaboration has concluded.

There's still time to enter my A Little Something Wicked Giveaway here.