Sweet Pea

Yes, it is I, your friendly neighborhood jewelry blogger. It seems I was a little bit optimistic about blogging more regularly last month - but I do at least have a nice, new spring design to share today. A while back, Artbeads.com asked their blog partners to select a few items from their catalog with which to create a new spring design. I chose this beautiful mother of pearl pendant by Lillypilly and a strand of wasabi potato pearls. I thought the color combination would work very well together. I elected to combine them with pale pink resin flowers that I already had in my stash. Artbeads.com has a beautiful selection of similar beads here. I also added a little sparkle with Swarovski crystal bicones (again, Artbeads.com has a beautiful selection of similar beads here). I finished the piece off with a few rose quartz nuggets and a very simple sterling silver toggle clasp.



I'm quite happy with the result. Although the wasabi color of the pearls is not quite a true pea color, they still reminded me enough of sweet peas for the name. Obviously, the focal here is the beautiful Lillypilly pendant, but I could easily see taking the pearls and resin flowers to make a cheerful multi-strand bracelet, perhaps with a nice, ornate box clasp.

I strung this piece while waiting for the Short One to finish his Spanish class. The timing was good from my perspective, as a few of the other mothers in the waiting area commented on the piece as I put it together. Since I usually work alone, I never have any third-party input in a piece while I am designing it, so I found the comments quite interesting. When I spread the materials out on the table initially, the other women felt that the colors I selected did not really work well together, and in particular, that the brown shade of the Swarovski crystal bicones clashed with the more pastel shades of the piece. For my part, I felt that the pastel green and pinks looked too washed out without a bit of contrast, so I kept a few of the brown bicones in the finished design, although I did reduce the number of the bicones I incorporated. What do you think? Would you have taken them out or left them in?

As always, this piece was made as part of the blogging program with Artbeads.com and would not have been created without their generous contribution of the pendant and pearls. Thank you, Artbeads.com, for once again giving me an opportunity to design with your lovely products.

Please note: (as stated in the post) some of the products mentioned above were promotional gifts from Artbeads.com for review and/or design partnership purposes.