Thursday, June 15, 2017

Fire and Water Challenge

Hi, welcome to this month's Allegory Gallery's challenge: Water & Fire Mystery Competition.  As with every challenge Allegory Gallery presents, Andrew Thornton selects a beautiful collection of various beads, each with a particular color palette. For this competition, Andrew states that "when we created the concept of this challenge, we thought about forces of creation and we instantly thought of the elements...water and fire both have many beneficial attributes as life-givers and influencers of change, but they can also be harmful and detrimental to life.  Water and fire also cancel each other out.  As with all things, there's a balance."  A new twist to this challenge is that there are two kits - one for Fire and the other for Water.  Participants wouldn't know which kit they were getting until the package arrived.  How exciting!  Not only is there the element of Christmas morning excitement (at least for me) of opening the mailbox and receiving a package of beady goodies, one wouldn't know which kit they would receive until the package was opened too.  What fun!

Fire Challenge Kit full of juicy yellows and oranges

I received a Fire kit, full of juicy oranges, reds and yellows.  I usually don't design with these colors, especially orange, but I gotta tell ya, I absolutely loved the kit!  I remember reading long ago that being a Leo, I'm a "fire sign" and that yellow and orange are "my colors".  I haven't thought of that for years, but I suppose there must be some truth to that because I really was drawn to the fiery colors of the kit.

I messed around with the beads not really settling on any specific design.  I made some earrings, then strung the Carnelian chips onto the wax linen for a necklace, but kept thinking of how to represent "Fire" for the competition.  I guess it was the whole Leo Astrological information that kept coming back to me, but I decided I want to create a sun for the Fire challenge.  The large lucite(?) bead has swirls of dark red, orange and yellow in it so I thought that would be a perfect center for my sun.  I scoured the wire making books I have on hand and found Kelly Tibbetts' design for her Avenging Angel pendant in Wire Jewelry Start to Finish by the publisher of Bead & Button magazine.  I must admit that I have many books and magazines for jewelry making but I usually fall short of actually trying the projects shown.  Anyway, Kelly's design looked like half a sun to me, so I practiced the technique until I actually "got" the rhythm of the wire pattern.  I continued making smaller then larger rays, alternating the lengths in somewhat of a random pattern to form the corona of the sun.

When I finished the sun pendant, I tried different cords and chains but settled on a combination of chain and orange and yellow small round beads from the kit to tie in the oranges and yellows of the sun. When I was playing around with the beads I made a "flame" clasp, so I added that to the Sunburst necklace adding a vintage yellow orange bead I had in my stash.  Here is my competition piece:

Fiery Sunburst Necklace for Allegory Gallery's Fire & Water Competition Challenge

Close-up of Sun Pendant

Fiery Sunburst Necklace
Carnelian Chip Necklace
Carnelian Chip Necklace
Earrings using the juicy yellow and orange beads from the kit


Yellow and orange beads from the kit with Czech glass and sun charms


Thanks for joining me here.  Don't forget to stop by the Allegory Gallery Design Challenges page on Facebook to see what everyone else made.

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Art Elements' April Component of the Month


Ocean Waves Necklace

Hello and welcome to my entry for April's Art Elements Design ChallengeArt Elements, a blog celebrating creativity and art expressed in craft form, host monthly design challenges.  I had the privilege of being chosen to receive one of  the lampwork glass beads made by Jen Cameron
 
When creating these beautiful beads, Jen said that first she was thinking of the Northern Lights for her inspiration.  As time went on, however, she noted that the beads had more of an ocean feel.  She textured the outside of the bead with swirls.  How she achieved her technique is described here.

The bead I received has more of an ocean feel.


Close Up of Jen Cameron's Lampwork Bead
In deciding how to design using this bead, I started by choosing sterling silver wire.  I thought the silver would be a good choice to contrast the dark blue and could also pull out the sandy brown and white in the bead.  Silver also reflects the way sun sparkles off the water.

To echo the ocean feel and the swirls on the bead, I made a large swirl clasp and figure eight links for a touch of some bubbles. 

I chose bronze faceted Czech glass, dark blue crystal and champagne, mercury finished Czech glass beads to pull out the colors in the focal bead.

Vintage "Sandy" Beads
In digging around in my stash I found these vintage Italian(?) lamp work beads that seem to have a sandy, beach like feel to them.  I gave the larger ones some swirls to set them apart a bit.

I love how the silver, crystal and bronze beads subtly sparkle in this necklace and I'm also very glad
to have more of the vintage beads so I could make a pair of earrings to coordinate with the necklace.
Sandy Beaches Earrings

Thank you for joining me here!  Be sure to stop by the other designer's posts to see their creations:

Guest Designers:
Sarajo Wentling
Deb Stewart (you are here!)

Art Elements Team:
Sue Kennedy
Laney Mead
Lesley Watt
Claire Fabian
Karen Totten
Cooky Schock
Jenny Davies-Reazor
Caroline Dewison
Cathy Spivey Mendola
Niky Sayers
Lindsay Starr
Jen Cameron

Monday, April 17, 2017

Forest Journey Mystery Competition

Hello again and welcome to the reveal of Allegory Gallery's latest challenge, the Forest Journey Mystery Competition
As with all the challenges/competitions that Andrew Thornton designs, this kit was loaded with many beautiful beads.  The concept of this challenge involved "thought(s) about the hero's journey...They must leave behind the status quo...where remarkable things can happen..." 


Every trip into the forest can set one on a remarkable journey of sights, sounds and sensations.  In creating this necklace, I wanted to express the different textures and shades of light found in the forest:  the smoothness of wooden branches chewed bare of bark by animals, the roughness of gnarled roots, broken branches and sticks, and rays of sunlight streaming through the forest canapy, revealing leafy plants dappled with delicate forest flowers. 











Most of my design features beads from the kit although I did add some Czech glass flowers, leaves and wavy glass discs.  I also found the delightful leather cord which has metallic flecks of copper on it from barsikmoy, a fellow Etsy seller.


Journey into the forest for more beautiful designs by visiting Allegory Gallery's Design Challenges Facebook page here.

Thanks for joining me!