Bead Happy: Michaels

Christmas is getting close, the decorations are up and things are a little crazy around here, but what else is new? I haven't had much time to play with my beads lately and I've been itching to work on something new. I had so much fun participating in The Challenge of Color blog hop a couple of weeks ago that I decided to join another one, even with all the craziness! I think these challenges are good for me. They break me out of my rut and get me thinking in new ways. Plus, for some reason I work best when I have a deadline. Nothing like a little pressure to get the creative juices flowing!

This challenge is hosted by the oh-so talented Lorelei who has one of the best jewelry blogs in the blogosphere. You can read about the challenge here. Lorelei and her friends Nancy and Daniele chose a palette of dark, smoky beads from Michaels. The rules were, you had to use the beads chosen plus you could add two beads of your choice and whatever clasp you'd like.

Here are the beads! PS: I stole this photo from Lorelei's blog because I forgot to take one before I got started. ;-)

The Beads

As you can see there were some peacock freshwater pearls, gunmetal chain, mother of pearl faceted ovals, black quartz nuggets and silver-rimmed glass beads. Of course when I headed off the Michaels to pick up the beads for the challenge, I forgot to bring a list. Oops. Going from memory I managed to get the chain, mother of pearl and silver-lined beads right but bought the wrong pearls and forgot completely about the nuggets. Luckily when I went back they had the two missing items and I was good to go! I was really happy that the selection of beads at Michaels is pretty much the same here in Canada as in the US.

Now, I have to admit, this selection of beads is not something I would normally choose myself. I'm more of a bright and sparkly kind of girl. This palette of dark smoky hues was a challenge for me and the black nuggets were especially throwing me off with their rough and rugged edges.

As I turned them around in my hands I was thinking about how much they looked like moon rocks or something from outer space. I thought, "why fight it?" and the idea for Cosmic Debris was born, (although I was originally thinking of calling this piece Space Junk). ;-) I sorted through my stash looking for the perfect celestial pendant to match and found a Green Girl Studios disc, called Alchemy Rock that I've had kicking around in my studio for quite some time. Its interstellar vibe worked well with my theme but it was kind of dingy and tarnished from sitting around for so long. A quick polish with my Sunshine Cloth had it looking like new in no time!

I used some gray seed beads and beading wire to create a loop to hang it from and then continued up the length of the wire on either side, alternating seed beads with the Michaels beads. I found a cool box clasp in my stash (with a moonstone cabochon... how perfect!) and finished it off only to realize that I had forgotten about the chain! So I attached a length inside to create a second layer. I think it works quite well for an afterthought. ;-)

Here is is, my "Cosmic Debris" necklace!

I'm very pleased with how it turned out. So much so that I've been wearing it around all day! As a matter of fact, I like it so much that I think I'm going to keep it. I never do that! Merry Christmas to me!

However, I still have enough beads left to make another if someone really wanted one. ;-)

Me wearing it!

Here I am showing it (and my new haircut) off. ;-)

Happy Holidays everyone!

Friday, December 17, 2010

A New Challenge -Cosmic Debris