As evidenced by my dwindling blog posts, beading has taken a back seat for awhile. After 25 years and much use, our kitchen was begging for a makeover. Dan and I would both put cooking near the top of our favorites list, but we'd been making do with a cooktop that only had two functioning burners for years! We began renovating every square inch of our kitchen in February, and once it was finished, we knew we wanted to dive back in and update the rest of the rooms on the first floor. With our two youngest graduated and moved to new cities and jobs, creating spaces that reflected our new lifestyle was an important factor, but fitting in a place to bead in each space was essential, too!

Replacing our multi-tiered island with a single-level design opened up the room. Lots of windows provide great natural light, which I can supplement with new can lights when needed. My new favorite place to bead!

Office: Organization is a key factor in any room, but for me, an uncluttered office is essential to getting any work done! A coat closet off the main hallway serves as a file room, and my tendency to file or recycle whatever hits my desk daily helps keep me humming along and my office neat and tidy.

Living Room: This room had been essentially empty for the last year, since giving our living room furniture to our son for his first apartment. That made repainting easy, and relocating our old family room furniture here turned this space into a cozy and relaxing retreat. In fact, it’s now one of our favorite rooms in the house!

The family room got a much-needed facelift with new seating, a retiled fireplace and neutral-colored walls. That green square on the floor? It marks the place for a black leather ottoman/coffee table/ bead table, due next month. This space is not quite finished, but the remaining tile, paint and carpeting are on Dan’s to-do-list. It's back to beading for me!

When Sally Russick of the Studio Sublime announced her One Crayon Color Challenge, I immediately joined in, choosing to create a design using the tints, tones and shades of black.

I challenged myself to finally use this pendant and string of rutilated quartz. When I purchased them nearly two years ago, I knew the pendant would make a dramatic focal piece, but despite much experimenting, hadn’t found just the right design for it.

Once I framed the pendant in a beaded bezel, I was stumped by the top center-drilled hole. After trying and discarding several beaded embellishments, I settled on a simple daisy spacer topped by a marcasite square. The marcasite added a little extra shine without full-bore bling, a perfect complement to the creamy sheen of the stone.

Keeping to the tints and shades of black, a beaded bead (from a tutorial by Sharri Moroshok) and quartz drop add some color contrast to the focal without grabbing the spotlight. To complete the design, I hung the focal from a black and gray herringbone neckstrap, finished with a bit of etched chain to echo the silver in the daisy spacer.

Much thanks to Sally for dreaming up this challenge and hosting our hop, and for inspiring me to conquer my design dilemma. If you haven’t already, take a few minutes to click the links below and take in the designs of all the One Crayon Color participants.