A Little Winter Romance

December’s inspiration for the Art Bead Challenge, Sleeping Beauty by Erte, offered some spectacular color combinations! I love its twist on the primary palette, with the darkened red and blue, muted yellow and the surprising addition of soft lavender. I decided to create a bracelet this month, and focused on an expanded complementary palette of rich red through orange-yellow, accented with the print’s deep blue.

The center strand starts with two Czech glass beads patterned very similarly to the dress in the painting! Vivid lapis rounds surround the center bead, which is one of Erin Prais-Hintz’s frosted flake charms in ginger and bezeled in brass. A brass disc bead completes the strand. I designed this strand to be reversible; warm and classic in the photo on the left, the bracelet takes on a frosty, elegant feel when the focal charm is flipped to reveal a second snowflake in steel with a silver bezel in the top, right photo.

A second strand is made up of vintage glass rosary beads in the same deep red, etched with delicate gold swirls. The last strand is a length of bronze chain embellished with bright red rondelles tipped with deep blue. The strands, which combine the rich gold of the 3-cut seed beads, the cool silver of the rosary, and the warm bronze chain, are joined by a curved bronze cuff connector handcrafted by THEAtoo.

This is one of my favorite projects of the year - what a great inspiration print to end the Art Bead Scene challenges for 2012! There's still plenty of time to join in the fun! Click over to the Art Bead Scene’s Flickr page to see all the entries for this month.