YOJP Week 5 - Mid-Winter Memories

I have always loved long, solitary mid-winter walks, when the landscape is unadorned, still gently fading. While the colors are subtle and muted, there's an abundance of structure and texture on display - details that go unnoticed when everything is in bloom.

The inspiration for this week's Year of Jewelry Project came from a pre-snow walk in my Atlanta neighborhood last week. When I bent down to pick up a large piece of fallen bark, thinking it might come in handy for a photo shoot, I was surprised to discover some young green shoots - the first promise of spring.

 

Faceted, icicle-cut tourmaline gemstones nestle among keishi pearls, calling to mind those fresh green shoots in the winter soil. The focal combines a black drusy, tourmaline roundels, freshwater pearl and sterling pinecone charm (from Nina Designs), beneath a sterling connector by Saki Silver. After the last few icy-cold mornings, I'm hoping those glossy green blades are true harbingers of Spring!

Year of Jewelry Project - It's Golden

Week 2's theme for the Year of Jewelry Project, It's Golden, sent me searching through my art beads for this curved lampwork focal, swirled in gold and blue. Deciding on a bracelet in freeform vertical netting, I loaded up a bead tray with all manner of gold-hued seed beads and pearls.

An afternoon spent building up five rows of vertical netting would have to be at the top of my list of pure beading fun!

This bracelet looks deceptively easy. The hardest design challenge was to tweak the length and weight of each side with the clasp attached until I could wear the bracelet without the focal shifting to the side or to the back. Much experimenting - tweak, wear for an hour, rebalance, retest - until it is now a put-it-on-and-it-stays-put, no-fuss accessory. And it looks smashing with jeans and a white tee!

Year of Jewelry Project - Week 1

One of the challenges I'm undertaking this year is the Year of Jewelry Project, a Facebook group where participants commit to creating a piece of jewelry weekly and posting it to the Facebook page and their individual blogs.

The prompt for Week 1 was Something New for Me, trying a new technique, or an old technique in a new way. I stitched up a pair of right angle weave earrings (old technique) with a (new-to-me) seed bead shape, farfalle beads. The pattern is from Maggie Roschyk's Artistic Seed Bead Jewelry, and I will be coming back to these peanut-shaped beads for more experimentation!

I picked up that hank of Czech farfalle beads at a recent bead show because their transparent, lustered finish combined two colors on Pantone's Spring Color Report.  The center of each seed bead is Violet Tulip, and the edges twinkle with Radiant Orchid, the Color of the Year for 2014. I finished the design with blackberry and pink-hued pearls and a touch of Vitrail and Indian Pink crystals.

Not daring enough (yet!) to try the full-hue exuberance of Radiant Orchid in a dress or a sweater, it's going to be a fun new shade to use in my jewelry designs! At first I thought I had very little of this year's signature color in my studio, but as I was putting away this project, I noticed pops of it on my bead tray - in my glasses and scissors!

Where are you seeing Radiant Orchid?