8/19/11

Japanese Gardens

The Inspired by Nature Challenge for week 7 is the Zen Garden, a place of peace and meditation.


The focal in my design is one I found when I was only weeks into my beading experience (and before I took up the habit of inquiring into the names of my stones.)  I was attracted to its cosmic undertone, the way it draws the eye in to explore its depths. Perfect for this week’s challenge! Bezelled in gunmetal and sterling silver seed beads, the stone has a small, center-drilled hole in the top, which I first viewed as a drawback, but came to see as an opportunity to begin embellishing with small pearls and pieces of silver, suggesting the small rock groupings found in these gardens.

The pendant inspired my color palette of  blues, grays and yellow-green turquoise. I added a bit of warmth with deep-red rondelles.

Click over to the Inspired by Nature group on Flickr to get a peak into other designers’ inner gardens.

4 comments:

  1. Nice Karin! Your bezels always look perfect!

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  2. Oh my goodness, what and elegant and perfectly named piece. Just the exactly perfect details and nothing that does not belong. I had a design teacher who always talked about "selecting out the unnecessary details" in life to create art, and you demonstrate mastery of that here. Bravo!

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  3. Oh this is gorgeous..I love the focal but I also really love the stones looking beads (Greenish) in this beautiful piece. Would you please share what they are called and where they came from?
    jenni

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  4. Hi Jenni - those are beautiful stones, aren't they? They came from of a strand of 19x6mm Green Turquoise. The nuggets in this strand were flecked with colors ranging from orange-red to inky midnight blue, like the ones I used in this piece. A very versatile stone. I purchased them from a store in Atlanta, Bead Dreams.

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